With the amount of technology that people use every day, it is not surprising that more and more data is produced every day. The same is true in the business world; as information and communication technologies become more and more critical to the operation of businesses, more and more data will be produced within organizations. Many business leaders and tech experts consider data to be one of the most important resources for companies to harvest and use – it has huge potential for generating insights, and helping companies make accurate predictions for the future, and that is just the start of how it can be of use.
TechQuarters is an IT support company that has plenty of experience utilizing data to grow their business and steer it in the right direction. They told us what they think are the main values of data for businesses.
Big Data
You may have heard of the term ‘big data’ – this is the term used for vast, dense, and diverse data sets; they contain so much information, that traditional data processing software is unable to manage them. IT support leaders in business have seen lots of growth in the demand for machine learning and business intelligence. Both fields are concerned with the processing and analysis of big data, and businesses that can do this will be able to address all kinds of problems that they wouldn’t be able to without the insights gained from it.
Business Decision Making
Every single business generates data internally – whether they are a massive multi-national corporation, or a tiny startup. These days most businesses have their own website, a social media presence, and use e-commerce to make and receive electronic payments and transactions; some businesses – especially those that use managed IT support services – will have even more digital tools they use that are creating data. Just these few basic digital tools generate data on customer trends, user habits, web traffic, demographics, and plenty more. Lots of potential to learn about your business, who engages with it, and how.
Its important when making decisions for a business, that one has influences that they trust. While everything from the world news, to your own instincts can influence a decision, hard data is difficult to argue with.
Performance Review
As mentioned above, a business generates data with every digital tool they use, especially tools like productivity apps, ERP and CRM software, etc. This data can help you accurately review the performance of your organization, and even individual users. Performance data is an incredibly valuable resource these days – you will find that every professional sports team utilizes performance data to steer their training in the right directions (and even individuals can do this with wearable tech and fitness apps).
For example, you might be wondering how the marketing team in your business is performing; this is easy to measure, as plenty of data is generated around user engagement, leads, search engine ranks, and more.
Understanding Customers
Perhaps the most valuable type of data is the kind that tells you who your customers are, what they think of your product, what regions are they concentrated in, and what digital channels they use the most. These are all incredibly important questions to know the answer to. A lot of this type of data is readily available online, thanks to social media channels and search engines. Accessing this data means businesses know where to post their ads, what keywords they should be focusing on for search engine optimization, and what demographics they should be tailoring their content to.
Also Read: How to Build a Career in Data Science?