2

The Data Culture Playbook

Content Introduction 03 00

Chapter 1: Build your data and AI strategy 05 00

Chapter 2: Empower teams to deliver on data’s value. 0900

Chapter 3: Advance your journey to data maturity 12 00

Conclusion 15 00
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The Data Culture Playbook

Solution

Introduction Data Culture

This playbook is for business, data, and IT leaders who want to understand the value Creating a data culture helps you accelerate
of data culture and the steps to build one. the value of analytics and AI. It transforms the
quality and speed of decision making across an
organization and forms a foundation of data trust
and transparency.

What exactly do we mean when we say, “data culture”? Building a data culture requires time, investment,
A data culture is the collective behaviors and beliefs of people who value, and an organization-wide commitment, but a
robust data culture is critical to making your
practice, and encourage use of data and AI to propel organizational
data and people be AI ready. This playbook will
transformation. It equips everyone in an organization with intuitive, guide you through the key steps to achieve—and
productive insights for tackling complex business challenges. maintain—a data culture for your organization’s
long-term success.

Benefits of a strong data culture1

AI imperative and the role of data 1 Greater productivity
The age-old problem of bad data in resulting in bad data out holds even more true
2 Innovation
when you add AI to the mix. Besides potentially producing inaccurate answers,
concerns exist around AI perpetuating bias and data being misused or compromised,
which makes the need for trusted data and technology at an all-time high. 3 Better customer service 18.8X
Profitability²
To address these rising concerns related to the proliferation of and greater access to 4 Confident decision making
AI tools, you must start by creating a strong foundation of data trust and transparency
within your business. It’s all connected—and you need this foundation to realize the 5 Cost savings
value of your analytics and AI tools. But what does it look like?
We’ll discuss how to build a robust data strategy
This foundation looks like an environment where people trust the data, have secure in Chapter 1, how to invest in continuous learning
to help your people confidently use data and AI in
access to actionable insights, and use these insights to be more productive and
Chapter 2, and how to advance your journey through
effective in their work. This is where having a strong data culture comes in. data maturity in Chapter 3.

86% of technical decision makers agree that AI’s outputs 1

State of Data Analytics Report

are only as good as its data inputs.¹ 2

McKinsey, 5 Facts: How Customer Analytics Boosts Corporate Performance
3
Salesforce “State of Data and Analytics,” 2023
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The Data Culture Playbook

Value of a strong
data culture Data culture improves efficiency, trust, results

Establishing a strong data culture reaps Thousands of decisions Improve Decisions Drive Alignment Drive Coordination
are made every day with data within each function between functions
rewards across your organization—from at all levels of your
rapid innovation, personalized customer organization
experiences, and improved decision
making to reduced costs, higher employee
retention, and increased revenue. And
while the journey to build a data culture can
seem daunting, with the right strategy, you
can plan for data and AI success.
Thousands of decisions Thousands of decisions Thousands of decisions Thousands of decisions

This playbook lays out simple, yet effective

steps for establishing a data culture. It’s
designed to help business and IT leaders
understand how your people can use data- Each chapter focuses on a specific element, from building your data and AI
driven insights to improve decision making strategy and empowering your organization through continuous learning to
and ultimately realize value from a strong advancing your data maturity. Keep in mind that building your data culture
data culture in your organization. isn’t linear—it’s a living organism that continuously evolves. These steps can be
executed and repeated, both as your data culture comes to life and even after
it is thriving.

Within each chapter, you’ll find a case study for inspiration and a checklist to
help you achieve the goal.

Are you ready to create a resilient foundation for AI and invest in the
future by building a data culture? Let’s get started.
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The Data Culture Playbook

Chapter 1:

Build your Know that your strategy starts with people

data and AI Data is the backbone of every AI strategy—and making high-quality, trusted
data accessible to more people is key to unlocking the full potential of AI. And

strategy
a strong data culture can help you do this by equipping more people with
the right technology, processes, and insights to help your entire organization
achieve data-driven success.

