The challenge that all the corporate face is not how to gather data but, how to structure the same, or what are the tools that could use to analyze the same, rather how to identify the questions we wish to solve.
A huge number of people have taken to learning big data or understanding the benefits of data analytics. One of the main benefits is that you can use the data that you collect towards driving operational performance within your business. The famous quote by Edward Demming is:
“In God we trust, everyone else brings data.”
This is really apt quote. As mentioned earlier, the challenge is not of gathering data, but what kind of tools we are using to analyze the same, or how to structure the same. It is also a challenge to work out what are the problems we need to solve in the first place.
An Instance of Business Analytics Used in Increasing Business Growth
An excellent example of an enterprise that has used business intelligence and data analytics services to increase growth is a business called You Flowers. This is an eCommerce floral business. The owner of the company decided he will not outsource his big data or analytics; he rather built a team within his business. He brought in some of the top graduates from the state and gave them over 10 years of data he collected of the business. The CEO ensured that for every portion of the data he collected, the data analysts knew each part of the business that could be optimized.
The results are evidence of the prediction made: Before we use analytics, the business was growing steadily at 10% each year from the year 2002 to 2011.
Since the CEO introduced analytics specialists from his team, the business started growing by 30% for the last 5 years.
Many businesses may be benefitted from using You Flower. Employing a good business analyst is one brilliant method of identifying out the weaker points in business. You could then make changes so as to improve them. Another amazing idea is training yourself as a business analyst. There are some good universities that offer online post-graduation in Business Analyst, something that would teach you everything that is needed for you to gather a better knowledge of data analytics solutions. The course would teach you to:
- Evaluate plus assess through extracting meaningful information from your data collection.
- Predict plus project to estimate the potential outcomes guess patterns also model scenarios.
- Prescribe solutions to guide the decision-making of your business.
- You would not only be able to improve your business but also develop your persona. You would learn new types of communication, presentation, leadership, consultation, and business skills.
The example cited above tells you exactly how data analytics has the ability to increase your business growth. There are quite a number of areas where big data analysts can be employed to bring complete transformation in a business’s performance. This change brought in:
- Greater profits
- Higher customer satisfaction
- Better revenue
- Higher retention of customers
Mentioned below are certain areas the data analysts and your business could consider:
Improved performance of service level
From the business, You Flowers, use a network of florists so that you can complete your orders, along with having their own distribution centers. Data analysts have made the employees capable of working out their ability so that customers’ demands are met. Most of the customers looking to order flowers look for delivery on the same day. Through data analytics companies, the business can check the impact traffic patterns create and also find out how long it would take each of the suppliers to deliver these flowers in major cities. This has further allowed the data analytics to fulfill their commitments, or refuse the business for those areas where they cannot meet the delivery slot.
This could be used for your business as well. It would help you to figure out which of the suppliers are in a position to help you meet your customer demands, also which suppliers are not reliable. By utilizing the best suppliers, you would be able to better your customer satisfaction.
Make order fulfillment better
Several factors are there that will determine how good your business is. Some factors that could determine how good the florist is may include:
- The day in the week
- What time of the day
- What kind of products is available?
Through keeping your eye on the performance of your supplier, you would be able to gather a further understanding of which of the suppliers would be able to provide the best chance for an order to be successfully filled, based on your location. This further increases your order fulfillment.
Provide your consumers with maximum value
You could use the information gathered from your consumers to figure out which ones are rather likely to come back also provide you with further business. This would enable you to make the maximum out of the marketing investment you have done. Understanding your customers and marketing to them directly would help you in building strong and long-term relationships with your customers. This would in turn:
- Increase the opportunities of repeating your business
- Maximize the value to you
Makes supplier management better
Keeping proper track of customer complaints and refund requests would allow you to come out of the suppliers who aren’t doing well, either from the perspective of product quality or even a timing perspective, where demand is not met.
This helps your clients receive the best quality products on time. Those clients who are happy with the product or service have a greater likelihood of repeating business, hence getting this right is highly significant.
Bring down the costs
Many businesses are essentially seasonal and function only at certain times or days in a year, having a greater amount of demand than at other times. For instance, certain occasions like birthdays, marriages, and valentine’s day may see greater business than other days. A business of this kind needs to consider how they can use the data they have collected so that business costs can be reduced. One way of doing this is through employing the staff who can work on shifts. This way you would be able to choose which employee you would like to appoint when and where in busy times.
Switching the big data focus on the business would enable in improving your levels of staffing and that would, in turn, help in bringing down your operational expenses.
Better Advertising
All the advertisements are mostly A/B tested. All pop-ups, product images, and landing pages get reviewed to find how effective they are before you do tweak to better your results.
Data analytics companies would even take consideration of your product’s position on your website so that they should be placed to improve sales and engagement. Marketing and advertising can be really expensive, so it is vital that all businesses understand what would work well and what wouldn’t. Data analytics would be able to give you this information.
Better product management
A business could offer thousands of products. Data analytics services will be able to help you work out which of your cataloged products are most popular and further tell you if they have the chance of becoming more popular at a particular time of the year. This data would help you in marketing the right kind of products at the right time, which would help you improve your sales.
How could Data analytics help businesses who are looking to expand?
It could be extremely tough to grow a business. It takes an enormous amount of dedication, work, and insight into the future. Most of the successful businesses turned successful because they understand the needs of their consumers, who understand the market and realize where they are positioned. To find this information, mostly all businesses collect data. They utilize this data to inform further drive and then incite action. These are 5 key ways you can enable your data to expand by utilizing the data you have collected.
- Planning on expansion – In case you are wanting to expand your enterprise, then it’s rather a good idea that you collect information on your customers, the equipment, payments for employees, maintaining assets, and scheduling delivery. All of this information could help you create one detailed plan to expand.
- Select your audience – You could utilize the data you collect to figure out who your customers are. You could also find out what people feel about your brand and business and the exact location of your customers. This information would help you locate your perfect demographics. It could also be compared with the census data available to provide you with a crystal clear view. Once you have realized your audience, you could look at other parameters like that of your competitors. This would allow that you choose an area that offers you the maximum in terms of customer expansion and potential.
- Create a business plan – The information that you are collecting gives you the information regarding what is happening around the world at this moment, but you would also need to identify how well your business performance is. Business analytics could help you understand turnover trends, growth, and sales trends. You could use this information so that you can develop a business plan.
- Market campaign development – The information gathered on your customers and competitors would enable in designing a marketing campaign that is aimed at targeting your audience. You would be able to bring down the tone in messaging, details of branding, and preferences of consumers, for instance, the offers that would make you stand out from your competitors.
- Take actions with help of predictive insights – Business analytics would provide you with predictive insights, something that helps you stand out from your competitors and create optimum expansion. This would enable you to take all negatives in your stride quickly overcome them also improve performance in the longer run.
Be it you wish your business expansion or increase sales, it’s rather a good idea that you spend time analyzing the data you have collected regarding all the different business areas around you. It is really amazing just the amount of learning you could receive by looking at your data repository. Data analytics services are the thing that all businesses are adopting today to create a better business insight for their global growth and prosperity.
Read more: 9 Ways Sales Data Analysis Can Help You Generate More Revenue