10 Ways Data Analytics Can Revolutionize Your Business Strategy

A vision of what your business can achieve. A plan for getting there. A way of ensuring that you are constantly and consistently on track. These are three pillars of your business strategy.

The fourth one is data analytics. Not just any old data analytics, but the ones that use your data to answer crucial business strategy questions, including “what should we do?”, “how should we do it?”, and “how do we know if it’s working?”. These crucial questions help companies understand how to compete in their market and how to create a competitive advantage that will secure their place in the market.

In the past few years, data science has exploded. Almost all industries use analytics strategies in their decision making processes. Everyone is shifting towards big data and data analysis to shape their business strategies. Data strategy is the future. Digital marketing is now exclusively driven by advanced analytics from SEO to social media posts, or even email marketing campaigns. Digital Marketers rely on data sources to provide them with crucial information about what type of content to produce, when to produce it, and how it performs. Sports general managers and coaches use analytics for drafting and in game decisions. Amazon uses predictive analytics to drive their acquisition strategies and algorithms for customer experience. Almost all important business decisions require a data strategy.  Businesses without strong data management plans will quickly fall behind analytic driven companies.

Data Analytics for All

Data analytics can unlock business strategy success for you. You can see data patterns, trends and relationships you might never have noticed otherwise. But data analytics must also make such insights actionable and create business value. In other words, you should be able to use this new understanding to make the right strategy decisions. You should be able to move forward faster and make suitable changes along the way if needed. In today’s rapidly changing markets, that also means data analytics must come out of the silos and onto your business users’ desks (or smartphones) for easy, immediate improvements to your business processes.

10 Ways to Get Business Strategy Benefit

With actionable, accessible data analytics software in place, here are 10 ways you can revolutionize your business strategy:

1.) Proper product planning – Don’t make the wrong products! Pull in data from marketing databases, social network discussions and your customer relationship management (CRM) system to home in on market and customer needs. Spot the future trends on functions and features. Make them part of your data strategy.

2.) Excellent user experience – Make sure customers will want to use your products or services, and tell others how good they are. Collect user experience data from surveys and usability tests. Use data analytics to refine your new designs and upgrade existing offerings.

3.) Smart supplier management – Success with your business strategy will depend on the performance of your suppliers. Track delivery quality and timeliness with real-time data analytics and dashboards. See which suppliers are helping you achieve your business goals, and which should be replaced.

4.) Pricing optimization – You want your customers to be satisfied. You also want to maximize your profit. Predictive analytics show you how different pricing strategies can work out for you. They can integrate data from past sales records, market trends, seasonal variations. You can even factor in the buying patterns of individual accounts.

5.) Advertising effectiveness – Ever said, “I know half my advertising budget is wasted, but I don’t know which half”? Now, you do know, thanks to data analytics. You can go full-on with big data analytics to process click-by-click data about which customers responded in which ways to which advertising. Then you can select the right channel and the right message, market segment by market segment, for maximum effect and zero wastage.

6.) Wonderful website navigation – Business is increasingly done online. Your sales prospects will head for your website to find out about you, before you have even found out about them. Data analytics will help you tune your site. You can lower bounce rates, boost click-throughs and increase conversions, turning your business strategy into your sales success.

7.) Customer by customer personalization  Who says a business strategy has to be “one size fits all”? Use big data analytics to drive chatbots to interact at a personal level with customers as they come to your website. Build a recommendation engine that analyzes past transactions, current website navigation and choices made by purchasers with similar profiles to offer each online customer just what he or she is looking for.

8.) Forecasting accuracy – Use descriptive data analytics to slice and dice past sales data to detect patterns and drivers. Use this knowledge and predictive analytics to understand future demand. Use prescriptive data analytics to get precise recommendations on how much to make and how to organize your workforce. Data analytics can help you at each step.

9.) Inventory cost reduction – Holding too much inventory means extra cost. Holding too little can lose you sales and even customers. For retailers, things can get even more complicated. They must pick the right assortment of products for limited floor space. Guesswork could be disastrous. Data analytics can help you find the happy medium.

10.) Top notch order fulfillment and delivery – Your business strategy only works if your customers get what they want, when they want it. Data analytics on past delivery records, current traffic conditions and future demand let you make delivery promises that you can keep, and that keep your customers satisfied and loyal. How’s that for a great business strategy!

User-friendly and Powerful Data Analytics

The days of just using gut feelings for business strategy have gone. So too has the era of “Excel is all I need”. Now, business and its strategy are driven by data from many different sources. Fortunately, data analytics for insights and actions from that data can be made user-friendly for non-technical business users, while providing affordable power to tackle enterprise databases and big data. Now that you know 10 ways (at least) in which your business strategy can be revolutionized, your next step is clear – If you don’t have a data science division, invest in one. Businesses without a data division will fall behind. Start with a Chief Information Officer (CIO). CIOs can help you set up a data strategy that addresses your business needs. CIOs will have the industry knowledge needed to form a team of data scientists and analysts. Data is the future. If you don’t invest now, you will be left behind.

Bio: Ilan Hertz is head of lead generation at Sisense, the leader in simplifying business intelligence for complex data, offering a powerful business intelligence software. Ilan uses his domain expertise and data-driven methodologies to lead digital marketing efforts at Sisense.

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Comments

  1. ASK THE LAW says

    Without any strategy adopted a well flourished and well settle business is impossible. A good strategy leads to a successful business and increases profit ratio. Above strategies are very helpful. These are basic guidelines that everyone should be adopted in any business setup. Thank you for sharing this.