OTTAWA RAIL

BUILDING TRUST THROUGH DATA VISUALIZATION

Once the team chose InEight Report and Explore, it was time to build up the new system and handle the various change management issues that would inevitably arise. As Moustapha points out, everybody has a tendency to get set in their ways and comfortable with the way things are done. “But then you tell them that in an evolving world, you need to be able to access data much, much faster, and then you show them how,” he says. “Only then is it real for them.”

That “show” is done by actually visualizing the data at hand, meaning a healthy amount of back and forth with stakeholders. “I ask each person ‘what do you need to track, why is it important to track that, and how do you track it? Oh, you track it with Excel? Okay, that’s good. What about when you need to display your information? Do you build a report? How do you share it? Does it take a lot of time?’” Moustapha explains. Once he establishes what each person needs, he suggests a slightly different way to handle those needs within the new system that will eliminate a lot of double reporting and double effort.

All those questions help build trust and personal investment, making the adoption of the new system much faster, easier and more lasting. The data visualizations also lend a lot of credibility to the dashboard for all the stakeholders, according to Moustapha. “They like the pie charts, the tables, the cumulative graphs and the percentages complete,” he says. “It’s all in real time, on a live data feed, with minimal work. They really enjoy all of that and can see the benefit.”

Williams notes that in her experience with change management, trust is usually the biggest issue. Because Moustapha’s approach is to take what the team already uses and then help them discover for themselves how to look at it in a more effective way, the normal barriers of resistance are broken down much faster. “No one is saying ‘I still need my spreadsheet to validate against my numbers’ because they know that they’re being included along the entire process. The transparency of the InEight analytics solution is very reassuring.”