Results are everything these days , so pick something and drive to that result . Your strategy has to be about ruthlessly getting to a result . How you get there should accept that you will need to change your infrastructure as new projects arise . When integrating any type of data analytics programme , be it in the cloud or otherwise , it is imperative that a plan and strategy is laid out . Preparation is key to a good data analytics programme . According to research firm Gartner , analytics users spend the majority of their time either preparing data or waiting for it to be prepared . This demonstrates a crucial element of the data processing function – data quality . The insights gleaned from an analytics task are only as good as the data that goes into it . Therefore , a data analytics strategy must define the objective of the analytics programme and identify the data to be used . This includes assessing its quality and how this can be improved , integrating that data if it is being gathered from a variety of sources , and then feeding into the analytics function . Without an effective strategy , the insights could be misleading and of limited value to the wider business .

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