78%
of analytics and IT
85%
agree or strongly
leaders say their agree that advances
organizations struggle in AI make data
to drive business management a high
priorities with data.3 priority strategy.3

3
Salesforce “State of Data and Analytics,” 2023
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The Data Culture Playbook

Solution

Low customer engagement and Data strategy

data trust To bridge the AI trust gap and increase the
broad use of data across your organization,
Customers are increasingly making AI part of their everyday lives yet they’re you need to have a data strategy. Building a
approaching the technology with mixed emotions. data strategy will equip you to increase your
operational efficiency and revenue streams.
74% of the general population is concerned about the
unethical use of AI and 63% is concerned about its biases.4 The secret to unleashing actionable insights
is marrying trusted analytics with the power
of AI. With the power of AI, the secret to
unleashing actionable insights consumption
Common obstacles to AI trust at scale by bringing trusted generative AI to
the entire platform. By combining analytics
Problem: Disconnected analytics ecosystem and AI with people equipped with data
1
Cause: Siloed data and poor integration with workflows skills, you can maximize your technology
investments and uncover opportunities
Problem: Low trust in data and AI quality that drive business strategy and strengthen
2
Cause: No single source of data truth customer trust.

Problem: Unclear data ownership and accountability

3
Cause: Undefined data governance responsibilities
Top 5 AI benefits for analytics
Problem: Buried insights and IT leaders
4
Cause: Low data discoverability and role-based access
1. Faster business decision-making
Problem: Need for data and AI skills 2. Operational efficiencies
5
Cause: Lack of data fluency and adoption 3. Free up time for valuable work
4. Automated workflows
5. Improved customer satisfaction

4
Salesforce “State of Data and Analytics,” 2023
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The Data Culture Playbook

How to create a robust data

+ AI strategy
An effective change management plan details how you will engage people
across your organization to promote ongoing awareness, education, and a
strong data culture. Start by identifying members of a cross-functional team to The changes that are happening
form your steering community or center of excellence (CoE). Your team will:
with AI are too big to only funnel
• Determine business goals or benchmarks where data and AI can help through the data team, and are
increase productivity, improve customer understanding, reduce manual too profound to wait for other
efforts, or drive targeted business outcomes. data infrastructure projects to
• List use cases and select quick wins. be ready before you start more
widespread implementation.
• Set and align business goals and performance measures (OKRs). The business units are going to
move. It’s better to be part of
After you’ve established this framework, you can create a change management the change than to try to be a
plan that articulates the behaviors and beliefs you want to instill in people silo outside of it and lose your
throughout the organization. First, determine that your stakeholders are relevance to the business.”
engaged and know what to do. Then, address specific steps you will take to:
SOLOMON KAHN
FOUNDER & CEO, DELIVERY LAYER AND
• Train your community to build data and AI competency DLC ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER

• Establish a data governance council

• Create realistic data maturity model targets

• Learn and improve through a continual feedback loop

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The Data Culture Playbook

18.8X
Profitability2
Case Study

Core components of data governance with AI capabilities JP Morgan Chase

Learn how JP Morgan Chase, a global financial
services company, fosters a data culture among
its employees to innovate faster, improves the
1 Change management
(People)
customer experience, and makes insight-driven
3 Capabilities (Technology) decisions across the business in a highly
Are your stakeholders
Which platforms and regulated space.
applications can support your
Data + AI engaged?

data governance framework? Trust Do your stakeholders

model behaviors for data
What intelligent, integrated, culture success?
and reusable tools help
promote security, Do you have the right skills in
collaboration, and action? your organization?
How do you use communities
to build competency and
Steps you can take
data fluency?
Create an internal data leadership community
2 Framework (Process) 1
and join the Data Leadership Collaborative.
What does good look like in terms
of rules and process? Prioritize data in decision making and business
2
How do you ensure data privacy processes.
and security—with access?
Identify, understand, and set a plan to solve
What are your standards for data 3
root causes for data issues.
quality, metadata management,
and data certification?
4 Solidify core components of data governance:
framework, change management, and tools.

5 Practice data-driven behaviors: Align your data,

analytics, and AI to business outcomes.
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The Data Culture Playbook

Chapter 2:

Empower Close the skills gaps and provide trusted tools

teams to To get the most out of your data, you need more than technology alone.
Promoting data fluency at every level empowers people to use trusted data

deliver on
and AI tools effectively so they can apply actionable insights and improve
their decision making.

data’s value
#1 24%
challenge for of today’s leading
organizations, employers have
according to IT included this critical
leaders, is the lack of skill-building into their
AI talent and skills.5 corporate strategy.6

5
Salesforce, The AI-IT Disconnect, 2024
6
BCG, 2023
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The Data Culture Playbook

