I was the only one left in the office—it was almost 9:00pm and everyone else had long gone. Finishing up a few emails, I sat back and sighed, looking around the room. It had been a long day, one full of frustrations with our current client-tracking system. It was antiquated software that hadn't been updated in years (unsurprisingly, the company has since gone out of business), and learning how to navigate the unfriendly user interface was arduous and time-consuming.
It didn't help that I had had zero experience with any CRM or similar system prior to this job—my first right out of undergrad. More than a year into trying to figure it all out, I had made enough headway to understand how to build some basic client lists using a process that I later found out was very SQL-esque in nature (in hindsight, I was grateful for the weird introduction).
I had just worked my way through one such list of clients, and my mind started churning as I sat back and stared out the dark window. "I wonder..."
Swiveling back to my computer, I pulled up the query tool and typed in a few lines of "code," hit "Run," and up popped a list of names and other client information. But it wasn't the names I was looking for—it was the tiny little number in the corner that told me how many names had been produced from my query. I wrote the number on the whiteboard behind me, adjusted the query to reflect another year's worth of data, ran it again, and wrote the new number on the board.
Feverishly, I repeated the process over and over again. Finally, I sat back to look at the small untidy table of data on the whiteboard, and the lightbulb that had been glowing dimly in the back of my mind suddenly flashed bright. If what I was seeing was right, and if I knew what to look for, I could get just about any data that I wanted out of this huge, clunky system. I could finally answer for myself questions I'd had for months about our client segments, demographic numbers, how long prospects took at each stage of our sales funnel, the caliber of clients we were closing, and much more.
Thus was planted in me the seed of love for data analytics that has only ever grown since then.
I would imagine my experience is not uncommon, although it's very possible that you had a little more context than I did. Having studied business in my undergrad and worked with no organizational systems or software, the world was brand new to me, and I couldn't get enough of it.
Thankfully, I had a boss and work culture that were supportive of my analytical pursuits. In fact, some of the most satisfying moments came months after I had yet other "I wonder..." moments and had spent hours pulling and sifting through data when my boss would ask, "Do we know how many...?" or "What's the percentage of clients that...?" I was able to say, "I've already done this. Here's the data."
It's not everywhere that you get to create a role for yourself at an organization simply because you have a love for something and dive headfirst into it on your own time. But there is immeasurable value that even a basic understanding of your systems and your data can bring to you and your organization.
I was also fortunate to have a colleague and incredible friend with whom I frequently conversed about big-picture and systemic issues and potential solutions. In other words, most of our late-night-at-the-office conversations consisted of saying, "I wonder..." As a result, he and I proactively produced a large number of solutions. Some were implemented and some that were not, but we were prepared with those solutions when the opportunity arose.
Fast forward a few years. We were finally ditching the old clunky system and replacing it with Salesforce (we won't get into the pros and cons of Salesforce at the moment), and I had been asked to project manage the transition. Even though our company was small, and our data volume relatively low, because of the robust nature of Salesforce and our organization's unfamiliarity with it, my boss decided to hire an implementation partner.
Unfortunately, the team that came out to perform the discovery process and the team that we ultimately implemented the system with weren't exactly the same, mostly due to the team leader stepping down from the role for reasons unknown to us. It was a needed transition—we weren't satisfied with the individual's performance anyway, and the lack of communication and a desire to understand our small organization ultimately led to lost time and frustration down the road.
One such "opportunity" arose when our sales and marketing teams faced a data bridging issue between Salesforce and Pardot caused by gaps and overlaps in the Salesforce objects that the sales team was using. Our web developer suddenly asked, "I wonder if we even need this object?" The thought had never even crossed my mind or that of our lead Systems Admin., as the original implementation team had been adamant about that object's necessity during discovery (all the while, of course, touting Salesforce's customizable qualities).
Long story short: after intense evaluation across various departments we found that the change would solve many of the other issues we'd been facing on the front and back ends, and was the clear choice. Had we been able or encouraged to ask those questions earlier on in the process, it would have saved countless hours of work initially and down the line.
Almost every valuable innovation, solution, or professional direction that I have experienced has started with an "I wonder..." I started Insyyt because I strongly believe in the power of such questions and the value that they bring to individuals and organizations. The next time you find yourself in need of a solution, have some idle time, or wondering what to do next, try using an "I wonder..." and see what happens.
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