How to make more money for your business using data

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The fundamental reason businesses use reporting, business intelligence, and data analytics is to make more money. The Data Knowledge Club commits to ensuring our readers and customers understand how to use data to improve business performance. You can think of this post as our ultimate guide to using data to help your business.

How can businesses use data to make more money

Here is a list of some things a business can do to generate more revenue:

• attracting more customers
• retaining existing customers
• optimising a product’s selling price
• creating a better experience for your customers

Business can also make more money by:

• Saving on costs
• Identifying inefficiencies

All the above have one thing in common; they make more money for the business by generating more revenue or reducing costs. These are by no means an exhaustive list of what steps a business can take. They are certainly worth considering. They also share another thing in common. You can achieve each one by utilising the data you have in your business.

What about non profits

If you’re from a non-profit or government agency, you must ensure your customers get the best possible service. In addition, you’ll need to reduce costs and wastage as much as possible. You’ll need to ensure you have enough operating cash to meet your operating costs and grow the business. So everything here also applies to you.

How can you use data to make more money

The articles here [Our upcoming series] will take you through different scenarios businesses face where data analysis can help. The focus is on how to increase your revenue using data or how to reduce your costs. We will give several detailed scenarios with examples that will help you understand. After reading these you will be able to recognise when to apply these strategies in your business. The first area that we focus on is how to increase your revenue using data.

How to increase your revenue using data

Here are some of the scenarios that we cover

• Understanding how Sales are trending
• Determining exactly who your customers are
• Interpreting your customers better
• Tracking the impact of business changes
• Identifying products that make you the most money

Additional things you need to consider

As a business professional looking to get much more out of your data, there are a few key things you’ll need to consider. These are important and yet may not be your responsibility within the organisation, but knowing how they contribute to the overall success of data is essential.

• Ensure you have Data Quality standards and processes in place
• Nominated individuals who have responsibility for data [ Data Ownership]
• How data within the business is kept safe [Data Security]

Distractions to avoid

More often than not it can be too easy to get distracted and waste the opportunity data can bring to an organisation. We have all heard stories of other companies that undertook great data initiatives that yielded very little.

• Focusing on the latest data trend or the shiny new AI product
• Waiting for perfect data

These are all just distractions if these don’t contribute to the overall bottom line.

Conclusion

You’ve seen that there are several ways how to make more money for your business using data. We have only scratched the surface, and as you become more familiar with the analysis techniques covered, you will be able to spot more specific to your business.