Your Single Source of Truth
Leaders know that data reigns supreme when it comes to making informed decisions, but finding truth in information is becoming more challenging daily.
In business, data is the key to identifying and analyzing patterns and risks, improved efficiency and innovation, cost optimization, and the list goes on. You can make the best decisions for your company with the right information.
Data Aggregation
An important step in using data to your advantage is making sure the most impactful metrics are visible and readily available to you without having to spend time digging for them. You build an accurate source of truth in one centralized place by aggregating daily, weekly, and quarterly metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and other critical data from team members and the other software platforms.
When your plan A isn’t working, and your progress on goals falls short, you can always go back to your data to re-analyze and construct a renewed strategy based on facts and history.
Using Data in Meetings
Ensuring data is shared and reviewed as the focus of your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings is critical to creating a synchronized culture that operates around a single source of truth. Whether the objective of the meeting is problem-solving, analysis, or forecasting, data is essential to provide context and measure the impact of actions.
The first part of a traditional meeting is typically every team member sharing the information they’ve collected and where they got it. Granting all team members access to this data beforehand will cut your meeting time in half and help ensure that your team arrives prepared.
Integrations are a great way to automate data aggregation – At Align, we use integrations with SalesForce, HubSpot, Excel, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Slack to pull relevant information directly into our meetings agendas.
Empower Your Team with the “why”
One of the most important things you can do as an executive is to make your employees feel valued in the business. Employee satisfaction is arguably your most telling asset, as so many other business factors depend on it. It starts with your culture – establishing a transparent culture will help unify your team around a single source of truth. When employees understand how to do their jobs and why they do their jobs, they are more likely to be motivated and succeed.
They are also more likely to enjoy their jobs and be inspired to build a rapport with their higher-ups and peers. Allowing employees access to important company information will elevate their sense of value to the business and help them feel like an important part of the team. Some company information must understandably remain amongst leadership, but that doesn’t mean business leaders should keep their teams in the dark.
Building Your Single Source of Truth
Your source of truth is the optimization of data at work. It’s the ultimate alignment implementor for your team – your starting place rooted in the core of your business. Your single source will enable other opportunities by allowing you to build a complete view of your business performance. It will also help you to drive a business strategy that reflects your values and those of your team.
Book a demo with us today to learn how Align can help implement your single source of truth.