Opening Keynote: Empowering Teams with Data

Transcript

Hey, welcome to the Experience Makers Skill Exchange. I’m Trevor Paulson, and I’m a Director of Product Management for Adobe Analytics. I’m really excited to talk to you today about data democratization, empowering people to use data to make better decisions in their job. So let’s start with one of the most prolific authors of the 1900s, Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel, known as Dr. Seuss. He was an author and illustrator who really transformed children’s literature with his whimsical characters and imaginative tales. He was born in 1904 and initially worked as an illustrator and cartoonist before making his mark in children’s books with The Cat in the Hat in 1957. It was a book designed to help children learn how to read. His stories are known for their playful language, vibrant illustrations, and profound messages that encourage children to think creatively, ask questions, and explore the world. His books have sold hundreds of millions of copies in dozens of languages around the world, and is a perennial favorite household author of mine when I was a kid, as well as my children that I have today. Now, one thing I find so inspiring about Dr. Seuss was his ability to take super complex ideas and topics and simplify them down into a form that literally millions of children can easily understand and internalize. Today, I’m going to talk about the value of empowering your teams with data and some of the lessons that we can learn from Dr. Seuss and how to apply them. Because as Dr. Seuss says, the more you learn, the more places you’ll go. Dr. Seuss offered some very powerful lessons for us on effective communication, and those lessons can be applied to data democratization. And I’m going to show you how you can use Adobe Analytics or Adobe Customer Journey Analytics to really apply some of those lessons. So let’s talk about some of the lessons that he taught us. First, Dr. Seuss simplified complex topics like environmental conservation, acceptance, war and peace, consumerism, and he made them understandable for children. Similarly, when democratizing data, we must ensure that we take the complex topics that we have about data and make them accessible and understandable to all users. Next, Dr. Seuss encouraged exploration and curiosity, whether through adventures with Cat in the Hat or open-ended stories that really made readers think critically on their own. With data democratization, you want to be able to allow users to explore data themselves and answer their own questions. That is going to always be key to really empowering your users to work smarter. Next, Dr. Seuss also deployed simple, rhythmic language to express complex ideas, as seen in Green Eggs and Ham, which actually only uses 50 unique words. Likewise, when we democratize data to all the different people in our companies, we should present just the right amount of information so that we don’t overwhelm people and they know just what they need to know. Fourth important lesson from Dr. Seuss is really fostering an inclusive and empathetic attitude and culture. Stories like Horton Hatch’s The Egg or How the Grinch Stole Christmas, they teach the power of openness and collaboration. Similarly, when promoting a culture of openness and collaboration, data needs to be shared openly and benefit everyone who needs to use it to make their job better or make the customer experience better. And then finally, Dr. Seuss was known for his very compelling and simple visualizations. He used bold colors and strong lines to enhance the storytelling. His illustrations made the story come to life. Well, like Dr. Seuss, when we democratize data to other users, we need to also use strong data visualization techniques to enhance the story that we’re trying to tell and drive our message home. So let’s dive into how we can use Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics to follow the lessons from Dr. Seuss. With Adobe Analytics and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, our goal is to make it so that you can bring data to everyone that needs it where they need it so that everyone can make the best customer experience possible. Let’s dive in. Let’s first talk about making complex data accessible. One of the most difficult things about using data is knowing what you’re dealing with, knowing what a dimension means, knowing what a metric means. Well, in Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics, we’ve provided a new capability called Data Dictionary. Data Dictionary is seamlessly integrated into Analysis Workspace and allows you to click into the information and description and settings of each and every dimension and metric so that any user can easily understand what it is that they’re working with. And we also show recommendations about what frequent dimensions or metrics the current dimension is usually used with. This sort of enablement allows you to scale up how users use Analysis Workspace and lets them understand and make sure that they’re using the right data that they should be using in a confident way. Next, let’s talk about encouraging curiosity and exploration with your data. One of the things that makes data so difficult to work with is how to share it with other people and do it in a secure way. Oftentimes, people don’t want to have to be able to log in to Analysis Workspace or they don’t have the ability to do that easily. Well, with Share with Anyone projects in Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Analytics, we make that very easy for you to overcome. You can share an Analysis Workspace project that you’ve created with anyone and they don’t even have to log in. You can also enforce login requirements if you want to, but they don’t necessarily have to have all the same permissions that you would normally set up for every other user of Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics. This gives you a pretty seamless way to make data open and accessible to anyone that needs to be able to do their job in the way that they need it. Next, let’s talk about meeting users where they are. Dr. Seuss was so amazing at taking complex topics and bringing it down to the level of children. With Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics, we really strive to make it so that you can do that too. One of my favorite things that you can get with Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics is our mobile app. It provides a simplified consumption-oriented user experience that’s available on the go. I find that most of the time my users are on their phone often, and so bringing the data to them on where they are is really helpful. The mobile scorecards that you can create allow you to have a very consumption-oriented experience where you can log in, see key trends, and pretty soon be able to look at funnels and other important data points that you may be needing to make a critical decision about how your customers are performing on your website or how we can make their experience better. Next, let’s talk about creating an inclusive data culture. So many of the characters from Dr. Seuss’ novels were teaching us about how to include other people and make it easier for others. Well, one of the things that we are going to be adding soon to Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is the ability to converse on the data and include and incorporate other people into the conversation. So with commenting in Analysis Workspace, you’ll be able to post questions. You’ll be able to at mention different colleagues or respond to and resolve different queries that they might have. This will enable users to pin comments to specific data points or ensure nothing is lost in translation. There’s so many different ways that you can get confused about data. So taking a lesson from Dr. Seuss and being able to bring other people in and talk about data is an amazing thing that you’ll be able to do soon in Customer Journey Analytics. And then finally, as we talked about, creating simple and compelling visualizations. This is something that was probably my favorite thing about Dr. Seuss’ books growing up is his very whimsical illustrations and the bold lines and colors. Well, one of the things that we want to be able to enable Customer Journey Analytics customers to do is incorporate the data that you have into different visualization tools. The Customer Journey Analytics BI extension allows you to do just that. It allows you to take the different data points you have in CJA and incorporate them into Power BI or Tableau in a way that makes it so that the data is always consistent. You never have to try and recreate different metrics and dimensions in your back end using SQL. And when you have a question about what you see in Power BI or Tableau, you can seamlessly jump into Analysis Workspace and dive in and answer those questions. It’s amazing. This is definitely one of my favorite things that we’ve ever released. And it’s awesome because it’s a SQL-based interface and works with just about any visualization tool that you have without needing to do anything special. So with those five different lessons that we can learn and hopefully those five useful features and capabilities that I’ve shown you, you should be able to do great things and go to great places. So I want to share this last quote with you before we close. You’re off to great places. Today is your day. Your mountain is waiting. So get on your way. I hope that you enjoy this presentation and learn something useful from it. And I hope that you will take some of the lessons learned from Dr. Seuss today as you think about making and empowering users with data. Thank you.