Two people in smart, dark suits walk up to your desk in the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company office. It’s the board. Without a flicker of emotion, they slam a suitcase onto your laminate desk. They spin it so the handle faces you.
“Are you ready?” is aimed at you with an authoritative growl.
You sheepishly nod.
*Click*
The lid starts to open… £200K peers back at you with something tucked inside; a note?
“Data Strategy Budget.”
You pause. “We don’t have a data department. Where to even begin?”
Option 1 – “You’re Hired!” The Obvious Play?
Say you decide to hire. It feels logical. Sensible, even. There’s missing knowledge and you need people with it. But at every level there are traps.
The Criteria Conundrum
You haven’t even got a contract drawn up and you’ve been hit the first one. If you’ve never worked with a data person before you have no benchmark for what “good” is. The role is highly technical in a field you’re just skimming the iceberg’s surface. At this point, you can’t tell the difference between pre-game talk and someone who can sink a three at the buzzer.
Without an internal expert to vet them, making that choice is as much luck as it is judgement.
The Assumption Problem
You appoint your person, a senior data hire who speaks elaborately about a strategy. Frameworks they’ve used before, “best practices” they’ve seen and tools that have worked with in other organisations.
But that’s the problem.
Their experience is based on what they have already seen, not what they will see here. They haven’t spoken to the people cranking the handle to keep the current systems alive. They most certainly don’t know that “Customer Status” is inferred from three columns… unless the account was imported from the legacy system before 2019.
You went all in early with pocket sevens. You’ve hired supporting staff. You’ve slowly burned through the goodwill chips with other business stakeholders.
The community cards land; jack, queen, king, ace… suited. With this new information, you’d have played it differently. But you dived in because pocket sevens have won before.
The CSV and The Strategy
Data’s very own chicken and egg.
Hiring at an analyst level, you’ve got a doer. They’ll build your reports and start ticking off raised data requests tickets. What you’re not getting is someone to architect the strategy, you won’t know if you’re solving the right issues just that you’re solving some problems.
Hiring at CDO or Head of Data level, you’re getting someone to set a strategy and advise. But they’re not in the thick of it; querying databases nor fixing Dave’s Excel formula. They’ll be expecting their team to do that, but they don’t have one.
The reality for SMEs is that you don’t need one person. You need 20% of a Data Architect to set foundations, 40% of an Engineer to build pipelines, and a final 40% on an Analyst to bring visual value. By hiring a single full-timer, you’ve locked yourself into hiring a Jack of all trades, and we know what they’re the master of. You’re paying 100% of a salary for a role that can only ever provide partial value at any given stage of the journey.
The Probation Risk
Finally, there’s the risk that every new hire has, their probation. For a fast-moving SME, getting to month five and having to face up to the fact that they’re not gelling with the culture or to find out their “pocket sevens” strategy was a seven two off-suit as it lacked your business’s nuances, it’s not just lost salary. It’s lost Board confidence.
When the Board asks for the ROI on that data budget and you have to respond with “we’re starting the recruitment process again”, well I’d rather you than me.
Option 2 – Consultancy Part-Time Specialists
If you’ve read the above and decided you don’t want that reality, then allow me to offer another option.
Instead of hiring a single person, you get access to multiple skillsets but only when you need them. This is the data consultancy play.
The Pre-Vetted Pack
Remember the “Criteria Conundrum”? With a consultancy, the issue of not knowing a benchmark of good in data disappears. You don’t have to worry about whether an engineer can hook a CRM database to a Power BI report, the consultancy has done that for you. You’re no longer looking at individuals; you’re getting access to an “out-of-the-box” unit. There is no longer a lag for them to get to know each other. They arrive as a fully formed functioning engine that can be bolted onto your business.
The Long Tail of Discovery
But more importantly, they will advise whilst they do.
A new hire in a newly formed data team will feel pressure to show value. They may rush, assume, and cause further problems. Because a consultancy works with you on a part-time basis, the discovery period spans months, not weeks. What would cost two weeks for a full-time employee could span months with a consultancy.
This gives more time for the business to be understood properly. They can uncover those workarounds and “we’ve always done it this way” processes that no one mentions in onboarding.
The “Boots on the Ground” Paradox
The reality is that if you’re in this position now, you’re not going to be data-driven in six months whichever direction you pick.
But here’s the kicker, the specialist will get you further down the road in the same amount of time than a generalist would. You’re getting focused bursts over constant availability. A lonely full-time analyst could spend all week on a report, a part-time specialist could build a process to generate any report for the same cost.
For organisations without established data practices, knowing what to do is far more valuable than having someone you can make a coffee with for 40 hours of the week. Direction trumps presence.
Create the Blueprint, Hire the Builders
The consultancy lays the strong foundations for whatever your next move is. The specialists have ensured that the data estate has been documented out, they’ll do the groundwork in making systems reconcile with each other automatically and they’ll help you scope out your long-term strategy.
This ultimately de-risks any future hires. If you did now decide to go inhouse any analyst will be answering questions that you know will be benefitting the future of the business. This in turn gives you that ROI the Board craves and solidifies the need for future funding for your strategy.
What Should You Do? The Four Questions Before You Hire
Ask yourself:
- Do we know what data capabilities we need? “Good with data” isn’t good enough, is it engineering, analytics, architecture, governance?
- Can we brief a new hire in a day? Can you point to live customer data? Give the exact calculation of profit? Who uses which reports and how frequently?
- Can we evaluate candidates in interviews? When they mention a dimensional model with facts and dimensions, is it brilliance or a bluff?
- Is the infrastructure ready? Can they hit the ground running, or will they need six months to find true north?
If the answer to any of those is “No”… you’re not ready to hire a full-timer. Don’t take it as failure, it’s a signal.
You need the specialists skillsets first to turn those “no’s” into a “yes”.
