How to make more Data Driven Decisions in your Business

Talk data to me ;).

I LOVE data!! All of it in spreadsheets color coded, in different formats and graphs. Now I understand not everyone is a geek like me and I have accepted it and monetized that fact. So I am here to help you understand more about your data and how you can use it as a tool to make better decisions in your business.

What is data:

Plainly they are facts and or statistics that are collected and compiled for analysis.

Wow, not so scary anymore right? They are just facts, such as how many people visit your website, how many sales you made, what people are clicking on. What is causing people to ask for returns or to give reviews.

So why does data matter in making decisions?

Data helps us see the facts. Having data can inform your decision making process. Made a sale and the data showed that something sold out being marked down just 10%, was it the sale or the pricing of your product?

Wanting to expand into a new market and so you start running ads or using social in a different way. Is it working? Are they responding and should you continue??

Made an investment? How much money are you going to get back? Was it with the return (ROI).

Staff is leaving how many are leaving and in what period of time? When should you panic?

All questions data can answer. Now the challenge that many face is.

What kind of data should you look at?

Now having data to just have it is like a collecting an item, one that is either to large or to small and so it gets tucked away. Not looked at or used. Data is made to be used and played with and it can actually be fun.

Run it through different views, ask it more questions. It is better to have smaller more digestible pieces of data that you actually put to use then metrics on everything that is happening.

So how do you know what data to use. What question do you want to answer?

Are you looking for ways to make more sales? Looking to retain staff? Improve productivity? Taking baseline data relevant to those questions before, during and after you implement a hypothesis or new system is what is going to measure how effective it was.

If you don't use it you lose it.

Here is a list I compiled of Questions to ask your data to give you a jump start.

The key here is to have a clear goal and hypothesis that would benefit your business goals and from there ask questions to know what data to compile and analyze, continuous measurement is needed to get feedback on the actions or non actions taken.