As businesses continue to innovate and explore more line of business applications that can help them speed up production and boost efficiency, we’re swimming in data. Dashboards and graphics give us more insight into our business and productivity than ever before. From sales to customer service, we know exactly where we stand with a quick glance. But how valuable is this data if we never take time to apply it to improve our business and truly optimizing revenue? Data without application isn’t going to help us very much in the long term. Here are just a few ways that you can go beyond the dashboard to use big data to optimize your business revenue:
- Collect the data
Whether you’re creating quotes, working jobs or interacting with your customers, you generate some sort of data in your business application. But understanding the numbers behind this data is critical. First things first, compile the data that your business application is delivering to you. What sort of data is available to you? This is going to depend on your business application. If you’re unfamiliar with how to extrapolate the data you need, contact your technology professional or the developer behind your application. They will be able to help you collect the data that you’re looking for depending on the process or goal that you have. - Analyze the data
What are your goals inside your organization? Do you want to improve efficiency? Increase your profits? Increase sales? Once you have the data, you need to delve deep into it to determine where you’re losing margin or where things can be changed. Going into this with one idea in mind is great, but you may find after careful analysis that the optimization can occur in an entirely different area of your business. The data will speak volumes, so keep an open mind as you pour it over. - Use the data
Once you’ve taken some time to analyze the data, you’re going to spot some trends and opportunities. This is the most important aspect of optimizing your revenue with data. Once a trend presents itself, or once you start to better understand where the productivity, efficiency or delivery gaps exist – you can improve. For example, our Service Team regularly pulls analytics on customer satisfaction surveys, ticket response times and resolution times. Based on those results we can determine if our process is failing, if an employee needs more training or if there is a tool that can help us better deliver.
Every little application that we use in business is storing tons of data. From call times to production timelines and ordering processes – it’s all there. Rather than just staring at a pretty dashboard, take a moment to identify where the gaps are and exactly how your business can change for the better. If you take nothing else from this article – let it be action. You can’t expect anything to change or improve unless you’ve given it the opportunity to do so.
