How to use analytics and data to grow your business

By Sophia Belarmino

Why are trillion dollar companies investing in data analytics? Data analytics allows firms to understand possible outcomes by data collected. Data analysts collect data then make an educated guess on how to solve the problem. There are 2 important steps to data analysis; first you need to harness the data and secondly you need to create an outlook.

Effectively harnessing data can create more opportunities for your brand. To successfully analyze the data you may need to hire employees. Before looking for data you want to create specific goals. Your specific goals may vary depending on your industry. Goals you could think about are:

• Improving service
• Creating a higher customer satisfaction
• Bringing down cost
• Creating better advertising
• Having better product management

​Data can be directly pulled from your firm's website.An example for this is sourcing data from google analytics, though you can source data, it is prevalent to have a professional who is equipt to analyze the raw data. Some basic things when analyzing your website are traffic, bounce rate, and average session duration. Understanding data literacy is key to turning the data into opportunities. Data can help executives understand which segments and products create the most revenue. It overall helps execs make decisions. Data can also help you understand your target markets and how to harness more of the market segment

Using business analytics is directly linked to business growth. You can hire a business analyst specialist to help you. But what are analytics? Analytics are a computational analysis of statistics and/or data. Hiring a skilled analytics team can take your business to the next level. Analysts take raw data and convert it to an analysis. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple have been doing this for years, data analytics even used in politics. Analytics helps us solve problems in our everyday world, so why not  use it for your business?

How can data analytics can be used to create change:

• Higher customer satisfaction
• Retention rate
• Higher revenue
• Better advertising

There is a vast range of benefits to using data analytics. Some of those include forming thoughtful analysis. You may use your data to analyze customers, suppliers, cost, and advertising. Analytics can be used for just about everything. Analytics allows us to make data-backed changes that encourage growth. It is important that you set your team up for success by giving them the informational tools they need to be successful, or hiring a qualified person for the job. Your team can then create visualizations from the data to explain their findings. Visualizations are powerful in understanding the data. We also want to make sure we're using our data analytics with ethics. It is highly recommended that you are transparent with the data being collected. Providing full transparency can drive loyalty and create new business.

​So should you use data analytics?
Analytics plays an important role in making decisions that will drive growth. Data analysts are able to make predictions off of data that has been collected and analyzed. Data can consist of qualitative and quantitative information. If you are looking to expand or increase sales it is important to use data analytics. More and more companies are using business analytics to provide insights on operations, management and more. If the trillion dollar companies are using these tools then why shouldn’t you? You can find an analytics team to help you get started. Do your research and start small. You can't be successful if you don't try.