Data is meaningless if not used properly
Data has the potential to improve a company’s profitability. But simply having data on hand isn’t enough. Whether or not your company harnesses it to improve its bottom line depends on a number of factors: your organization’s cultural attitude toward data, the business intelligence (BI) tools you deploy, and how you integrate data insights with your performance goals.
In other words, data isn’t going to turn itself into measurable new revenue. It’s your organization’s job to convert rows upon rows of structured data into something your business can actually use — positive headway you can reasonably quantify for stakeholders.
Here are four data tips to keep in mind as you work toward tapping new revenue streams.
Improve Your Product or Service Offerings
Every organization can improve the products or services it offers. This is true for: hospitals and retailers; manufacturers and cell phone carriers; and banks and services companies. The ethos here is that doing whatever you do better will help you attract new customers and retain existing ones. The result? Your brand will experience a boost in reputation, ultimately helping increase revenue flow when you’re able to capture more of your desired customer segment.
Improving your existing product or service could mean taking what you already offer and making it better. Or, it could mean expanding upon your current offerings. As Harvard Business Review advises, data can help you do both: “Use data to uncover hidden insights, and use those insights to create or improve products, services, and processes.”
Your company’s ability to unearth useful insights lurking within company data will depend on its analytics platform. Search-driven data analytics tools are a modern alternative to traditional BI reporting, allowing users to ask ad hoc questions and get answers immediately. Artificial intelligence-driven analytics tools dive into data using algorithms capable of pulling insights that may be interesting to teams.
It’s worthwhile to consider both approaches to data analytics as you work toward turning insights into tangible improvements.
Embed Analytics into Workflows
Having the tools to pull data insights is a start. But tapping new revenue streams depends on people within your organization actually making use of them and sharing their findings. Platforms like ThoughtSpot offer embedded analytics, meaning users can access data analytics, charts and dashboards within the applications they already use for work.
Making analytics tools accessible raises adoption rates. Remove hurdles standing between employees and taking advantage of data. Only then will people extract the most value from data and incorporate their findings into everyday decision-making.
Use Data to Reduce Customer Churn
Customer churn rate measures how many customers have stopped doing business with you. This metric has an inverse relationship with revenue — so lowering churn tends to lift revenue.
Data can help companies of all kinds “become absolutely customer focused” to “understand customer pain points and design [their] solutions around them,” according to Forbes.
Use data to figure out where customers are leaving your funnel. What difficulties are they encountering on their journeys? In which areas are your company falling short? Turn toward data insights to identify sites of improvement for your company.
A hospital might dig deeper to figure out why readmission rates are high. A telecoms company could look at network downtime and customer complaints by location to see where their service is spottiest. A retailer could parse returns data to figure out which products are causing problems. The list goes on.
Make Data Part of Company Culture
Your analytics platform may enable employees to access data, but your company culture influences whether they will or not. Consider how your company culture encourages or discourages people incorporating data into decision-making.
These data tips will help your company do its utmost to tap into new revenue sources.
