How data science can improve your business
According to this Forbes article data fuels digital transformation in an organisation. Here are five reasons why.
The right data is crucial for making well-informed decisions. But it’s not always easy to find or interpret.
Organisations today are overwhelmed with data; from mailing lists to website analytics – and more. So how do you sort the useful from the useless data?
Easy – you hire a professional whose sole job is to gather and analyse data. It’s such a growing industry today that more and more people are researching how to become a data analyst.
To understand exactly why, here are five ways that data science can improve your business.
1) Data improves decision-making and testing
Entrepreneur believes that big data fuels business growth through improved decision-making, by giving you access to crucial information and insights.
And it makes sense. With the right data to hand, you can make better informed decisions and reduce the need for risky guesswork. You can also use data to test a number of options, rather than needing to put all your business eggs in one basket.
2) Data identifies opportunities
For any business to be successful and profitable, you need to be able to identify and tap new opportunities. And this is where data science comes into its own.
Data can help you to question current systems, and look for new opportunities to exploit. Using data you can come up with inventive, new solutions to old problems.
To give you an example of ways that data can identify opportunities for your business, one data expert told how she was able to show a veterinary group that their customer base was skewed towards dog owners.
This meant that there was a big, untapped opportunity in cat owners – enabling the group to focus future marketing campaigns on reaching cat lovers.
3) Data improves communication
Data can also enable you to improve the way you communicate to your target audience by giving you valuable insights into your customers problems and needs.
You can also segment your audience into smaller groups using data, and send them much more highly targeted communications that will result in increased loyalty and sales.
So, for example, the veterinary group above could segment their customer list by animal types, and send out communications to owners based on the type of pet they owned, and even pet gender.
And if they wanted to increase business from one segment of their customer base, for example cat owners, they could email an offer specifically to them.
4) Data encourages agility
Data science is also a key factor in helping organisations remain agile. With the right data to hand, managers can make quicker, more informed decisions, and then use data to track the results of those decisions.
If an outcome isn’t what they’d hoped for, they can then reassess the data to choose another option. This enables clever companies to out manoeuvre other organisations and remain competitive.
5) Data enhances competitiveness
In fact, all these points add up to one key advantage: a company that uses data cleverly is more competitive.
They make quicker, better-informed decisions. They can spot new opportunities (and identify areas of their business that aren’t working.) They know their audience and can target communications and campaigns at segmented groups.
And they can be more agile, enabling them to out-strategies their competitors.
So, how can you use data science to improve your business?
Photo by Franki Chamaki
