With so many people generating so much data every day, you’d be remiss if you didn’t attempt to monetize it. But at the same time, it’s easy to see why many companies, especially small ones, would be reluctant to implement business analytics tools. There’s an upfront cost for integrating data analytics into a company, and it may not always seem worth it.
But it is. Business analytics can save you money on almost everything you need to run a business. You can use it to cut the electric bill, reduce employee turnover, manage your equipment and fleets, and more. Let’s take a look at some of the ways that advanced business analytics can save your company money.
Minimize Turnover
How much is your company throwing away on employee turnover? Most companies pay about $15,000 per worker for voluntary turnover costs. The best way to reduce these costs is to keep more of your employees invested in the company and engaged with their work.
Business analytics can be a powerful tool for cost reduction when you use it to choose employees who will fit better with the company culture and mission, as well as to assess satisfaction among current employees. In the hiring process, you can use data analytics to identify those candidates who will be most likely to stay the longest. To keep them around, you can collect employee surveys and use data analysis to identify patterns in employee satisfaction or, as the case may be, dissatisfaction. Then you can make changes targeted at convincing employees to stick around.
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Manage Equipment and Fleets
Internet of Things (IoT) can allow you to collect valuable data on fleets, equipment, shipments, and more. Figure out where your drivers are taking your fleet cars, how hard they’re driving them, or how much fuel they’re using. Track shipments and monitor them for signs of shipping damage, then dig deeper into that data to determine where and how damage is occurring. This kind of data can help you save money by incentivizing safer driving, cutting fuel costs, improving logistics, managing maintenance, and maximizing your repair budget.
Cut Operating Costs
What’s your organization’s carbon footprint? Do you know how much energy you’re wasting? By collecting data on your electricity usage, you could pinpoint times of the day when lighting and other electric fixtures are in use but don’t need to be, such as at night when no one is in the office. You can do the same with water and other utilities, like heating and cooling. Are employees complaining about how hot or cold it is in the office? Put an end to those sweltering winter afternoons and frigid summer days and save some money on heating and cooling costs. Everyone will be more comfortable, and you’ll have more money for more important things.
Improve Productivity
Just implementing data analysis tools can increase productivity, because it gives your employees access to the information they need. There’s no more digging through filing cabinets or searching through digital file folders for information when modern data analysis software can easily compile it and reduce it to a digestible report formatted in eye-catching fonts and colors.
Digitizing reports also improves productivity, because it streamlines interdepartmental communications. This eliminates the time-consuming process of tracking down paper files and sending them back and forth from one department to the next. There are a number of great analytics tools that can help you further boost productivity.
You might be tempted to turn to time-tracking software to boost productivity, thinking that if employees are required to account for every minute, they’ll use more of those minutes wisely. But this strategy can often backfire, leaving employees feeling resentful of an employer who seems to breathe down their necks all day. Instead, take the opportunity to collect information about what parts of their jobs employees enjoy and feel engaged with, so you can create more opportunities for satisfaction and engagement at work. If you do use time-tracking software, use it to analyze patterns in your workforce productivity and engagement, rather than micromanaging individual employees.
If you’re looking for a tool that can help you cut costs in every area of your business, you need data analytics. But identifying and analyzing the patterns in your data, you can pinpoint the exact changes you need to make to cut costs, reduce turnover, boost productivity, and more.