Un-silo Your Data Science and Insights Departments
June 9th, 2025
Silos: Barriers to Collaboration
Silos. Good for farms, bad for companies. When disciplines or departments stay siloed, the organization as a whole may suffer from lack of collaboration, ideation, and growth. In particular, think about a company’s data science and insights departments. Two groups that, in our experience, rarely interact as often as they should.
Different Data, Same Potential
Data science teams, for the most part, work with secondary data such as a company’s database. They likely have access to transactional information, and any information collected via interactions with a customer, such as online registration or even product reviews. On the other hand, insights teams mainly work with primary data – opinion/attitude research collected via surveys or qualitative interviews. But certainly working with different data sources isn’t a good reason for keeping these groups separated.
And that’s because they ultimately have the same goal: use consumer-based information to develop insights that help the business navigate decisions/drive growth. If multiple parties have the same goal but different perspectives or value to contribute, ideally that is celebrated and valued.
The Power of Diverse Thinking
Think of your last internal brainstorming session. Were the participants of the same background, discipline, experience, and mindset? Or did they have unique experiences and opinions to offer? I really hope it’s the latter! Diversity allows one idea to build off another and branch out in multiple directions, whereas the former tends to lead to stagnation.
A Collaborative Approach in Action
This is why TRC embraces the opportunity to work with our client’s data science teams. There is a lot to be learned from transactional data, whether that be claims, purchases, interactions with customer service, or something else. Analysis of this data can direct a company towards goals to achieve (for example, sell more of product X to increase company profits). With the direction established, insights teams can now develop primary research to understand how to best execute and achieve that objective (for example, consumers are motivated to purchase products that contain these particular marketing claims). Neither can truly get to the finish line on their own, but they can tag-team to get there, and benefit from the journey.
