How To Make Business Data Work For You In 2023

Meeting 2023’s Challenges With Business Data

As we rang in the new year, businesses were faced with some tough challenges. Inflation and recession created the need for more cost savings, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. But it was now also critical to retain existing customers while still optimizing company growth. But how?

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Your business data: an asset hiding in plain sight

Your business can turn to its own data to meet 2023’s challenges and stay competitive. 

More than 60% of organizations are planning to increase data-related spending relative to 2021 levels in 2022 and beyond. And at the close of 2022,  it was already predicted that 50% of businesses would incorporate what is known as “continuous intelligence.” 

Continuous intelligence is a data-driven approach that uses real-time analytics and machine learning algorithms to analyze and interpret data as it's generated, allowing businesses to make more informed decisions and act quickly to changing market conditions. 

This is especially important for small and medium-sized businesses that may have limited resources to collect and analyze data. By using this approach, these businesses can make data-driven decisions in real-time, allowing them to better understand and anticipate customer needs, scan consumer trends in social media, and analyze both external and internal threats.

This can provide you with a competitive edge and enables your business to make informed decisions based on real-time data, optimize operations, and improve customer satisfaction.

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What specific challenges can business data help with?

There are a number of ways you can leverage your data and continuous intelligence to solve your business challenges. Here are just a few:

Inflation and recession 

You can use your business data to monitor market prices, identify cost-saving opportunities, and adjust pricing strategies to remain competitive without sacrificing profitability. This is especially important during a recession where consumers are more price-sensitive and have less disposable income to spend.

By analyzing customer interactions and behavior, you can also identify areas where you can improve customer experience, by perhaps offering personalized promotions or improving their online shopping experience.

Innovation

Innovation is essential to remaining competitive in today’s marketplace. By analyzing market trends and customer preferences, you can identify new product and service opportunities that will appeal to your target audience. You can also use data to track the performance of new products and services, allowing them to refine and optimize their offerings over time.

Reduce customer churn 

By analyzing customer behavior, your business can identify early warning signs of customer churn and take proactive steps to retain customers. This can include offering loyalty rewards or personalized promotions, improving customer service, or addressing specific pain points that may be causing customers to leave.

Provide supply chain security

You can use data to show you where to restructure your needs to prevent future shortfalls, or over-ordering to fill backlogs, (which could worsen the situation). It can also help optimize your inventory and supply chain management, ensuring you have the right products at the right time to meet customer demand. 

This can prevent inventory shortages that could disappoint customers and push them towards the competition.

Streamline your business processes

Having a single, strategic overview of your business is critical for making data-driven decisions. By seamlessly integrating your data from various departments and sources, you can create a holistic view of your operations and identify the exact areas to optimize processes, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

For example, Skylytics has helped businesses align disjointed data across various departments to improve the speed and accuracy of decision-making and reduce operational costs.

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Avoiding business data errors and pitfalls

Data can only help your business if it is of good quality and is applied properly. Here are some problems that we often see with business data, and how to avoid them:

Lack of standards

Data can be collected from various sources.  Without standardization, it can be challenging to analyze and interpret this data. You can avoid this by creating a data governance framework that defines standards for data collection, storage, and analysis.

Poor data quality

Poor data quality can lead to inaccurate insights and flawed decision-making. Make sure to implement data quality controls, such as data validation and cleaning, to ensure that the data is accurate and reliable.

A lack of leadership buy-in or participation

Using data and implementing continuous intelligence requires collaboration between different departments, including IT and business teams. Without the advocacy and participation of the leaders of the business,  it can be challenging to get the necessary resources and support. 

Avoid this by involving your business’s leaders in the planning and implementation of data and continuous intelligence initiatives. Communicate the value of data-driven decision-making and demonstrate ROI whenever possible.

Insufficient data storage and processing capabilities

Continuous intelligence requires large amounts of data to be stored and processed in real-time. Ensure that you are investing in scalable, robust data storage and processing infrastructure.

A lack of skilled data analysts

In order to  analyze and interpret data properly for your business’s use cases, you’ll need skilled data analysts. Make sure you are investing in training and development programs needed to upskill your existing employees. If needed, hire new talent with the necessary skills and expertise you need.

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Uncover the power of your own data 

If you’re looking for a way to stay competitive in tough times with a data-related solution, Skylytics can help. Our team’s Data Discovery process identifies key data processes and pipelines, evaluates data quality, can set up real-time data processes, and shows you how to leverage its strategic value to grow your business.  

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Schedule a call with us to discuss your needs.

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