Using Data for expansion: The secret sauce of companies showing exponential growth

People across the globe are generating several quintillion bytes of data each day. The rising enormity of data can be estimated by the rate at which it is created. Nearly 90% of the data presently floating in the world is generated in the past three years only. This data has been the secret of mounting growth of the companies across different industry verticals. 

However, this secret mantra is no more a secret. Organizations are increasingly recognizing their significance and are finding ways to propel their growth. While many are able to capitalize on it and lead the competition from the forefront, some are still bewitched by its diversity and magnitude. 

Businesses that are showing exponential growth are the ones that can separate the wheat from the chaff in the humongous datasets and harness its potential. Such judicial use of data points out the problem areas, drive changes, and unearth an assortment of opportunities that navigate you to success.

There is no denying that changing trends in data and analytics are likely to disrupt your enterprise and cause turbulence. It is the way you capture and analyze your digital gold and sail through the turbulence into a brighter tomorrow.

The power of optimizing the use of data

Let us first address the elephant in the room. Why in the first place, your organization must use data? The answer is pretty intuitive. You need to utilize the data to the best of its potential as it helps identify the pitfalls, improve your processes, and deliver enhanced customers’ experience. It delegates valuable insight that drives your critical business decisions and helps you stay abreast with the recent trends and fluctuations.

Given the current state of pandemic and the strident blow that the economies have taken around the world, unleashing the power of data and data analytics is the only ray of hope. Companies are investing significantly in pattern analysis, assessment of market shifts, and customers' behaviour. Establishing such a correlation between data helps identify and grab growth opportunities and survive and thrive even in antagonistic circumstances.

Companies that can leverage the capabilities of data gain a myriad of advantages that steer their sails to success and continuous growth. To name a few, they can find new revenue generation opportunities, enhance marketing strategies, deliver improved customer support, achieve higher operational efficiency, and a great competitive edge. 

Elevate customers’ experience

With the explosion of digital media, customers have become more informed and demanding than they have ever been. Data lays the foundation for creating the most accurate buyers' persona and identifying their pain points. You are able to harmonize your services and products to their demands and dig out the opportunities that are right under your nose but still out of sight.

By acquiring and analyzing customers' opinions, you can develop a knack for their needs and expectations. It not only helps in delivering convenience and reliability but also boosts your market shares. Reviews and remarks from the customers help you recognize where you need to improve and how to optimize your business to meet your audience's engagements and tap into new prospects.

While data helps you elevate your customer experience, you must focus on the quality of data that you collect. The thumb rule is, better the quality the faster is growth. It helps you understand every nuance about your audience and helps you cater to their typical and unique needs beyond their expectations.

Enhance cybersecurity

Another area where data can be instrumental in boosting the cybersecurity of your organization. With cyber threats and breaches becoming defaults, customers are paying a lot of stress on your security capabilities. Not only that, but these attacks are also detrimental to your everyday operations and brand name. Wisely implemented data analytics can save from unfortunate losses and embarrassment. It supports and strengthens your security posture and mitigates the risk of attacks.

To establish a solid security posture, you first need to know the chances of various attacks and their likely impact on your organization. You need to assess the effectiveness of your current security strategies. Data helps you diagnose the loopholes well in time and take effective measures to safeguard your enterprise and customers’ data. It is a vital tool in assessing the promise of the security tools you are investing in and the ROI they would deliver. 

Real-time assessment of data helps you generate alerts before the issue can lead to a catastrophe. Armed with such data-driven insights you can also distinguish between positive alerts and false positives and save plenty of resources in addressing false calls. Data also fuels predictive analytics to enable you to pull up your guard before you get knocked.

Improved talent management

Despite the radical inclusion of automation and digital technologies, there is no replacement of skillful talent. A strong workforce can build and seal your image in the public eyes which are why companies invest generously in talent acquisition and retention.

Following data analytics practices can make the talent acquisition process faster, more precise, and cost-effective. It allows you to process zillions of profiles and discover the best candidates for a position based on the skills and personality traits. It also eliminates human bias to ensure that you get only the best man for the job.

It is a well-known fact that talent retention costs much less than talent acquisition. Data analytics provides you valuable and actionable insight regarding your workforce and job market trends. Such information can be instrumental in initiating engagement practices such as refined scheduling and rewarding to resonate with the expectations of your workforce.

Streamline management

Consider the situation where your customers are bound to wait significantly before being served or you invest in a popular security tool that does not serve your purpose the best. These are critical management decisions that not only jeopardize your business and its reputation but also lead to big financial losses. Customers are likely to leave in the middle of the journey owing to longer lead time and a security lag can make your enterprise vulnerable.

Data analytics helps you eliminate wasteful tools, processes, and people and enforce lean management. Such business sanitization is an ongoing investment and data analytics ensure the designing and implementation of effective change management. As the processes are tweaked daily based on several internal and external factors, it allows your people to adjust to the changes smoothly.

Optimize vendor management

The growth of your business depends on the quality of products and services you offer, for which you rely on what your vendors supply to you. Vendors who deliver substandard products and often delay the orders are likely to adversely impact your offerings. Choosing such partners can push you out of the business pretty soon and force you to mourn the remains of your organization.

On the flip side, if you can collect ample amounts of data regarding vendors and draw insights from it, you can easily compare and pick the best partner for your business. You can compare the price and service/product assortments quickly and easily. Data simplifies the selection of the right mix of vendors that can increase your profitability and drive growth.

Manage ever-changing demands

Demands in every industry are changing rapidly and regularly which is leaving even the incumbent business perplexed in delivering to the market calls. Businesses need to align their processes and daily operations with the flow of these demands. 

Data analytics can quickly squeeze your historical and current data to render a clear and accurate picture of today's and tomorrow's demand landscape. Data helps you almost get inside the head of your customers and understand what they are rejecting and what is making them happy. Such insight, if available in time, can guide changes to deliver a better experience to your audience and completely turn the game in your favor.

Get ahead of your competition

Getting an edge over your competitors is only possible in two ways. You can either provide your customers with an innovative, game-changing, new product or service or cater to their needs at the most competitive price. Businesses are always racing to push others out of businesses and win over the audiences. 

Data can open doors to growth without involving in such a price race and compromising in the quest of winning by which very way. Data can reveal the audience your competitors are targeting. You can also learn about what the target audience expects and what unique strategies can help you win them. It also guides you with disruptive innovation and helps you ensure great ROIs in your efforts.

So how you can use data as the secret sauce for exponential business growth

Data is certainly the most valuable thing under the sun in today’s world. Companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google are examples of how good quantity and quality of data can drive your growth and success. 

Despite the tremendous value of data, only prepared businesses can fully capitalize on its potential. You need to embrace technologies and practices to collect, organize, and process the data most profitably. You must adapt strategies and develop a work culture to derive valuable insights and relish the benefits of this most precious asset.