Solution

Challenge of the data skills gap Continuous Learning

Does your entire workforce have the skills, tools, and curiosity to deliver Change management is a key component that
on data’s value? Most likely not. Start by assessing skills and gaps in your can promote your people’s skills and capabilities.
people’s knowledge that can impact their ability to make insight-driven After all, investing in data and AI tools will not
decisions. Leadership agreement is critical in assessing current skills ensure your people have the skills to use them.
and identifying workforce needs to identify what is critical to using That’s where training and development play an
data effectively. important role. Continuous learning through
training, education, and data community
Audit and assess your workforce and organizational needs for data analytics involvement ensures your workforce has the
and AI skills by aligning use cases to employee competency. For example, skills needed to use your tools. And it is an
what data and AI skills do you expect a product manager to have versus a ongoing investment that should be fully aligned
financial analyst? You may want to create a matrix that shows your current with your corporate strategy.
and future (ideal state) workforce skills based on data culture behaviors
that drive data maturity (described in Chapter 3). Consider this a two-step process. First, you need
to uplevel your current workforce in terms of its
Innovative solutions can also help you address the data skills gap more data fluency and AI proficiency. And second,
quickly and across all of your teams. You can use AI in Tableau solutions you want to recruit and hire talent that aligns
like Tableau Pulse to democratize data analysis and simplify insights with your data and AI strategy.
consumption at scale. It accelerates time to value and reduces repetitive
tasks for the data analyst with smart suggestions and in-product guidance.
Knowing our AI is built on the Einstein Trust Layer, your organization is
enabled with trusted, ethical, and open AI-powered experiences without
compromising data security and privacy—which is critical as you grow access
to analytics and AI, and nurture data skills.

60%
of people leaders say the
rise of AI and automation will
make data security skills
more important.7
7
Salesforce Digital AI Skills Research, 2023
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The Data Culture Playbook

Invest in technology and access 18.8X

Profitability2
to data Case Study

Maximizing analytics investments and capitalizing on the transformative potential of

Staysure
data means that everyone who encounters data—regardless of their skill level—can find Find out how Staysure uses Tableau Cloud to
insights and take action. Rather than rely on instincts or feelings, your people actively break down fragmented data silos, eliminate
seek to use data in their decision making. Promote user education, measure adoption bottlenecks, and encourage data exploration
and engagement, and increase analytics use within your organizations to support and analytics fluency.
insight-driven decisions.

AI capabilities empower your people by adding automated, plain-spoken explanations

to your dashboards in seconds, helping you to discover the “why” behind insights
with dynamic visualizations that allow deeper exploration, and bringing trust and
transparent predictions and recommendations to everyone. Steps you can take
In addition, AI in Tableau brings trusted generative AI to your workforce. Tableau Audit and assess your workforce and
strips sensitive data processed by LLMs with data-masking tools, and Salesforce never 1
organizational needs for data and AI skills.
stores proprietary data outside of its platform nor uses it to train LLMs. Not only are
responses scanned for toxicity and bias and audited for compliance, but all prompts Set an actionable talent management plan for
2
recruitment, retention, and upskilling.
and generated responses are forgotten as soon as an external model processes a
prompt. As you consider your needs, a helpful goal is to ensure the entire generative Invest in delivering the right tools and access to
AI process is safe, secure, and trustworthy. 3
data to your people.

Build a community of practice that helps

4
people interact with and learn about data and
AI from others.
 12

The Data Culture Playbook

Chapter 3:

Advance Create processes that support your data maturity

your journey Your business is on the path to data maturity. Data maturity requires you to
identify best practices that will ensure you’re ready to take advantage of AI.

to data Respondents who say they have high data maturity

maturity are 2x more likely to have the high-quality data
needed to use AI effectively.⁴

According to Forbes, data maturity is a measure of an organization’s ability to

use data, along with how well the organization leverages those capabilities.
When an organization is data mature, it means that it can deploy its data
resources to achieve a range of goals. In many cases, this not only means
making data-driven decisions, but also making data resources more accessible
throughout the organization.

The point of data maturity and the preparedness recalls the analogy of moving
up and to the right on the maturity curve, driving the ability to take greater
advantage and prepare for AI.

Tableau customers see 25% faster creation of custom

generative and predictive models.⁸

4
Salesforce “State of Data and Analytics,” 2023
8
Source: 2024 Salesforce Success Metrics Global Highlights. Data is aggregated from 2,165 customers across 10 countries.
 13

The Data Culture Playbook

Solution

Data maturity definition and Data maturity best practices

model (stages) To progress on your data maturity roadmap,
consider implementing these best practices:

Model and measure success.

