Data Expert MaryBeth Maskovas: Five Steps To Squeeze Value Out Of Data

DURANGO, CO, UNITED STATES, April 2, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Almost every business leader has a data mystery that keeps them up at night, contends author MaryBeth Maskovas.

“Somewhere, hidden in all that information, is the answer to those business questions that keep you awake at night,” says Maskovas, a data expert who has worked with major companies and startups. “The trick is to crack the code—the data code—to push all the unnecessary information aside and identify the pattern within all that data that will transform your business.”

After spending more than a decade in the corporate world teaching innovative ways to use data, Maskovas knows it is possible to get past the supposed enigma of data.

In her book, The Approachable Data Method: A Five-Step Process To Squeeze Value Out Of Data (2025, Indie Books International), Maskovas presents her process called the Approachable Data Method.

Maskovas states that the odds may be against business leaders because nearly 85% of data projects fail. Leaders often can’t overcome the thought that they are “not good at data,” which makes it harder to create impactful projects.

“For many reasons, we have issues executing the data our companies produce by the truckload,” notes Maskovas. “Even if a business has set up comprehensive tracking and has done its financial forecasting, business leaders lack confidence in their own skills and in the data itself.”

Employees may also be intimidated by the data and avoid including figures in their presentations. However, all levels of the business can benefit from searching through the data and using tools to find the key points that inform better business decisions. The overriding problem is to dig out the data that informs KPIs (key performance indicators).

“Digital and business data isn’t that good,” Maskovas explains. “It’s so inaccurate compared to data that we look at in the hard science world that it would likely give a scientist a bellyache if we told them what we were basing million- or billion-dollar decisions on.”

Maskovas believes the hurdles of data mining can be minimized and the data quality maximized by using her five-step approach as follows:

Step One. Determine The Broader Business Strategy. This strategy can be developed by stepping away from the numbers and determining what needs to be accomplished. Starting with what the business needs to accomplish helps identify where to start digging for hidden patterns in the data.

Step Two. Make The Invisible Visible. This is essentially an approach to analysis that focuses on playing detective and making connections among data sources, interactions, and teams. It’s a broader picture than just looking at one data source, creating a table, and making some insights. It’s looking at all the threads that contribute to that data, such as the people behind the data points and the context of the business situation.

Step Three. Uncover Opportunities And Losers. Opportunities include identifying an untapped market or product or something else that can be turned around to add more revenue growth, brand recognition, or whatever the business goals may be. Losers can drag the business down and are things that are losing the company money or putting it at risk for potential loss. When these opportunities are uncovered and quantified for the team, they are made incredibly tangible and actionable.

Step Four. Link Findings To Broader Business Issues. Finding one opportunity or area to optimize the business provides only a one-time lift for revenue or improvement. Value is added when that specific opportunity is used to understand what it means for the broader business. There is almost always something underneath the original opportunity or loser uncovered in the data linked to something bigger; it’s not just that one data point.

Step Five. Capitalize On The Data. This means building systems and processes that affect positive change around what has been found. There are two layers of systems and processes. The first layer applies the approachable data method within the business. The second examines the systems and processes that need to be created in the broader business to affect that “how-did-this-happen-in-the-first-place” issue. This is where the real magic of data comes from—an analyst or a business leader can take this extra step and help improve the business.

“Like many processes, the approachable data method won’t be as effective if you only do it once,” emphasizes Maskovas.

Businesses are only transformed when the process is repeated and communicated across the organization and when the approachable data method is fully incorporated.

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