Once you’ve identified your objectives and goals, you can begin designing and building your strategy. Remember, your starting point should always be to align your data strategy to your business strategy.

First, work to find out about some of the key business initiatives that data should support. Take a look at any existing documentation your business already has that outlines the overall business strategy, along with the goals of that strategy. You might find this information on annual reports or internal business proposals, so it’s worth having a good look around if you can’t find it immediately.

Next, interview key executives and heads of departments and ask them to talk you through their priorities. Bear in mind, you’re not asking them to talk you through their data priorities, but their business priorities - and then you can work to ascertain how data might be able to help. This will also be a good opportunity to get their buy-in to the data strategy you’re building, as you can ask them to review it once it’s written to ensure it meets their needs.

Don’t forget to speak t o your suppliers, retailers or other partners too. You shouldn't just get an internal view of things - it might be that your partners have business needs that you might be able to help with, opportunities that could be enabled by your data strategy or perhaps even a strategy that you might want to consider aligning with.

Finally, consider running workshops across key functions and geographies. It’s important to get input, prioritization and buy-in from key stakeholders across the business. Not only will they be able to give you a good insight into their needs, but this will also help you avoid creating a data strategy that doesn’t meet the needs of teams who weren’t consulted at this early stage.

Designing & Building a Data Strategy