Here are five mistakes for start-ups to avoid when it comes to implementing those all-important data and analytics in their business. 

1. Bringing in a data analyst too early

It is tempting to bring in an analyst at an early stage, to immediately start gleaning reports from your system and creating a simple dashboard, but postponing investing in a complete data system yourselves, and prematurely hiring a data analyst is not always wise. This is because if you rely on individual systems, without a full infrastructure, the analyst may waste a lot of time on manual effort that you may have to do over when you implement your final infrastructure. Another negative is that using a hired analyst makes it more difficult to foster a data-driven culture amongst your staff. It’s preferable for each member of your team to get involved with self-service analytics in-house.

2. Putting off laying your foundations

Yes, it’s daunting for a fledgling company to construct an infrastructure which will gather, store, and analyse all the new data. Yes, there can be spreadsheets, and decisions made on information gathered on your marketing, your product, and your financial results, but short sightedness may cost you. Foundations of a business are like the foundations of a building. If the foundations aren’t secure and in place, then your building can topple and fall. You must make sure you have layered all your core data systems first before building your business on top of them.

3. Underestimating the work that goes into your data infrastructure

Building and operating a data infrastructure is no mean feat and involves taking into consideration the key factors of security, all your privacy protections, and legal compliance. It won’t be the case that you can hire one junior engineer and the work will swiftly be done. Indeed, some big technology firms have a team of 50 or more in charge of their data infrastructure. Plan ahead and find out exactly what and who you will need to take on the challenging task of building this for your business.

4. Outsourcing your infrastructure to consultants

Consultants are all very well, and so is a technology development shop. Both can implement all the rooms of your data warehouse, sort your analytics, and build in all the other functions you’ll need, but be warned. Outsourcing all this work can be very expensive and it also comes at a cost to the expertise of the members of your team. You need your team to be able to incept your data infrastructure together, and with growing knowledge of your business and its specific goals. And this will reap more value to you in the long run.

5. Launching into machine learning or other advanced applications

There are many powerful applications around that can be created using artificial intelligence and will likely launch you a good start, but there’s a negative side to AI not everyone is aware of – that most of its resources are involved in cleaning data then feeding it into machine learning systems. Don’t be tempted to invest in AI, instead invest in your infrastructure and its ability to collect consistent, valuable data will make your advanced applications operate more efficiently.

What your start-up will need to grow and to thrive will depend on the specifics of your business, but if you try to avoid the five mistakes above, then setting up and running an effective data infrastructure will see you hosting pertinent and valuable analytics. Good data and good infrastructure leads to a successful start-up and mistake are easy to avoid if you think smart.