Incorporating Data Analytics into Your Business
Does the phrase “data analytics” make you gulp and think about large lists of long numbers, unreadable pie charts, and graphs. A sinking feeling of confusion? Data analytics, aka – keeping score, can be beneficial to your business to know if you are going to achieve your goals.
Data can be your friend. And leaders need to act as umpires and keep score.
Defining Data Analytics
First, it’s essential to understand what data analytics is.
Data analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used to discover, interpret, and communicate meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making.
Cutting to the chase – – – DA means score keeping.
DA is a means of using the numbers your business generates to describe what’s currently going on in your company, identify patterns and trends, and predict and plan.
Those numbers come from your sales figures, budget, customer interactions, marketing, inventory, and general operations. If they sit there tucked away on a hard drive, the numbers do no good to anyone.
It would be like taking your temperature and seeing that you have a fever but doing nothing about it.
Data must be analyzed, interpreted, and acted upon. Insights from information can help you shift course, double down, or avoid the bumps in the road.
One of my recent industrial manufacturing clients didn’t understand how unprofitable one of his three channels had become. When he started using a data analytics dashboard by channel with profitability, he realized his team was spinning their wheels and losing money working with wholesalers. His data analytic dashboard gives him a heads up on trends in profitability earlier than waiting for his financials at the end of a quarter.
Setting and Monitoring Goals
Data analytics can help you set and monitor goals for your company.
For instance, you can look at the trends in your sales figures, but you can also get more granular. Maybe three of your ten SKUs are doing 80% of your volume. Should you act put more focus on those products?
Once you implement changes, a well-crafted dashboard can help you monitor your progress, keep taps on your plans and help guide you in the right direction.
Measuring Finances
You can also use data analytics to measure your finances.
Perhaps you want to keep better track of your cash flow. Data analytics allows you to see exactly how much you’re spending and your return on that investment.
You can get software that shows, for example, two years of transaction data to determine where your money’s going and make changes as needed, cutting excesses and reinvesting in areas that are providing a better cash return.
The software can also provide real-time transaction notifications to always keep you up to date so you don’t have to wait until the quarter ends to see what’s going wrong.
Improving Marketing
Your marketing plan can also get a boost from data analytics. More marketing data products are available today to help you track investment and return.
Without a comprehensive marketing plan that addresses your marketing needs, you can’t keep score.
What if your CAC (customer acquisition costs) becomes out of line with last quarter? Maybe you need to shift your spending away from tradeshows and back to digital marketing ads on LinkedIn.
Where are leads coming from that convert best? Think of analytics like a scoreboard at a ball game – you know if you are winning, but you also have some leading and lagging indicators.
Find Efficiencies in your Operations
For example, if your company operates in e-commerce, you can leverage techniques such as process mining to make your operations more efficient. Process mining is an easy and cost-effective way to analyze the data your business generates and develop solutions to meet your business’s challenges. Effective process mining can lower your costs and raise your productivity. More and more of these products are SaaS-based and can help you reduce OEE (operating equipment efficiency).
Getting the Most from Social Media
Social media probably plays a significant role in your marketing, but you may not know its actual impact on your business.
Data analytics can help you sift through mounds of data to find insights. By crunching some numbers, you can see which kinds of posts get the most hits and the best response, then adjust your posting accordingly. If you share a lot of images on Instagram, for instance, you may get the best response from the ones that load most easily for viewers. You can use an online resizing tool to make images easier to manage for yourself and your customers.
Using Data Analytics Well
Confused about what to measure—frightened of data analytics?
Consider getting your leadership team together and ask each of them to bring one-key metric based on collected data that they think is critical to healthy, profitable growth and success. Build a dashboard based on a handful of these vital indicators and review them each month.
Before it is too late in the game, it helps to know the score.
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
Photo by Nathan Shively on Unsplash
