How to Use Data to Improve
Your Business Practices
As revealed in some eye-opening statistics shared by St. Bonaventure University, the entire digital universe had generated 44 zettabytes of data by 2020 — and it has been estimated that, by 2025, 463 exabytes of data will be produced on a daily basis.
The prospect of using large amounts of data to inform your corporate strategy might therefore seem daunting — but, in research mentioned on the Entrepreneur website, 91% of firms classed data-driven decision-making as crucial to their business. How can yours beneficially use data?
Foster Stronger Employee Engagement and Retention
Research has found that, when enterprise data is integrated with a Human Resource Management System (HRMS), employees can consequently perform better and be more engaged.
This way of using a HRMS can also assist business owners in recruiting, training, and organizing staff in the first place. All in all, if you are eager to both keep and attract top talent for your company, using data strategically can help you in all of this to a surprisingly high extent.
Strengthen Cybersecurity
You also might not have realized how significantly data analytics can contribute to efforts of identifying, mitigating, monitoring, and reporting cybersecurity risks.
It is possible for data scientists to build analytical models capable of detecting potential risks and assessing their impact.
These models can therefore be particularly useful to you if, say, you run a large company that accesses both internal and third-party data. Remember that, if you fail to prevent data of your customers from leaking, lasting damage can be inflicted to your brand’s reputation.
Learn Where Your Operations Can Be Streamlined
Many of your organization’s existing processes could be somewhat inefficient — especially if you have only recently opened your business or certain departments of it. However, data analytics can help you to weed out such ‘teething issues’.
With the right data at close hand, you can assess existing workflows, analyze their outcomes, and — when and where you deem this necessary — automate new workflows. Data can also indicate which processes of your companies are draining its budget or arduous to use.
Track Customer Behavior
Many companies can now access not only internal data on customers’ interactions and transactions but also third-party data revealing customers’ attitudes and preferences.
Good sources of this third-party data include social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Incidentally, you would be able to speedily peruse all three of those sites through using the Pulsar social listening tool — and the findings can influence your corporate tactics.
Monitor Market Trends
One particular merit of social listening is that it can enable you to accurately ascertain how your target customers’ needs and preferences are changing, if indeed they are.
As a result, you could potentially identify demand for a specific product or service that does not yet exist — or at least not in ways that members of your target audience primarily need or want. Your company could subsequently be the one that first brings this sought-after product or service to market and reaps financial rewards of doing so.
