In the first part of our Future of Data series, we looked at the ways organizations like Spotify and Robinhood are benefiting from data storytelling initiatives, deepening their relationships with customers while driving brand awareness and new client acquisition. 

How can your company get started with data storytelling? Well, these aren’t fairy tales. “Once upon a time” isn’t going to cut it. 

The first step to great data storytelling starts with a deep understanding of who will be consuming your data stories. Who are they? What do you know about them? What are their goals and objectives? Silverline is here to help you find the answers. 

Storytelling starts with data essentials

There’s no shortage of data available today. As we dive deeper into the future of data, let’s start with some quick definitions of the types of data that financial services organizations can use in their storytelling, and why they’re important:

• First-party data: Data collected directly by the firm or individuals within the firm about the market, customers, or prospects. This can be behavioral data, such as website visits or social media engagement, or direct intel from 1:1 meetings or investment history.

• Second-party data: When one company purchases first-party data from another company. Essentially, second-party data can help firms map the network of their clients, or compare their customers to another benchmarked group. For example, an investment bank can map its network via LinkedIn and identify new nodes of influence — as well as how actively their bankers are engaged with these network influencers. 

• Third-party data: This type of data typically comes from aggregated and/or paid sources, such as market news, analysts, websites, ticker values, social media reactions, or media mentions. Third-party data firms scour the web for information and sell that data to customers.

Democratizing data across the financial services organization

Gone are the days of traditional business intelligence and data analysts. 

You may have already invested in the people doing the hard work of assimilating, assembling, and cleaning your data sources. But it’s not necessarily about getting the data in the hands of your team or shiny new tools that will usher in this new era of data for financial services firms. It’s about being able to understand that data and take action from it. 

How can you tell a story from that data, so that your entire team knows what to do next? Combining qualitative insights with quantitative data is what’s going to set your firm apart and help your team level up their game.

Today, you don’t have to be a data scientist in order to take advantage of sophisticated tools like TableauCRM or incredible next-gen voice analytics like Quarrio. The power of data storytelling can be directly in the hands of your bankers, tellers, investment analysts, private equity associates, and more — making every member of your team a data scientist.

Data storytelling with Salesforce

This is exactly why Salesforce has invested so heavily in data storytelling. Salesforce acquired Tableau in 2019, bringing another level of data analytics into the Salesforce ecosystem.

This includes:

• Reports and dashboards, available via desktop, mobile and web applications
• Predictive analytics, automatic recommendations, and scoring models
• Cloud-specific analytics, like Financial Services Cloud or Marketing Cloud
• Connections to external sources for augmentation and enrichment 

So why add Tableau to the mix? As one of the market leaders in user-friendly analytics, it made logical sense. The product offers expansive intelligence and analytics features, combining data visualization with storytelling. For a sense of the logic behind the acquisition, here’s what Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO, Salesforce, said in a press release:

“Tableau is an extraordinary company, with an amazing product and team and an incredibly passionate community. Together we can transform the way people understand not only their customers, but their whole world — delivering powerful AI-driven insights across all types of data and use cases for people of every skill level.”

That last sentence? It’s the key value proposition that Tableau brings to Salesforce, unlocking every type of data for users regardless of whether or not they have a data science degree.

The data of the future is already here, with help from Silverline 

Building a data-driven organization at all levels of your financial services firm is not only possible — all of the tools you need to do it are already here. 

You can have all the data in the world and it won’t help you land more deals if you’re not using it effectively. If you want to take advantage of all of these new tools and technology, you need to unlock that data for the entire organization, and invest in skillbuilding for your team so they can continue to act and iterate on that data. 

The most innovative companies out there are getting experimental, and that’s exactly how you should approach this new data era, too. Start small and pilot which tools work and don’t work, and give your employees opportunities to build up their skills. This might be trying more account-based marketing on for size, adding live chat or chatbots to your customer support offerings, or eliminating forms on your website and using AI-based bots to deliver leads directly into your Salesforce instance.

That’s where Silverline comes in.

Working with a partner that will help you realize your potential

As we reflect on our work partnering with financial services clients over the last ten years to develop their digital transformation roadmaps, we are encouraged by all the ways that firms are investing in developing their technology capabilities that deliver a better customer experience.

As firms look to build their analytics and data science capabilities in order to better monitor and interrogate their portfolios, Silverline takes its role as expert service provider very seriously. It is our goal to provide industry insights and expertise in emerging technical domains, and pragmatic recommendations on how to realize fast results. The long-term client relationships we most cherish are rooted in the practice of collaboration, which helps us to imagine and execute new ideas for technology that drive advantage for dealmakers and investors. Find out what Silverline can do for your company.