Data Analysis for SMEs

All businesses face competition, and it can be fierce, especially in a fast-moving market. And with the explosion of online and social media channels, customer expectations are also increasing. They are comparing business to business, not only in terms of product or service but the total experience. The companies that are able to keep up with these demands and expectations stay afloat, while those who fall short are struggling to sustain themselves.

To satisfy your customer’s needs is to satisfy their total customer journey. And that journey includes a number of areas that will need your attention, from sales, production, operations, etc. It is very difficult to address all those areas at the same time, and that is where data analysis could be helpful. Data analysis helps organizations determine and rank the most impacting to the least significant factors. It helps businesses make strategic decisions, achieve major goals, and solve company problems using relevant data.

We asked our resource person on data analysis and digital transformation, Ms Herleen Mortera, to define which areas SMEs could expect more clarity with the aid of data analysis. Here are her thoughts:

First, data analysis is systematically investigating a set of data using illustrative, quality, and statistical techniques. How we extract insightful information from these sets of data using analytical tools is the key to producing timely solutions. Some of the areas where we could expect data to help us are:

1. Business Health

You would be able to see the overview of the business based on data.

Data analysis will show you your real business status. It could potentially give answers to factors which you are asking yourself if they are relevant or true or not. Sometimes we have a hunch what our problem might be, but data could show us definitively.

2. Significant Factors

We could target the area that needs to be focused on from high impact to less significant.

Out of all the possible factors, both internal and external, that you might face, you would be able to act on the most significant factors which greatly affect your organization first, by utilizing the right tools and techniques.

3. Relevant recommendations

After knowing your significant causes, you would be able to create relevant and targeted solutions. It is important to prioritize, to address immediate risks and to create a great impact on your organization given a short amount of time.

4. Sustainable solutions

While knowing the significant causes to create relevant solutions is important, we must not forget how to sustain these high-impacting solutions. Through proven analytical tools, you would be able to measure your improvement and monitor consistently the metrics of your organization.

Let’s take a coffee shop as an example, one that has been receiving different complaints about its products and services. One complaint was coffee acidity, another was staff not being friendly, among many others. Through data analysis tools, you would be able to know which customer complaints are highly impacting your ratings. Once you’ve known the top issues facing your business, you could then deep dive on the causes. If our data tells us that “friendliness” is the top issue, we would now assess different contributors such as hiring, training, management, etc through basic graphs and statistical tools. We would also have a targeted recommendation that would positively impact our customer satisfaction ratings.

Mortera will be sharing the most helpful go-to tools in data analysis used to identify the top issues of your business, and subsequently to adapt and to monitor your most impacting solutions – applicable to any business and organization. She will facilitate an eight-hour virtual workshop titled “Data Analysis Techniques: Better business decisions for optimum performance” on January 25, 27, and 28, 2022.

For more information, you may write to [email protected], or send an SMS to these numbers 0919.3428667 and 0998.9641731.

For your other online learning needs, Inquirer Academy could assist you in designing and facilitating a virtual workshop, a webinar, or a self-paced online course for your organization.

The author is the Executive Director of the Inquirer Academy.