Clarity from the start is crucial when it comes to evaluating data strategy

How do you assess the result of an invisible policy?

Having a data strategy is crucial for modern businesses, but if done correctly it's one of those policies that will never be noticed. How do you measure the outcome of something that's meant to be invisible?

One method is to track the complaints. An IT leader at a financial firm, speaking at Computing's recent IT Leaders' Club (sponsored by Informatica), drew parallels between data and security strategies due to the way in which these policies can impact usability.

"I can see the same thing happening for data," she added. "Sometimes you just need to find the right balance."

Going to the board and saying, "We didn't get any complaints about data this week, we're doing great!" is unlikely to engender confidence though, and happily attendees at the event had other ideas.

The CIO of a large events firm said that setting firm goals at the launch of the strategy will prevent confusion in the future:

"When you lay out the strategy and the business piles into it, it has to be very clear what they get out of it. That could be revenue, insight, savings, efficiency; at the end of it, if you haven't laid out what you were going to measure at the start then you've already failed.

"At some point...the business will expect you to deliver on what you set out to do. It should be baked into the beginning… If at any point you're not clear on whether you've delivered, then you've probably got the wrong strategy."

Another attendee argued that measuring outcomes in that way can be difficult, because "There are only really three types of benefits [of using data]...that the organisation can measure: make money; reduce your operating costs; or reduce the risk."

"It's not about the IT department," one delegate stressed. She added, "If you're measuring data as how it's helping your IT department or your data strategy, you're kind of wrong by default." More important is observing how successfully the organisation is using data - but that comes back to the difficulty of quantifying such a nebulous topic.

With that in mind, perhaps the most achievable way to measure the success of a data strategy is to ask, ‘Is your data aligned with the outcomes that your organisation is trying to deliver?' If not, then you need to write a new strategy.