5 Core Data Analytics Software Capabilities For Small Businesses

In this modern digital world, data analytics is no longer just for big enterprises, as new and improved technology breaks down the barriers for small businesses. Information is mostly considered as power for small businesses and here is a discussion from Anthony Bradley that strongly supports the concept. Read below to find out.

The effective and innovative use of business data analytics is a hallmark of the most successful companies.

After all, data analytics impacts every aspect of every business, from supply chain to customer experience and everything in between. It provides the knowledge needed to make business decisions that will grow revenue and profitability.

This is especially the case for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), where employees wear many hats, processes constantly change, staying competitive is a moving target, attracting customers is key and there’s often rapid growth.

While many business leaders still rely on intuition, evidence-based business leadership is on the rise—meaning those who don’t dig into the data may find themselves at a significant disadvantage.

How Can SMBs Perform Effective Data Analytics?

Effective data analytics comes from the careful examination and exploration of how information flows through and improves a business. And while there may be a ton of business intelligence (BI) technical lingo associated with data analytics, this doesn’t mean it has to be hard for SMBs.

In fact, BI software tools have advanced to where businesses are no longer dependent on technical gurus.

To help SMBs make the right choice, we’ve identified the five data analytics capabilities that are most important for a small business seeking a new data analytics tool.

1. Business Dashboards Provide a Holistic Business View

The best data analytics tools enable business users to create highly interactive, visual dashboards that allow others to view, share and explore key data. Users can dive into the data to search for root causes, discover trends and more.

2. Data Set Creation Empowers Users to Build Own Source Data

Great data set creation functionality provides users with an easy, code-free, drag-and-drop interface for pulling data from different sources so it can be massaged into something tailored and ready for display and exploration.

Data set creation also enables the following capabilities:

• Joining
• Scrubbing
• Aggregating
• Splitting
• Calculating

3. Interactive Exploration Enables Customization of Data Views

Interactive exploration capabilities help business leaders manipulate and examine data by interacting directly with a visual representation. Strong BI tools go well beyond pie, bar and line charts and include advanced visualization capabilities. This powerful functionality does all of the data crunching and heavy presentation lifting so users can focus on what the data means for growing their business.

4. Collaboration and Social Integration Makes Sharing A Breeze

Collaboration and social integration is exactly as it sounds: This functionality enables business leaders to share information, tell a story around the data, find collaborators, discuss the analysis and collectively explore issues and make decisions.

The most important features include:

• Social platform integration for posting to communities
• Expertise location for finding others analyzing the same problem
• Storyboarding for creative ways to present findings to others
• Discussion threads and chat rooms
• Commenting, ratings and rewards
• Together, this feature set takes analysis and decision making from isolated individual work to a community effort. This begins the collaborative and socialization process required to bring ideas to life.

5. Ease of Use Increases Business User Creativity

Ease of use is not a specific feature or feature set—but it’s a general capability that is crucial to small business use. Historically, data analytics tools were built for more technical, data scientist types who would then provide a data “service” to business users.

But now, usability by normal human beings is a primary goal of most data analytics software providers.

Easy to use data analytics platforms should have an intuitive drag and drop graphical interface that requires zero software coding and minimal training. Users should also be able to use the tool’s basic capabilities anytime, anywhere with both offline and mobile access.

Another big part of ease of use is how easily people can install, set up, deploy and administer the software without IT department support.

Together, these capabilities help get people up to speed quickly so they can start being productive within minutes—not days or even hours.

Share your thoughts with me regarding managing consumer and business data. You can also email me at [email protected], or call me on 1300 908 220 if you want to discuss further.

?Thanks,

Wendy