Six Benefits To Embracing Data
Data is the new oil. It’s often difficult to find. Can be painstaking to bring to the surface, and is only valuable once it’s been refined. The right data can make a huge difference to your business in many different ways, but here are the six major categories:
Agility
The world around is ever-changing. Where once business sought an advantage by building up their infrastructure and systems, today they are finding new ways to innovate and adapt quickly. That’s where data can help. The earlier you see the signs of change, the sooner you can be on the right side of it. A 2021 report found that 63% of organisations who use big data and analytics say it’s creating a competitive advantage for their business.
Customer Closeness
According to a McKinsey study data-driven organisation are 23 times more likely to acquire customers. That’s because the right insight can help you understand not only who you are customers are and the channels they come through, but also which customers will go on to have the greatest lifetime value, which are at risk of churning etc. This allows you to use your resources more effectively and narrow your targeting to areas which will create the most value.
Holistic View
Data is only useful if served to the right people, at the right time in the right format. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? The truth is that we all absorb and interpret information differently. You’d be surprised how often we’ve presented the same data to a team and they have all come to very different conclusions as to what to do with the information! Data visualisation is about more than pretty charts. Well-visualised data shortens the time needed to absorb information, unveils trends or outliers, and empowers the decision-makers to make a data-driven decision.
Streamlining Processes
Wherever you have humans…you have human error. It is commonly accepted that the typical error rate in manual data entry is about 1%, with the error rate going up the more complex the task. There are significant time (and with them cost savings) that can come from automated data extractions, the obvious example being reporting. Staff often spend hours collating information from different sources into one report, something which can easily be automated. In fact we were able to save clients 1300+ hours just by automating reporting.
Making Strategic Decisions
Tying together data with decisions is one of the most difficult things to get right. Data should act as a helpful advisor, guiding your team. Yet too often senior executives will actively ignore research in favour of what they believe to be true. A report from KPMG found that only 38% of C-Suite executives have a high level of confidence in their analytics. Clearly there is still a lot of work to be done so that data can be both incorporated and trusted at the highest level…but there are big gains if you can get it right, the average rate of growth for insights- driven businesses is 30% according to Forrester.
Cost Reduction
When you gain a holistic view of your business it becomes easier to identify non-value added areas that can be trimmed. Data can also help you to narrow your focus, spending money in smarter ways or on areas with higher return. Businesses surveyed in a BARC report that use big data saw an average 10% reduction in overall cost.
How 173tech Can Help
Your business is unique and so if you’d like to find out how data could benefit you, why not get in touch with a friendly member of the 173tech team?