You’re a small business owner who needs to make sense of your data. What’s the best way to get started?

When you start looking at the data, you are going to get overwhelmed unless you have clarity on your goals. By defining your goals, you are then able to focus your attention on the metrics that align with those goals rather than diving in a sea of data. For instance, if brand awareness is your main goal then key metrics will be more focused on reach, impressions, followers, engagement. But if your main goal is sales then metrics will shift to website visits, link clicks, MQLs etc.

The last thing you need as a small business owner is to measure your company against pointless metrics! Most metrics that are more likely 'vanity' metrics where they don't have a measurable impact on your business. For example - you could track website visitors and tell everyone how great it is that your visits are increasing. But it is a pointless measurement if it does not correlate to a better measure - for example, mailing list sign-ups per visitor. I would suggest that you have the minimum of metrics tracked... - Overall company profitability - Number of products sold - Customer queries responded to in 24 hours - Number of repeat customers In effect, anything that directly impacts your profitability should be tracked.

This really depends on each person! For myself, I have no experience with figures,?data or analytics. This is where it has to be the most simple basic system. If you are like me, I outsource this to my accountant. Leaving me to focus on the part of the business I am good at. Being a small business owner we have to wear so many hats, just choose the ones that suit you- in my opinion ??

1. Define Your Goals: Clarify objectives, whether understanding customer behavior or enhancing operational efficiency. 2. Choose Your Tools: Opt for user-friendly, budget-friendly tools that align with your business needs, considering scalability. 3. Clean Your Data: Invest in data cleanliness. Remove duplicates, correct errors, ensuring a solid foundation for accurate analysis. 4. Analyze Your Data: Dive into analysis, using tools for patterns, trends, and actionable insights tied to your defined goals. 5. Act on Your Insights: Translate insights into action. Develop strategies, optimizing processes or refining 6. consider: Prioritize data security, compliance, and instill a data-driven culture for team-wide impact.

Before running around, try to check if there is meaning at a high level using goals obviously but also benchmarking. Talk to another business owner or entrepreneur who you admire and find out what data is important for them and how they approach it especially its usefulness to decision making.

Knowing what kind of data your small business requires is essential to making the best decision. It is essential to consider elements like data kind, volume, and customized needs. A smooth process also depends on simplicity and integration with current technologies. For a secure and durable solution, remember to account for constant costs and security features.

An essential step in the data analysis process is data cleaning. Making sure your data is thorough, accurate, and consistent lays a strong basis for insightful conclusions. Correcting mistakes, replications, and missing numbers improves the dependability of your analysis and helps in decision-making. More accurate and reliable findings are produced from a clean and organized dataset, much like creating a strong foundation.

GIGO is a phrase that has stuck with me throughout my career. GIGO means garbage in, garbage out. That's one of the many reasons I'm a huge advocate for processes. Having a consistent method of inputting data along with a well-defined audit process will prove to be extremely beneficial when it's time to analyze the data. This will help dramatically decrease errors and increase the quality of data.

As a small business owner, It is generally overwhelming with the number of things you need to do. Hence, I find it essential to focus on my core goals. The way I go about making sense of my data is by asking questions that help meet my core goals. If its going to take me more than a day to figure it out on my own, I outsource/pay someone else to collect and make sense of the data for me.