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Gathering data in 2021 to get a better grip on your consumers (or any of the stakeholders) is not a difficult task. In fact, it has become so easy that you actually run a real danger of having too much data to deal with. Data champion Bernard Marr in an article says: “While the regular small business has marginally less self-generated data than big players, it does not mean big data is inaccessible. Contrarily, big data is more suited to smaller businesses, as they’re more agile and able to act upon insights drawn from the data acquired.
A Forbes article discussing a survey from Deloitte, says that a whopping 49% of participants say that analytics helps them make superior business decisions. But to optimise the data-driven insights, it is imperative to know how to get the most value from your data and work as a purely data-driven company. In fact, some of the biggest players in the economy are all hardcore data enthusiasts. Right from the giant that thrives on data for competitive edge, Google, to a relatively new entry, Uber.
Advantages of Being a Data First Company
Companies using data to drive all key decisions companies use advanced analytics to understand customers, industry trends, and their own business model better — this really sets them apart from the competition. Don’t believe us? Believe our data for competitive edge!
Data-driven companies are:
* 2x more probable to be in the topmost quartile of their domain’s financial performance.
* 5x more probable to make timely decisions as compared to others in the industry.
Now that we have established that data-driven companies outshine their peers, how does it holistically make a difference in business decisions and output thereof? To answer this, we have put together how data-driven decisions help various stakeholders in a business:
1. Data Helps in Retaining Customers
Data analytics is not restricted to marketing strategies. Consumer experience is a very important part of a CRM journey. A part which can be completely aided by data.
Analysing customer interactions, seeing what they are gravitating towards, studying purchase and transaction history, preferred service channels will build customer loyalty and push overall revenue. Any detail that you can leverage to give them that nudge or make them feel important will go a long way. A customer is always usually amazed by their own data. They know what it is that they like, they love it more when you know it.
Putting down and fleshing out these details through data visualization and storytelling to every team that interacts with the customer at any level helps drive direct growth.
For instance, American Express studies over a hundred variables in the transaction history of each customer to predict custom behaviour in the future. Every negative customer experience can be practically avoided. They can go as establishing that 24% of their accounts that will be disabled by the customer every four months. They can now figure out why they have such a high burn rate and pull out all stops to incentivise (financial and non-financial) at-risk customers.
Delta airlines has studied and analysed customer data and knows that a major concern for passengers is lost baggage. Especially when they are on a flight that has multiple layovers. They looked further into their data and created a neat solution that would absorb this pain point entirely. The Delta app has a “Track My Bag” feature that helps them keep tabs on their luggage.
The end results? The data-driven decision helps you retain customers buy understanding their main pain points.
2. Data Mining can Help Companies Grow and be Agile
Data backed decisions leave little room for error. We are at the very threshold of a digital and automation transformation. Data is the reason for every decision that was of superior quality.
Data empowers you to spot the right patterns that emerge and leverage them to your advantage. For instance, if you know that you hit peak sales on a Wednesday evening, you ramp up your display ads by Sunday. You also happen to know that women in the age bracket of 35-40 are ordering it. So, you just give them exactly what they are looking for. All powered through data.
For instance, the delivery giant UPS makes the smartest of decisions using data. It monitors speed, the direction of traffic, traffic jam updates, weather, and other damages all in real-time to create the most effective routes for its delivery troupes.
You also save in terms of real cost: time and effort. For example, assume you have a top-performing sales rep who gets assigned the greatest number of leaves. However, you are surprised to find, after studying, that they close deals at a lower rate than somebody who receives fewer leads but cuts deal at a higher value. This is now the right opportunity for you to assign weightage to a number of leads versus the sales value of the lead.
The end results? Data-driven decision helps you optimise your resources and to maximise revenue growth.
3. Quality Data Management Improves Businesses
Real-time data has become the primary selling point of many big data processes, and for a great reason that too. With live insights, you don’t have to wait for months at the end to find out if a change to your supply chain is having the desired effect or how that one change in the variable is affecting overall output. You simply don’t have that time.
With quality data for competitive edge on your side, you will have greater confidence when making business decisions in almost no time at all. To corroborate this further, a PwC survey of over a thousand business executives found that data-driven businesses were three times as likely to achieve vastly major improvements in their decision-making capabilities.
Guesstimates are no more the norm. Proactive steps based on trends and patterns will improve your business beyond measure. It can also help you reanalyze your products’ basis consumer reaction and hit the sweetest spot. You can also find other avenues to generate revenue, depending on which part of your business gains most traction by simply disintegrating data for competitive edge.
The end results? Data-driven decisions will help you unlock bottlenecks in your company.
Sounds like a lot to process? Luckily there are data that help you crawl and collect all the data you need to get that unfair advantage. The advances in data processing and visualisation are the real growth hackers for your company. That is the disruption your business needs.
“Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.”–Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.
