Dealing With Your Business Facts And Figures: What You Need To Know

When it comes to looking into your business’s facts and figures, you are going to need to make sure that you are accurate and using them to your very best advantage. You might suspect how valuable this data can be, but you might not yet realize how much easier it is to run your business with facts, figures, data, and information on your side. In case you were still undecided, here are some of the reasons why keeping track of data is so important, and how you can begin to use them to your advantage.

What is the importance of keeping track of your business facts and figures?

As a business owner, you should make it your priority to know the power of your business’s stats and how it affects every aspect of your business. It is something that is taken very seriously indeed and should be the focus of every new move that you make.

In short, you should be referencing up-to-date data, as well as historical data and future predictions with every meeting you hold, no matter how little or large the decision is. Here is why it is so important to keep track of your business’s facts and figures. 

#1 It improves team management

Knowing accurately what is happening within your business can help you improve team management. Whether you have adopted a hybrid working pattern or are back to purely being based in the office, there are many different things that you are going to need to pick up on. These can be things such as the shortcomings of your staff and where you need to focus your training, who you need to promote, and who you could move to be in the best role to suit their skills within the business.

This might sound very basic, but it is a great starting point and it will improve staff knowledge and therefore boost team management, not only for you but for any managers you happen to have as well. 

#2 It helps with making your projects a success

Knowing the trends within your business will help with project and product success. Whether you see trends within your business that you can exploit, or you see areas that seem to be slowing down, you can act on this data to make sure that you are making the best decisions that you can about your business and how it operates.

This can mean looking into the prime time for product launches, what kinds of products work best and what has gone wrong in the past to mean that a product or project has failed. 

#3 It can also help communicate with customers more effectively

Knowing what works and what doesn’t makes it easier to communicate with your clients. Whether this is from data that you have collected from surveys, or simply how much of your clientele respond to your promotional emails by clicking on links or buying something.

In fact, your email list can tell you a lot about your business. Not only will it tell you how well your marketing is working, and if it is actually reaching your clients, but it will also help make you more aware of the different methods that you need to reach different types of customers through your various marketing campaigns. 

How can you manage and collect your business’s data and information?

There is a multitude of ways that you can collect your business’s data and information; however, some ways are much easier than others. Some require certain skills to be able to interpret that data (such as a degree or years of experience in data analytics) and others are just software tools that can help out your managers and employees prove points in meetings and come up with strategic ways of marketing.

If you didn’t realize it already, these are all things that are vitally important to businesses, so that your team can work to the best of their ability and so that you know what they are doing is based on good data and is more likely to work. For that reason there are some things that you might invest in, to help you with data collection:

#1 BI (Business Intelligence)

Business Intelligence is a great way to build up statistics for your business. It can help you to see future trends within your business and it can also help you to make accurate predictions about what is happening on a more international scale.

This can help you organize finances and help your business both on the inside and on the outside. Naturally, you might find that there are a huge number of additional skills needed to use this software effectively, so if you have the money to spend on training or have someone already with the skills that they need to be able to use this software you probably should use it to your advantage.

#2 Use your data from social media

Using social media can be tough, especially for your employees. They need to see what strategies will and won’t work, and if they are going to try something a bit more ambitious they are going to need data and statistics to be able to support their idea and does not risk alienating customers.

This means that you should be investing in resources like Sproutsocial’s social media reporting service to put the data into easy-to-read graphs and graphics to help them make the best decisions about where they can most effectively use your resources and your budget. 

#3 Don’t forget customer surveys

Using customer surveys can help you get directly into your customer’s head. It can help you make the best use of your customer service resources and can help you pinpoint what you need to work on as a team and as individuals.

This can prove vital when it comes to achieving a better than satisfactory level within your business and it will help you get the most out of every customer interaction, creating both extra revenue and building a long-term relationship. You can do these by email as discussed earlier, via chatbot on your website, or even just on the checkout page if your business’s website has one.