Your ability to take advantage of AI depends on your organization’s behaviors and data 1
capabilities. The greater your capabilities, the higher your data maturity. Clearly this isn’t Define what data maturity looks like and means to
your organization.
a process you can complete overnight. It’s not a matter of “one and done.” However, the
more your people, processes, and technology are aligned, the further you will progress Benchmark competency levels and capabilities
across people, process, and technology.
through these stages of data maturity—ultimately enabling your people to confidently
make the right data-driven decisions for your business. Measure your ROI using the following key
performance indicators: business performance,
analytics productivity, organizational alignment,
community satisfaction and adoption.
Data capabilities needed to take advantage of AI

Low Medium High Ensure your data sources align to one or

data maturity data maturity data maturity 2
multiple parts of your business process.
Build curated, analytics-ready data sources to
Data quality 30% 39% 59% address critical decision points.
Use a data lake to centralize, secure, process, and
Technology infrastructure 36% 40% 57% organize large amounts of data so that people
across your company can access the unified data
Artificial intelligence strategy 32% 36% 56% they need from a single location.

Technical talents / skills 33% 36% 56%

Promote a culture of data-driven
3
decision making.
Business stakeholders alignment 34% 36% 55%
Use data discovery coupled with AI-infused
Security / compliance capability 32% 39% 55% analytics to improve productivity.
Get commitment of executive stakeholders to
behavior change and budget allocation for
change management.
Automate analysis and increase data collaboration.
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The Data Culture Playbook

Build data maturity roadmap

Case Study

Elements of a successful data maturity roadmap include considerations around your

analytics strategy, governance approach, having an agile or flexible deployment, and John Lewis Partnership
communicating the value of and facilitating a community that supports analytics.
Watch this video to see how John Lewis
Partnerships uses data and AI to transform
customer experiences and improve profitability.
Streamline processes:
Discuss integration of AI to automate and enhance data processes

Offer insights into

Steps and best
simplifying data Define use cases, start
practices to
build trust
collection, storage, and
analysis processes
trials, get quick wins Steps you can take
1
Model and measure success. Define
what data maturity looks like and what it
Cultural shift: means to your organization.
Build or support a community that inspires and celebrates data-driven wins.
2 Ensure that data sources align to one or
multiple parts of your workflow.

Tips for fostering behaviors that Communicate across teams - Promote a culture of widespread data
3
promote data-driven decision build community and embrace discovery coupled with AI-infused
making and its value Tableau Community analytics to improve productivity.
 15

The Data Culture Playbook

Conclusion Next steps

Analytics 1:1 connect & demo

Tableau provides the trusted data, analytics, AI, and Deep dive into our products to learn
visualization tools you need to create a data culture
how we help data people deliver
in your organization. Your data journey begins on
our platform, where we provide a single source of results for less.
truth across your organization. Then, AI in Tableau
leverages your data, reveals trends and patterns, Schedule a demo
and uncovers actionable insights to drive accurate
and rapid decision making—without impacting your
existing technology investments.

To start building your data culture, review the steps Start your free trial of Tableau
outlined in this playbook. Limitless data exploration and
discovery start now
Tableau is here to help accelerate your data culture
journey with AI-powered insights. For example,
Try Tableau
you can get from data preparation to visualization
faster using a trusted advisor right in your workflow.
And you can gain meaningful insights from your
data to guide and improve your decision making. Virtual webinars
Finally, you can leverage the productivity gains of AI
Join Tableau’s events and webinars
without compromising on data security and privacy.
created to help data leaders.
Our analytics capabilities support trusted
AI to democratize your data analysis and Join an upcoming webinar
insight consumption, helping everyone in your
organization—from business users to data
professionals—harness the full power of data
and make informed, data-driven decisions.
 16

The Data Culture Playbook

About Tableau from Salesforce

Tableau is the world’s leading AI-powered analytics platform. Intuitive data experiences,
backed by generative and predictive AI capabilities, elevate insights where you work most.
Offering a suite of analytics and business intelligence tools, Tableau turns trusted data into
actionable insights so you can make better decisions every time. Tableau offers the most
choice and flexibility for your architecture as your technology and AI strategy evolve. With
security, data governance, and compliance in mind, your organization can maintain agility
as new demands on data arise.

Tableau is committed to supporting the unique needs of organizations around the

world with the largest partner and success ecosystem, including the passionate Tableau
Community that can teach, support, challenge, and celebrate you at every stage of your AI
journey. The future is limitless when you start with data and move forward with Tableau.
For more information, visit www.tableau.com