The purpose of gathering and analyzing information is to produce a strategic course of action which changes or improves our desired outcome. Our goal is to reduce the time between data gathering and formulating and implementing actionable outcomes, or what I refer to as analytics efficiency.

Consider the following:

• Can this data help me change an outcome or provide meaningful insights? The time spend analyzing it will depend on the usefulness of the information.
• What is the shelf life of the data? Every data extraction by definition is already obsolete. If your data is constantly moving, then your desired outcome might also have a perishable usefulness. Time spent analyzing depends on the speed in which you can put it into action.
• Use analytics tools to help with summarizing your results, (excel, Tableau, PowerBI, etc). The more advanced your data strategy and reporting capabilities, the easier (and quicker) it will be to address the question being presented.

Finally, data is a critical piece of the puzzle, but data alone can not tell the story. That is because while the data may contain the story, we are the storytellers. We are the ones that have to put that idea into action.