By: Gloria Martinez of WomenLed.org
Owning your own business requires a lot of hard work. In fact, research shows that the owners of small businesses work significantly more hours per week than those with standard 40-hour-per-week employment arrangements. Fortunately, there are strategies to help you work more efficiently. For example, data analytics is the process of interpreting data for the purpose of making informed decisions. Here, Jeremy Empie Web Design presents five ways that data analytics can help your business.
1. Finances
Maintaining adequate cash flow and good financial standing is key to a successful business but is difficult for many entrepreneurs. Fortunately, predictive budgeting can help you with this. This type of data analytics uses artificial intelligence to analyze historical financial data and make predictions. Combined with human knowledge and intuition, this is a very valuable resource that can help your business prosper.
Even business owners who do not wish to purchase the software used in predictive budgeting can still use data analytics when making a more traditional financial projection. Instead of AI analyzing the data and making predictions, the business owner examines past records and gauges current market trends to predict income and expenses.
2. Inventory
Performing inventory analytics involves tracking the products that you sell, starting from the raw materials out of which the product is made. By monitoring the trends of every component, you can determine if you need to replace one material with another to adjust for supply chain issues, if you need to order more or less of a product to match customer demand and how much to keep in stock to prevent spoilage.
3. Marketing
For many businesses, marketing analytics are a particularly helpful tool, explains MarTech. This information can help you devise an effective marketing plan that addresses sales techniques, goals, success metrics, budget concerns and marketing strategies. Analyzing the success of past marketing efforts or information gathered from market research allows you to tailor your marketing to specific audiences using the most effective methods.
Marketing analytics are also useful in designing a web page. The information gleaned from analyzing web site traffic data allows you to tweak your site as needed. A web designer, like Jeremy Empie Web Design, can help with this process, but it is important to streamline communication for the best results. Communication may be disrupted by clunky image-sharing techniques. Fortunately, using a PDF to JPG converter can help you share images efficiently.
4. Customer Service
According to Fit Small Business, data analytics for customer service help improve interactions with customers in a variety of ways. A good data set will allow you to see the most and least effective aspects of your customer care process and adjust accordingly. You can also identify common customer concerns as they arise and take proactive steps, such as sending out an email to all customers addressing the issue, allowing you to save customers and employees time.
5. Product Development
Using data analytics for product development can be quite useful. For example, you can learn what customers want in a new item and what materials or design elements are best suited for it. In addition to helping product developers, information gleaned from product development data analytics can help marketers craft better advertisements and help product managers better oversee the entire development process.
Increasing Your Technical Knowledge
Understanding how data analytics can be used to help your business is one thing. It’s entirely different to be the person who sees patterns in that data and can make changes accordingly. While you can certainly outsource that more complicated role to a freelancer or hire someone to your team, you can also learn it yourself.
In order to use an IT bachelor’s degree online effectively, choose a specialization that will fill in knowledge gaps and benefit your business. For example, you can choose an IT degree in data management or data analytics. And taking classes online will give you the flexibility you need to continue running your business while increasing your knowledge.
Let Your Data Work for You
Extrapolating valuable information from high quality data helps you make the best choices for your business in a variety of areas. Understanding where data can be gathered and applied is the first step. But if you really want to harness the power of data, then consider going back to school for an IT degree in data analytics. By harnessing the power of data analytics, you optimize your work life and maximize your business’s chances of success.