After experiencing a slow sales month or watching a poor-performing marketing campaign, how do you pinpoint what went wrong? Tracking and reviewing data from business processes helps you uncover performance breakdowns so you can better understand each part of the process and know which steps need to be fixed and which are performing well.

“The best-run companies are data-driven, and this skill sets businesses apart from their competition.” – Tomasz Tunguz

Simply put, data helps you see performance. Sports teams are a great example of businesses that collect performance data to make their teams better. There isn’t a professional team, today, that does not employ a team of data collectors and analysts to help support and improve play on the field. They are always updating data about who’s doing what well and how that can help the team excel.

Have you ever wondered how your team, department, company, marketing efforts, customer service, shipping, or other parts of your company are doing? Collecting and reviewing data can show you how all of this is performing, and more.

If you’re not sure about the performance of employees or your marketing, how will you know if your money is being put to good use? Or if it’s bringing in more money than you spend?

One example: Say you have a top-performing sales rep to whom you send the most leads. However, when you delve into the data it shows that she closes deals at a lower rate than one of your other sales reps who receives fewer leads but closes deals at a higher percentage. (In fact, here’s how you can easily track sales rep performance.) Certainly, some performance data can affect how you portion out leads–which can lead to revenue increase. Performance data provides the clarity needed for better results.

Data helps you understand and improve business processes so you can reduce wasted money and time. Every company feels the effects of waste. It depletes resources, squanders time, and ultimately impacts the bottom line.

For example, bad advertising decisions can be one of the greatest wastes of resources in a company. With data showing how different marketing channels are performing, however, you can see which ones offer the greatest ROI and focus on those. Or you could dig into why other channels are not performing as well and work to improve their performance. This would allow your budget to generate more leads without having to increase the advertising spend.

Without data, how do you know who your customers are? Without data, how do you know if consumers like your products or if your marketing efforts are effective? Without data, how do you know how much money you are making or spending? Data is key to understanding your customers and market.
However, it can be easy to get lost in all the data you have if you don’t have the right tools to help you understand it. Especially for SMBs, a BI solution designed for them is the best way to access and interpret consumer data so you can leverage it for higher sales.

Today, running your business with the help of data is table stakes. If you’re not using data to uncover insights that will guide your business into the future, you will become a business of the past. Fortunately, the advances in data processing and visualization make growing your business with data easier than ever. And there are tools available to do it.

Interrogate data to help understand the customer base, segmentation – targeted communications.