1. 66 Advancing Philanthropy www.afpnet.org / Fall 2014
technology
A
s organizations look for more efficient ways to
make, keep and grow relationships; bring in more
money; measure outcomes; and demonstrate
impact, analytics has become a potential alternative as
a key enabler. So what exactly is analytics? It is about
technology, techniques and processes for understanding
what is in your data and driving your business practices.
Analytics can help determine trends, prescribe actions
and responses and provide a solid foundation for data-
driven decision making.
In order to realize the true benefit of analytics, your
entire organization needs key decision makers who
embrace the gathering, analyzing and frequent reviewing
of data. An organization driven by analytics requires
leaders who leverage the tools, techniques and processes
as a flexible, mutable guide for driving efficiency and
results. Achieving that end requires careful thought and
planning, as well as a focus on the people who will have
to change. While this sounds like a clear “no brainer,”
organizations often struggle to implement these types
of data-driven decisions. Often, a shift in thinking
and processes is needed. In any effort composed of
technology, processes and people where this degree of
change is required, the people must be engaged, educated
and involved in the ultimate solution that is put in place.
The careful and thoughtful introduction of an analytics
culture requires preparation if you are to have a successful
journey. Analytics can change the way you move forward
and improve your results.
To begin the setup for analytics implantation, broad-
based questions are in order.
1. Do you have good data to analyze? Where
is it? Who uses it, for what and with what
frequency?
Most of you want to trust what comes out of the
computer, but your experiences demonstrate that trust
needs to be earned. Data often must be cleaned up before
you can consider a technology choice to help in analysis.
The technology is merely a tool, an enabler. The people
and processes involved are other important enablers.
Cleanup need not be burdensome, however, and vendor
partners are often your best allies in ensuring that good
data hygiene is in place.
You also need to know what you have, how it is being
used and by whom. In order to move to a future state,
you need to deeply understand the current data types,
uses and questions being answered. Then you need to
decide what questions you want to ask and answer. That
step of clearly defining what your expectations are is a
critical element in the process.
2. Do you have the capabilities and skills in-
house to do the analysis? Do you know what
questions you want and/or need to answer?
What do you expect from the organization
in leveraging analytics?
You cannot simply assume that, if you acquire an
analytics tool, your organization will immediately be
able and skilled enough to use it. You may need to
Analytics, Schmanalytics—It’s More Than
Just the Data
By Gilman Sullivan
JimFrazier/Illustrationsource

2. Fall 2014 / www.afpnet.org Advancing Philanthropy 67
4. Are you ready as an organization and
culture to tackle this? What will you need to
do to change? How do you institutionalize
analytics?
First, you need a vision. Senior leadership needs to paint
the picture of the foreseeable future and talk about it in
ways that make people want to be part of that picture. In
one of his speeches, JFK said, “I believe that this nation
should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this de-
cade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning
him safely to the Earth.” Clear, specific and visionary.
Next, leadership needs to form a coalition of like-mind-
ed people and a few naysayers to sculpt a communications
plan. Define key audiences: Who needs to make this hap-
pen, who needs to help them and who has to be cognizant?
What does each of those audiences know about the effort,
are they probable proponents and is their sphere of influ-
ence in the organization large or small? What do you need
them to do?
Communications planning requires answering those
questions and building a plan to define who owns each au-
dience and how each audience will receive communications,
from whom, by what means, how often and with what ex-
pectation of demonstrated action toward commitment.
Initial messages need to be about the vision and cover
such frequently asked questions as who is doing it, who’s
on the team, what will they be doing, for how long, etc.
Later messages need to push accomplishments—the things
the team has discovered and what is coming next.
Involvement is critical, so you need to create opportu-
nities for involvement. Hold a kick-off, whether you are
using a vendor partner or beginning an implementation.
Serve some doughnuts or snacks, and invite everyone to
attend live or over the Web to hear about the vision, the
plan and the participants. As you move forward, have simi-
lar sessions to present the status and some of the early wins.
Provide training to all early team members to improve their
understanding of data and to push the cultural change in
using data analysis to be more successful.
Analytics and its broad use across an organization
requires some thought, some planning and some care in
managing the process of change. It is not just about the
data. It is about moving your people and your culture
toward embracing and using the techniques, tools and
processes.
Gilman Sullivan is change management practice
manager at Blackbaud (www.blackbaud.com) in
Charleston, S.C.
technology
acquire the initial skills to actually draw inferences and
meaning from the information the tool provides. It
is not rocket science, but it does require an analytical
mind, disciplined in the rigor of data analysis, capable
of explaining what it all means and able to make
recommendations on opportunities, risks and alternative
options. Organizations often engage a partner that has
proprietary tools, skills and experience to do analytics
work for them, giving them the benefit of skilled analysis
and interpretation of their data. With the support of the
hired company, you can experience the “wow” moments
as your organization’s leaders learn the opportunities
and risks that have been in your data but have gone
unnoticed or not acted upon until now.
At some point, you must consider the skills of
current resources and how much of an analytics bite
your organization can chew as a core competency. Are
you capable now? Do you need to more slowly move up
the mountain of change in having an analytics culture?
Should you just rely on a partner?
Ideally, your analytics effort needs to grow into more
pervasive access and use by a data-driven culture across
the entire organization. This may require training and
a beginning reliance and insistence on asking, “But
what do the data say?” Analytics is critical to strategic,
as well as tactical and operational, decisions. Unless all
of the organizational silos are involved, you will not be
optimizing your usage.
3. Are you able and willing to look at how
you need to change your decision process?
How do you decide now? How will analytics
change that?
Too often, organizations make decisions by CEO fiat or,
at the other end of the scale, by the executive leadership
team discussing what people think and feel while going
for consensus. Both approaches serve a need, but not
when it comes to making a data-driven decision. To truly
leverage analytics, the organization needs to become
comfortable in challenging assumptions and debating
alternatives—but only if the challenge is supported
by the data. Context and experience are important in
decision making, but you should never overlook or
ignore the data and what the analytics tells you to be
fact.
And do not forget the people. In a change as
major as this, key users need to learn from leadership,
communications and involvement just what the benefits
of an analytics journey will be.