Data, data, and more data – how to not drown in an ocean of information
Using data to deal with growth
Small and medium-sized businesses often pride themselves on having an intuitive sense of what their customers want. From a customer service perspective this is of course something of a Holy Grail but unfortunately, in most cases, it is a precarious if not fleeting situation at best if there is no solid data to base these intuitions on. The realities of revenue growth and geographic expansion inevitably collude to make it increasingly harder to sustain this position.
As businesses grow, they may feel like they are losing touch with their customers, when in fact all that may be required is for them to start converting data already available to them into valuable information for educated decision-making and accurate strategic planning.
Acknowledging the importance of a data strategy, small to medium sized businesses sometimes revert to patching together different data applications from various vendors. This results in added complexities, especially with regards to integration, management and security of the ecosystem. Not to mention data spillage.
Leveraging data for decision-making & planning
Business data is the most strategic asset for any company and, when deployed effectively, can provide a distinct competitive advantage and invaluable insight. In most cases, this may require nothing more than developing a data management strategy and then utilising the right tools to act upon the insight gleaned from the data.
Making sense of data is a challenging endeavour for small and medium sized businesses, especially if you have not yet fully adopted advanced analytics capabilities. With limited human and other resources, it is especially important to guard against allowing data to overwhelm your employees. Information overload may result in staff feeling anxious and powerless - reducing creativity and productivity.
Leveraging data effectively will almost certainly ensure that your business runs more efficiently, productively and profitably. The introduction of cloud technology, platform as a service (PaaS) with integrated reporting, automation, machine learning and appropriate business intelligence practices means that businesses are now able to put data analytics to work in ways that are far superior to simple spreadsheets and manual methods.
Avoiding information overload
Managed access, automated reporting and the wide, but appropriate, sharing of large data pools provide a great opportunity to interweave analytics with business processes at a pace, scale and cost ideal for a small to medium sized business. Drawing on these analytics enables staff to discover, analyse, plan, predict and collaborate in a single integrated experience, where instant insight can be turned into quick action.
The best way to avoid information overload in your business is to create a set of measurable business data goals that are specifically focused on how to turn data into insights and action. The easiest way to do this is to find integrated platforms that facilitate instant insight into current data sets. An integrated platform will also facilitate the segmentation of data into a hierarchical framework which dictates access, use, format and version accuracy.
Data should not be feared. It should be embraced. If your dedicated and specialist platforms are in place with centralised report and your master data is accurate, everything else will be too, which means you may just learn more about your customers and business position than you ever did before.