Sourcing Data In Your Business For Effective Decision Making

Most start-up entrepreneurs rely on data in order to establish whether a certain product will have market when they start producing it. When creating a business plan a lot of data is collected. Sadly for most, this all ends here. No more data is collected when the business starts.
Data today has become the key to every company’s competitive advantage. A company that collects better data, applies analytics and deals accordingly is more profitable that the other that doesn’t.

"Did you know: By 2030, businesses using data will see $430 billion in productivity benefits over competitors who are not using data."

Data should continuously be collected by every business no matter the size. Data can be collected internally through the following ways:

Sales
Sales data can be collected through establishing a sales database where information is recorded each time a sale is made. This can then be used to establish customer details and other insights. it can also be used to establish your performance over a period. Or used to run analysis like analyzing sales by distribution channel (where a major performing channel will be given more attention to increase profitability), geographic area, sales person, etc.

Finance
Finance data can be collected to establish budgets or to check whether the business has enough funds to run smoothly. It can also be used for comparison of budgeted funds against actual amounts used.

Marketing
Marketing data can be collected through a market survey, website, etc. This data can then be used to implement batter marketing strategies that benefit the business.

Human resources;
Collecting human resource data can be important for your business to establish how much money you are spending on employees. Payments should always reflect performance.

The above measures are internal data sources that every business must utilize to obtain data. Businesses can furthermore collecting data through the following ways;

Web scraping;
Data can be collected online from websites through a web scraping solution. Read more about web/data scraping here.

Online surveys;
Running a survey is another effective way of obtaining general data. A survey can be used to understand demographics, tastes and preferences, etc. it can help you understand your customers better.

Focus groups;
A group of individuals are usually put in a single room with a moderator who then discuss about a company’s product/service. This could be a new app where a group of users usually way in their opinion. A lot of care has to be taken when collecting these individuals so that they are a representative sample.

Conclusion
A common misconception by small business people is that they don’t need data for decision making. Small business managers always think they have the necessary knowledge about every corner of their business. Whatever your business size, data can be leveraged for your business effectively.

The above article is written by Arthur Kakande. Any criticisms, complements or comments are highly appreciated and can be forward directly to us through service4businessweknow@gmail.com with the post title as the subject of the email.