How Data Can Give Your Business the Edge

Data is a powerful tool and a commodity that is rapidly increasing in monetary value. The ubiquitous presence of social media and online services demanding our personal information has led to vast amounts of data being collected and stored and has fueled debate about an individual’s right to privacy and what corporations should be doing to keep their data safe. The fact remains, however, that when used properly, it is hard to understate the potential gains a business can make by learning how to take advantage of data analysis. It allows companies to understand their market in a way that no amount of market research ever could and therefore to exploit that knowledge to maximize profits.

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If there is one thing that all entrepreneurs hate, it is waste. Whether it is the inefficient use of material resources or employees time wasted, waste represents lost revenue and missed opportunities. Waste is also a sign of inefficiencies in the approach the business is taking to its day-to-day operations. Using data correctly can allow you to quickly identify and plug these gaps in your organization.

Gathering Data

Wherever you suspect inefficiency or room for improvement you should consider what metrics you can use to test your suspicions and how you can measure these. You can choose to collect data in a number of ways, you can monitor and manually record the data yourself, you can ask the relevant members of your team to self-report the necessary statistics to you, or you can set up an automatic solution that will measure and record your chosen variable without any outside input. Automating, wholly or partially, this process removes or reduces the element of human risk and will give you greater confidence in the results you collect. You might want to consider gathering your data several times or over a sustained period so you can be confident that your measurements are representative of standard operating.

Data Analysis

Data analytics is the science of interpreting data and it is where data is ‘mined’ into something more useful. There are a number of options for analyzing data. In some cases, you won’t need an in-depth analysis to tell you what you want to know. For example, if you were measuring what percentage of employees were meeting deadlines, then you only need to glance at the data that you’ve collected to see if this is the case. However, if you are attempting to gain an understanding of more nuanced behaviors of your company and its staff, then you will want to consider employing the services of a professional data analytics firm, as they will be able to advise you on every stage of the process. Some people find data visualization helpful.SelectHub has a comparison of two of the most popular data visualization software packages.

Acting on Your Findings

Once you’ve analyzed your data, consider the conclusions you have drawn from it, ask relevant people amongst your team how they think any issues can be addressed, and see if they can help you understand what went wrong, to begin with. Once you have a list of issues and plans of action for fixing them then you can begin to act on them.

Data is one of the most important tools open to the modern businessman and learning to utilize it effectively could give your business the edge over its competition.