When I started my first endeavor it was time to set up our data ecosystem. It was very frustrating to find out that we had to install 8 different technologies including Segment, Google Bigquery, Amplitude, Heap, ClearBrain, Facebook, Google and Google Analytics. But the worst part was that it took us 2 months to set up everything because we had to focus on building our product at the same time. In the end, we still had to do a bunch of manual work to make predictions and collaborate with the rest of the team. Painful.

I started my career in Marketing and I remember clearly hpw 20 years ago the main problem in the industry was that when companies wanted to create a strategy and execute, they would have to hire “Specialists” like a PR agency, a BTL agency, an Ad Agency, and others. This was creating silos and that is why, back when I was in college, I worked on a thesis about Marketing Integration. The whole idea was that Marketing had to return to the early days when everything used to be done by a single agency of record in charge of both the strategy and the execution, from every front.

Technology is fairly new, and it seems like the problems we are having in data management are very similar to the problems marketing had a while back, which are already fixed. Today more than ever we have growth agencies in charge of strategy and execution in every single channel. Yes, there are still some specializations, but more than ever clients rely on a single agency to carry out their strategy and execution. But when it comes to data, we have all of these specialized systems that are creating chaos in organizations. All of these systems are in silos and teams are not able to collaborate and take action in real time.

Setup wise, engineering teams setup the system for each different area within the company. Then, when data analysis is needed, sales will ask BI, BI will make the analysis, send it to sales, then sales sends it to Marketing, then they will ask questions to BI, which then will generate the analysis again and finally at some point, Marketing will share it with their agency of record. After all this process, at least a month has gone by and in the meantime, users are not retained, money is lost and data is stale and losing value.

Recently companies like Notion.so have helped us all see the light. Notion.so is an all-in-one Workspace where you can have a CRM, Todo List, Calendar, Docs and many other tools in one place. Many will argue that it is their service is good because they focus on many things at the same time, making them everything but specialists, but it all depends on what you think is good. To me it is much better to have a “shallow” system that makes me more efficient, collaborative, and faster. It is useless to have a deep and very technical system if I am not able to share and collaborate in real time with other areas of the company, plus having to spend a lot of time setting it up and learning how to make it work . It is true that  Notion.so CRM system is not as “complete” as Hubspot’s CRM system but Notion's CRM does what it needs to do.

Here are my insights on why I think data Workspaces are the future:

  1. When different areas can work with the same data and have access to real time data they can make faster and smarter decisions.
  2. When an entire company is working with the same information, friction is reduced. With the same data at hand, it is just a matter of strategy and execution.
  3. Providers can now be part of the workflow and have access to real time data that they can make actionable.
  4. Execution time is greatly reduced because now analysis and execution aren’t separate. For example if there is a problem with churn I can activate a pipeline right from the software and solve it immediately.
  5. Workspaces are the only way to take action with end to end pipelines. For example, if a company without a workspace wants to reduce churn, they have to use 5 or more different systems and develop their own predictions engine with a programming language. With workspaces you can connect many different data points and automate the entire process.

Silos are a silent killer in organizations. We need to learn from other industries that are mature and understand how to work differently and more importantly, collaboratively. Collaboration is not just about working better with peers, it is also about data and technology working together in harmony with the people, to achieve business goals.                                

What's Datagran? Datagran is a system of record that allows companies to integrate data and analyze, predict and take action in a single pipeline to solve specific business problems like churn, increased inventory value, customer acquisition cost, and more.

For more information visit www.datagran.io