Five Ways to Ensure Your Analytics Solution Takes Root and Flourishes Across Your Organization

This year, companies driven by advanced analytics and a robust data culture have proven their resilience in the face of global disruption. According to McKinsey, organizations are rapidly establishing analytics capabilities to respond to challenges such as Covid-19, with these capabilities expected to offer significant annual economic value.

Successful analytics are now critical to all companies’ futures, regardless of industry. However, few business leaders understand what’s required to ensure analytics solutions truly take root and flourish within their organizations.

Winning analytics solutions align with the individual roles of both technical and business users, featuring specialized tools that connect everyone to a centralized analytics resource. Yet, companies must overcome inherent barriers to success to achieve this.

Can You Bridge The Gap Between Analytics Ambitions And Companywide Success?

While it's easy to envision analytics success, most companies struggle to make it effective and sustainable. Even organizations with strong analytics solutions often face challenges operationalizing and scaling these tools beyond isolated successes.

INFORMS reports that most analytics projects fail to provide real business value, with a failure rate in large organizations close to 85%. This is especially challenging for older organizations with deeply embedded legacy data tools.

Key Steps To Drive Analytics Adoption Within Your Organization

How can organizations ensure analytics take root and flourish among their teams? Here are five strategies decision-makers should prioritize, along with practical tips for achieving these goals.

1. Get your employees on board for data literacy

Leaders must proactively support data literacy for all employees, at varying levels of sophistication. When employees can use analytics tools and understand insights—or at least communicate effectively with analytics users—companies realize greater innovation and efficiency, as reported by Harvard Business Review.

2. Commit to a single, enterprise-wide solution

Data silos are a classic problem, but overcoming them requires more than new technologies. Leaders must help employees change their habits and align everyone with a universal, centralized analytics tool. Committing to a “single version of the truth” empowers decision-making at all levels and creates a foundation for long-term success.

3. Align augmented analytics with individual employee success

Analytics tools should be implemented with individual employee success in mind. Features like “search analytics” allow employees to find answers and build reports using simple search tools, without needing help from data scientists or IT professionals. This empowers employees to turn insights into actions within their existing business or productivity applications, improving both individual efficiency and broader business outcomes.

4. Include built-in training functions so users can progressively develop critical analytics skills

The first exposure business users have to analytics tools shapes their perception and future use. Aligning employees with functions that help them, are understandable, and proactively train them increases the likelihood of long-term adoption. This approach also reduces the need to hire only analytics experts, supporting continuous analytics adoption as teams evolve.

5. Create a culture of trust

Leaders must instill confidence in both the tools provided and their genuine desire to support employee success. Trust influences employees’ decisions and their use of analytics tools. Analytics cannot take root if employees do not trust them. Success in this area ensures employees will augment their judgment and intuition with algorithmic recommendations, leading to better outcomes than either humans or machines alone.

The Key Is Beginning With Realistic Steps

No one achieves transformation overnight. Large-scale decisions should begin with a clear understanding of current progress. For business leaders and employees, analytics adoption is no different.

With the right tools, focus on small successes and individual growth. Embrace incremental gains, commit to progress, and celebrate achievements along the way. This approach leads to a healthier, more resilient analytics environment and prepares organizations to face future challenges.

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.