The power of merging multifunctional expertise to create innovative, data-driven products

Did you hear the one about the data scientist, the business owner, and the frontend designer? In an era of increasing competition around delivering the most comprehensive, reliable data, we’re faced with the challenge of making our data stronger to present more meaningful insights that help with the development of effective data products. If your organization truly wants to adopt a data-driven culture and create great products, it’s critical to look at data from various perspectives. Opening up your data to colleagues across functions and business units can yield interesting observations, allowing you to spot patterns and identify trends that may move the needle. Additionally, cross-functional collaboration based on different backgrounds, experiences, and varying types and levels of business knowledge can result in more efficient paths for product development and give your company a competitive edge.

At ADP, Marc Rind has focused on building a data science practice and team of brilliant people across departments who look at the same data to mine for insights through different lenses and put those viewpoints into action to create new ADP products like Pay Equity Explorer and Benchmarking, among others. Marc shares his experience creating a cross-functional team, discusses the power of listening to others’ points of view (and what you can learn from them), and explores real-world case studies of leaders with varying backgrounds and perspectives who collaborated to take data from analysis to idea to product rollout.