The value of data in decision-making is known to every business owner and manager. Business growth through data insights is consistent. Decisions fuelled by data insights have higher rates of success. And yet, SME business owners rarely extract the complete value from business data.
The most common reason for this underutilization of data is the availability of adequate quantity and quality of data.
As a business coach, whenever I ask for the data that supports a decision, I witness huge gaps in collecting, analyzing, and applying this data. So, let us break down the entire data cycle for a business.
Conscious Collection of the Right Data for Business Growth through Data Insights
- Notice the word – “Conscious” The reason for this emphasis is data. Just like the dust, it gets collected without us doing anything specifically. It is especially true in today’s digital world. We need to identify the Right Data consciously and structure this collection.
- Notice the word – “Right” The reason for this emphasis is to identify the gaps between the data required and the data collected. This data gap can be either known or unknown. Often, the data is collected first, and then we try to put it to use. However, data gaps focus on data we do not have. We should start with strategies based on certain assumptions or calculations to identify these gaps. We then work backward to validate those assumptions or calculate with that data. This step invariably exposes the gaps to help us create a conscious data collection architecture.
Question for our readers- What are the data gaps in your organizations? How can you consciously bridge this gap?
Right Analysis of Collected Data for Business Growth through Data Insights
- Not all data is equal. We should slice the data in multiple ways to draw out helpful analyses. Again, the emphasis is the “Right” Analysis. This step always needs various viewpoints because data can tell us different stories. For example, when data tells us that we have a 40% conversion rate, it also says we have a 60% dropout rate. We can break the data further into sub-levels. For example, conversion rates of different product offerings, at different geographies, by various sales teams, for different customer segments, at different purchase stages, and through multiple channels. We should also be conscious of outliers that can skew the data and lead us to wrong conclusions.
Question for our readers- How often do you analyze your collected data?
Application of Insights from Data for Business Growth through Data Insights
- An in-depth analysis of this data can tell us where to focus our efforts to generate maximum business growth. Should we focus on specific products that have higher or lower conversion rates? Or should we focus on specific channels that are/ are not giving us better ROIs? Or maybe we explore new market segments having lesser competitors rather than fight for wallet share in a crowded market! Set time aside and experienced resources to analyze and apply this consciously collected data. We need to regularly analyze this data and revalidate our organizational strategies based on them.
Question for our readers-Who can access all these data and analysis reports? How do they use it?
Data in different Business Functions
Business Growth through Data Insight in Marketing
- Today’s digital-heavy marketing channels churn out a lot of data. Data collection is, hence eased to a certain extent. But there is still work to be done. I like to start with data that helps us understand the customer. While most organizations may have demographic data such as the age, gender, or income of the customer, it is the behavioral data that is often missing. Data such as; what are the pains of the customer? What gains do they covet?
- Why do they buy from you or your competitors? Or even, why don’t they buy from you or your competitors? The more intimately a business knows its customers, the better its marketing and sales results. The different marketing channels of an organization should be continuously analyzed to evaluate the one performing best and the optimum use of marketing budgets. Business growth through data insights in marketing is a stiff target because Marketing ROIs are often the most difficult to establish. Hence a conscious collection of marketing data right from the beginning is of prime importance. Marketing is not one size fits all. Each marketing channel will yield different results based on the purchase stage, the offering, and the competitive landscape. With outsourced (digital) marketing, data becomes even more vital to ensure that resources are used correctly to meet the preset revenue, marketing, and branding goals. Examples of these goals include the number of registration forms filled, downloads, callback requests, etc.
Business Growth through Data Insight
Sales
- The most common type of sales data is the billing data. Business growth through data insights in sales is inevitable. Most organizations collect this data with ease. However, how much of this data is studied and used? Are we slicing the data to uncover deeper insights? Are we applying these insights to question the current status quo? Back to our earlier example, when we analyze the 40% conversion rate and ask questions such as, why are only 40% of our leads converted? Which products/ markets are pulling us down? Which competitors are winning these deals? How do we compare with these competitors? Do we have any untapped competitive advantage? The second type of sales data is customer data. It is more than just information about which customer buys what product/ service. This data refers to valuable information about the buying behavior of your customers. E.g.
- Who are the decisions makers in the customer’s organization that prefer to do business with you?
- What percentage of the wallet share do you have vs. your competition?
- Why do these customers buy from you and not the competition?
- What are the buying cycles of the customer? This type of data is not available easily. However, the sales teams can collect this information consciously. Most often, the sales team will have all this information in their head but may not have them recorded in a centralized place that is accessible afterward. The third type of resourceful data is thesales funnel data At first, we identify the distinct stages of the sales cycle and capture the conversion and dropout ratios at each. Remove the outliers from this analysis to offset wrong averages, and end with applying this staged data to make improvements at each stage. Businesses are often surprised by the insights that we gain from this exercise. This results in rolling out simple improvements at each stage that snowballs into huge impacts across the entire sales funnel.
Business Growth through Data Insight in
Customer Service
- Customer Service is more than Customer Support! We expect Business growth through data insights of customer response, whereas businesses often miss out on analyzing the data lying with their customer service teams. This data pertains to the reasons for customer calls. Are customers reaching out for installation guidance? Or are they following up on delivery dates? How can the business facilitate these needs proactively? For example, many now offer ‘unboxing’ videos to serve marketing content and usage guidelines. Simultaneously we can also further slice the customer service calls to reveal areas of improvement for the organization. For example, what products/ services generate the most service traffic? Which geographies do customers log in the most service calls? How long do we take to resolve each type of service call?
Question for our readers-
- What data do your sales, marketing, and customer service teams collect consciously?
- How often do you review this data?
- Who reviews this data?
- Do you interlink your sales, marketing, and customer service data insights?
- Other Functions: Other critical functions like HR, production, logistics, finance, IT, governance, operations, quality, etc., derive immense value from data. I have covered only three of these functions here.
For videos on Data Driven Decision Subscribe to YouTube channel
Loved this Article! We are sure you would love reading this too
