How to Unlock Your Big Data Detective Mindset

by | Apr 9, 2015 | General BI

Reading Time: 2 minutes

As a child, I was a big fan of Nancy Drew. I owned tons of Nancy Drew books (the old school kind from the ‘60s and ‘70s with the yellow cover) and would read them any chance I had. In fact, on a recent visit to my parents’ house, my mom dug up some of my old Nancy Drew books, and I was thrilled to be able to take them home and pass them on to my own daughters.

What fascinated me so much about Nancy? (Other than that she was much older than me – 18 years old! – and seemingly so sophisticated?) Mainly, it was her ability to piece together hard-to-decipher clues and – voila! – solve the crime. During the years I read those books, I used to fancy myself a detective, trying to solve my own neighborhood mysteries (which unfortunately never quite had the drama or thrill of the Nancy Drew capers).

Now, as a marketer who relies on data to guide program decisions, I’m finding myself more and more relying on these detective skills that I honed as a young wannabe-sleuth. When you’re analyzing data, it’s about more than just the numbers; it’s about figuring out what they mean in context and trying to correlate them with other data you have in front of you. It’s about determining which data is relevant and which data is just sending you down the wrong eerie path.

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In a recent study, Aberdeen Group examined the “Nancy Drews” of the big data world – those users who have a detective’s mind and are more adept at exploring and analyzing data. They found that adopting a detective’s mindset can help you substantially improve data access and visibility – enabling you to solve those big data mysteries.

Want to learn more about how to unlock this detective’s mindset? Take a minute to view this presentation and then read the research for yourself.

Read the research:

Kathy Sucich
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