If you’re running a business and looking at what others in your industry, including your competitors, then you’re likely to notice that everyone is collecting, and using, a lot more data.

We’ve always relied on data, since the days of first taking surveys (very much a valid data collection method still), but with the right of digital technology, data has become a whole economy in and of itself. Still, what good can it really do your business? Let’s look at a few of the potential benefits.

Increasing your market

One of the clearest uses of data being utilized by businesses of all industries is the ability to use website analytics and opt-in forms to better learn who their actual customers are.

It’s not as uncommon as you might think that a business’s understanding of their market and what kind of people are actually in their market is different.

As such, once you have the data to help you better understand the demographics that your customers fall under, you can realign you marketing to reach those who are genuinely interested in your products and services, potentially increasing your market share. As such, data can help you stay competitive and find new avenues for growth.

Improving customer service

Another age old concern of business being met by data. The customer satisfaction survey is still as useful as it ever was, but now it can be sent much more widely thanks to the internet.

At the end of every customer service interaction, you get details on how your team is currently handling service and any potential upgrades you can make to it.

Simply listening to your customers’ concerns and making them feel heard can increase your retention rate alone, but if you can actually implement changes based on feedback and show them off, that can improve your brand’s reputation even further.

This can shape the kind of customer-brand relationship that sustains the business for a long time to come. Nowadays, machine learning systems are incorporating that data automatically, without need for human intervention, too.

Maximize marketing potential

Marketing has become much more transparent thanks to the ability to look at website analytics, social media analytics, and all of the other data behind the online marketing tools you use. In the past, you had to simply wait on the results of your marketing to see if they’re bringing more sales now.

Nowadays, with tools like Google Analytics, you can see not only how many more customers and conversions you’re getting from ads, SEO, and the like, you can see how much general interest and clicks you’re getting as well.

It allows us to better understand our customers’ behaviors at various spots in their consumer lifecycle. As such, we can optimize every step of that process to make them more likely to become customers in the end, using the data to see what works and what doesn’t.

Make better decisions

Modern businesses are using data not only to look at how they interact with customers, but it’s playing a much larger role in shaping their internal processes and workflow, as well.

With the services of an expert like a Power BI consultant, businesses can collect and collate data all into a single centralized location, helping them gain insights that would be impossible to gain from one dataset alone.

This is known as Big Data, and it’s being used to drive decision making across businesses. Data has helped businesses improve inventory maintenance, make pricing decisions, find which sections of the business could use additional talent, and much more.

As time goes on, it’s fair to expect that data will an ever-growing role in how we make decisions.

See which way sales are moving

As important as increasing sales and growing customers, you also need to be able to project what direction the business is moving in. When you’re growing, you can invest in the business to improve it.

When you’re not, you can play it conservative. Sales forecasting software utilizes all of the available commercial data to help you get a better idea of what the months ahead will look like, allowing you to adjust your budget to match.

As such you can avoid a lot of the cashflow pitfalls that businesses tend to get stuck in. Furthermore, you can better identity trends leading to higher sales, so you’re can maximize marketing in order to boost those periods even further.

Data has the power to transform businesses, shaping your market, how you interact with them, and even how you make the most important decisions in your business. The data-driven solution is almost always the more option, so start looking at how to integrate it in your business.