Data Driven Decision Making | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 12
Data Driven Decision Making
Reports and analytics can help report the health of any business, though we all have different metrics. Data provide clues on where the friction points within the user experience are. When we base decisions on hard data instead of feelings we can create a resolution with confidence. Business analytics are important for making good decisions for a strong profitable business.
It isn’t profitable to run a business based on how everyone feels, business decisions should be made based on data because sometimes people feel great and business is doing horrible and other times businesses are doing great and people don’t feel good. How employees feel is important but isn’t what business decisions should be based on, employees’ feelings are helpful when making decisions regarding internal user experience or rating process.
What Data Should Be Collected?
Data collection shouldn’t turn into busywork. It should only be collected if it can be used to analyze the current, previous, and future state of the business.
A good way to decide what data needs to be collected is to think about the numerous data points that are collected throughout the system and all the points we could track, then decide what points from those are the most important to the business.
For example, in a sales-based business, some of the data points that are the most relevant to the business’s health would be the average sales, demos completed, demos scheduled, and overall office or team sales. All these data points are important and can be picked apart during a team meeting for instance. When there is data, questions can be asked then resolution and improvement can occur.
How To Collect This Data
Every department has an individual set of KPRs that need to be tracked. After deciding what data should be tracked for each department a report needs to be created to collect that data in a way that is both easy for the department to report and also easily received.
We want these updates to be per department, consistent, and painless. These updates should just show up in our inbox ready to be analyzed and discussed and this is why automation of data and self-reported data collection is so important. This way we stay updated in real-time on what is happening within the business instead of being forced to wait for updates till department meetings.
Self-reporting data is a fantastic starting point but it can have a few traps which are mainly human error.
Not doing it
Lying about their data
Typos
How To Avoid Human Error
If you haven’t been to business school and you haven’t gotten comfortable with excel or google sheets these are two topics you should educate yourself on. Excel and google sheets can be intimidating at first but once learned it is quite easy. Like riding a bike. Several youtube tutorials can help with the creation of reports and analytics and the use of these technologies. Conditional formatting is a great tool accessible using these technologies, this tool is helpful to highlight specific data within a pool to see who is doing well and who needs help.
There are also reporting experts who will set up an automated report program with you. You can hire out for this process.
Another problem that often occurs is the disruption of communication from one program to another. There are software aggregators that can connect to the two software systems to pull data in real-time to help them communicate with each other. Depending on budget, how much a report and analytics program is worth to a business, and the business size decides what type of automation is needed.
Raw data collection can be expensive but it’s extremely important. This is where we can find the changes that need to be discussed or changed ASAP. If we don’t see what the problem is, we won’t be able to solve anything.
If we want to advance our business we have to begin thinking differently. How can we free up our time from collecting reports by creating automated reports that are helpful to the business? We want to be sure to collect meaningful and useful data that will shine a light on points for progress.
