Integrating Data Analytics Into Your Business: A Brief Introductory Guide

The rapid expansion of technology into practically every aspect of society has generated more readily accessible information than ever before. While this comes with many advantages, it also creates a need for processing and interpretation, one answered by data analytics. Analyzing data serves as a valuable tool in virtually every industry, including agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, banking, and real estate. Through the use of data analytics coupled with Summit Success tools, your business can optimize its operations and maximize profits.

Customer Base Development

Customer analytics can help you understand your customer base, including what they need and want and what attracts them. By studying how they behave and why they behave in that manner and using this knowledge to make predictions, you can make marketing plans and design promotions targeted at reeling them in. Methods you can use include segmentation, polls, and testing.

Analyzing existing patrons also allows you to develop strategies for customer retention. Studying data on what customers did and did not enjoy about an experience (customer service, self-checkout lanes, free samples, etc.) can help you improve customer experience and elicit more positive customer feedback, which can in turn aid in the acquisition of new customers. You can also utilize data to identify where you need to alter your social media strategy, what content is most relevant to your base, how you can connect with people, and even locate collaborators to help drive your brand awareness.

Product Development

Toy companies generally analyze the previous performance of other toys before designing and releasing new ones. It helps to know the psychology behind why something is popular so it can be applied to a new product. For instance, research shows that the blind bag toy craze is partially driven by the excitement of surprises and the addictive lure of collecting. Other businesses also employ tactics to understand what makes people’s brains crave or derive satisfaction from a certain good. Data analytics helps you make products with the designs and features that stimulate the buying urge.

Risk Management

Part of being an entrepreneur is taking risks, but not taking steps to minimize that risk can result in excessive losses. Data analytics can help you do this in numerous ways, including making risk forecasts to determine if a plan is too hazardous and monitoring your performance so you can identify costly mistakes and avoid repeating them. Risk analysis matrices, comparative analyses, and visualization are examples of data analytics tools you can use.

Cash Flow Monitoring

It is imperative to watch your cash flow, the shift of funds into and out of your business. Data analytics can help you gain a clearer picture of where your money is entering and leaving. It can also help you keep track of your backorders, supply chains, and inventory so you can ensure you have what you need and are not wasting money on unnecessary stock.

It can also help you better manage your receivables. Having a set invoice system can help you improve cash flow and make payments (to yourself as well) in a timely fashion. You can use an online invoice maker that generates pre-made templates with photo, text, and logo customization options to ease the process. Many also allow you to pick the download format.

Using data analytics tools and specialists can help you improve the overall efficiency and performance of your company, grow your customer base and identify key strategies to implement.

-Dean Burgess