How Much is your Data Silo Costing You?

Data silos may be a funny name but the amount of money they waste is serious business.

Have you ever gone to the grocery store without a list? Perhaps you wrote a list but forgot it on the front seat (guilty!) or thought that you’d just remember (famous last words!). Chances are that you missed an important item. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve driven home from an impromptu milk run and realized that I’ve gotten the eggs, the bread and the peanut butter, but am coming home sans 1%. It happens to us all; we know we need things, but if we don’t write them down and religiously consult the written list, we simply can’t remember everything. The technical term for this gap between what you knew and what you did? Data silo! Data silo is just a fancy phrase for the gap between the you who wrote the list, and the you who bought things off of memory.

In the case of the grocery store, it’s pretty easy for us to tally up how much our data silo costs us. On one shameful beach shopping trip, I spent $73.02 and did not purchase the one thing that I actually needed. That data silo was pretty expensive; if I had just ordered sunscreen online I would have spent about $10, plus skipped all the nonessential things. 

What does a data silo cost you? 

Data silos are pricy everywhere. But they’re especially vicious in educational organizations. This is because when data is improperly siloed, you can end up with a staggering cost. The first big bill is in wasted work. 

Wasted work from siloed data can take the form of 

• Redundancy: Work that is done multiple times unnecessarily. Redundancy can happen when two people independently do the exact same thing, like when the testing coordinator and the compliance director both ask teachers for a list of class accommodations.The teachers don’t like answering the same question twice, and the coordinator and director could have saved time in collaboration.

• Waste: Because of a data silo, you may have to re-do work that you’ve previously done. Think about the times that you’ve written a report, then found out that you were missing a critical piece of information. Now you’ve got to re-write it, with less time and more pressure. Data silos cost money in lost time and lost hours spent doing something that was ultimately unusable because a critical piece of information was missing. 

• Waiting: We’ve all been stuck waiting for someone else to hand us their part so that we could move to the next phase. Sometimes we feel like we’re in the world’s slowest relay race, especially when collating reports for audits or federal compliance activities.  One of our favorite LSU alums, Anna D. Kornick, shared on her LinkedIn recently that the average worker loses two hours a day looking for the right data to complete a task!

Calculate your data silo tax

So, what is all this costing you? There’s actually a cool way to find out. In your eight hour day, 

1. Tally up how much time you spend on data silo issues (like waiting for someone to call you back or looking for the right folder, or re-writing a report). 

2. Calculate the percentage of your time wasted on those data silos (for most Americans, it’s somewhere between 20-30% of the time) 

3. Multiply that by your organization’s average salary. 

4. Then multiply that by the number of employees. 

Yeah, that’s not a pretty number by any stretch of the imagination.

The solution? Dashboards!

This is a very depressing exercise. But, take heart. Once you identify exactly what hidden data silos are costing your system, you can actively implement solutions. At Instructional Data Solutions, what we’ve found works best is to narrow in on a focused, limited-scope analysis. We identify quick wins that generate immediate savings. 

One quick win? Having a single, stream-lined dashboard that shows which students are progressing toward mastery, and lets you focus intently on any subgroup that needs your attention. Say goodbye to futzing around with manual report downloads or filtering through endless spreadsheets. We’ve built this dashboard and call it the Cohort Achievement Tracker (CAT). The CAT is a data-tracking tool designed to help educators monitor student progress over time without hours of manual work. Our number one goal was to reduce the time you have to spend sorting, sifting, and analyzing your data, in favor of actually teaching. 

Final Thoughts And How to Take Action

Want to learn more? We invite you to view our video tour of the CAT or sign up for a free one-on-one tour here. What are you looking to do with your data collection and analysis? How are you preventing data silos? Join the conversation on social media and share.

About Instructional Data Solutions: Our mission is to remove barriers to enable education organizations to focus on what matters most. We assist school systems and education organizations of all sizes by collecting, analyzing, and clearly communicating data. We are committed to empowering educators through comprehensive data analytics and tailored support. Additionally, we provide dedicated support for operational needs, process improvement, and special projects, offering customized solutions to enhance effectiveness and success. Our solutions bridge the gap between data collection and instructional improvement in PK-12 settings.