Data permeates the modern business landscape. You get it from all kinds of places, including face-to-face interactions, orders, website visitors, and social media. The sad truth is that most businesses end up drowning in data. Yet, you can’t afford to ignore all of that data that streams into your hands daily. That data provides you with a very clear picture of your business’ overall health. So, let’s dive in and take a look at the importance of data.
Cash flow is so fundamentally important to a business that treating it as anything short of your number one priority is tantamount to business suicide. Even a short-term cash crunch can derail everything from buying new materials or inventory to paying your staff. More importantly, this is one area where you have near omnipotence courtesy of in-house data.
You can track where every penny comes from, when it’s due to arrive, and where it goes. All of this data should be digitized for easy access. Once you digitize it, you can run daily, weekly, and monthly projections to evaluate your business’ financial health.
Every business has key performance indicators that can tell you whether your business is hitting its essential benchmarks. Are deliveries going out and arriving on time? Are projects being completed and delivered on time? Are you bringing in new customers at an acceptable rate?
You can and should track all of this information. You should also review it regularly. This review will expose weaknesses in your performance. Knowing where those weaknesses arms you to address the problems and formulate solutions.
Possibly the most significant benefit of all this data in your hands is the marketing potential. You can analyze that data to find out where your new customers come from. That lets you focus marketing dollars on the appropriate channels and regions. You can also use that data to create extensive and accurate demographic, psychographic, and geographic customer profiles.
It’s also entirely possible to use all of your own data and publicly available data to measure things like market penetration and identify underserved markets. You may even discover unintended but profitable uses for your existing products that you can rebrand for new marketing efforts.
All of that data can feel like an unwanted burden when you don’t have a clear plan for how to use it. Yet, that data can keep you clear on your financial health. It gives you a picture of your company’s overall performance and the performance of departments or business units. It can even improve or jumpstart your marketing efforts. Data is your friend if you use it correctly.
Not sure what to do with all of that data? Let Timpl connect you with a data science professional.