HOW TO IMPROVE THE PROCESS OF MAKING BUSINESS DECISIONS THANKS TO THE DATA-DRIVEN BUSINESS APPROACH
Is intuition a sufficient tool for making business decisions today? This method worked in the past, when changes in the market could be predicted and prepared for. Today, changes happen all the time - you can trust your intuition, but it's better to make your decisions based on information flowing from data.
it is not difficult - we have many systems in our companies, we base our activities on more and more sophisticated technologies. And wherever there is technology, there is data. And since there are data - it is also possible to base decision-making processes on them.
Thanks to this, your company can be more flexible in operation and react faster to changes in the market. In a data-driven organization, anyone can leverage the insights available in pre-built analytics.
From the article you will learn:
What is a data-driven business? 2. How to choose the data that is crucial in making business decisions? 3. How to turn insights into actions?
Data-driven – make business decisions more efficiently
Viewing reports, controlling the results is nothing new. What distinguishes the so-called data-driven businessfrom what we've known so far? The difference lies in what data and how much of it we use today in the decision-making process, and how we process this data and how quickly we have access to information.
To really drive your business with data, you need to think about how to use it skillfully. Companies that have already learned this have excellent insight into the behavior of their customers, they focus on their needs. In addition, data that they only collected so far, e.g. for handling requests, have started to work, which makes the cost of their storage more justified.
However, it is important to remember that the huge amount of data collected will not always contribute to improving the way you do business. The real value of data is the knowledge you extract from it. So how to use data effectively?
Strategy - mark key areas
Start by revising your goals, focusing on those areas that will contribute to their achievement. Companies that produce goods must first of all ensure that consumers choose their products and not their competitors.
The fight continues, the message to the customer is important, but also the place on the store shelf. There's still distribution and a retailer on the way. Determining what data is needed to properly assess the sales process and which data will unnecessarily distort the image is therefore essential.
Data that will allow you to properly assess sales activities are created in many places, both in the company's systems and distributors or in stores. Omitting an important source or including an unnecessary one will distort the picture.
Selection - prepare datasets
Now that you know what has the greatest impact on your goals and what questions you need to know the answers to, it's time to choose datasets that can answer your questions. Check what data you have, where they come from, how you receive them. Is this data only from the systems you use in your company.
Or do you collect sales data not only from your sales support system, but also from distributors? The more data sources, the more attention should be paid to whether the data concerning one area can be easily combined with each other.
After all, even in one company, data from different departments is often difficult to juxtapose in a meaningful way, even though they concern, for example, the company's customers.
Analysis - collect data and create visualizations
Once you know exactly what data you need, think about who will manage it. Most often they are department managers. If the data also comes from outside your company's systems, you also need to know who will be responsible for clearing data at business partners. This knowledge is essential to properly integrate data from so many sources and ensure that they always contain the necessary, predetermined datasets.
The point is that if you create some kind of analytics, every indicator, every chart must always be based on the same data without having to check whether the data populating the analytics is correct. In a data-driven organizationit is important to create appropriate connections between data that give insight into the current situation. In addition, it gives the opportunity to share information with a larger group of interested employees, giving them knowledge and better opportunities for organized, coherent action across the company.
Insights – turn information into action
How you present the collected data affects its usability. Choosing the right form of visualization is very important. It is not without reason that there are so many BI tools available that allow you to present information in a way suited to the subject they concern. Because the right presentation of observations is not about a beautiful picture, but about a clear message. One that is understandable, easy to relate to other visualizations. One that is associated with exactly what it is supposed to present. And one on the basis of which it is simply very easy and simple to decide what actions to take.
Tailored analytics - digital reflection of the company
To create a data-driven organization , it is not enough just to decide that it should happen. As you can see, this is a series of steps that need to be taken and will cover the entire company. The most important thing is to choose the key areas of activity and select all the data that gives a real and broad insight into those areas. The enterprise is one organism, but sometimes it is not easy to communicate at different levels of the hierarchy or between individual departments. Reliable and useful for all business analytics it facilitates the flow of information in a democratic way. At the same time, well-prepared data sets leave no room for manipulation or errors. In addition, connecting to external data sources (e.g. data from distributors or contractors) allows for better response to changes outside the organization. Never before has the business decision-making process been based on so many authoritative factors. Decision makers can take the stress out of making decisions based on intuition. Today there is no time to wait for a hunch. Information flows from everywhere, you just need to strategically organize and use it today.