Experts estimated that there might be around 1.7 MB of data created in each second for each person in the world by around 2020. If we can store each byte of data and then run proper analytics, this data mine can be converted into valuable insights or better living.
Even though different entrepreneurs of small business across the globe have a different set of goals and aspirations, they all have something unique when it comes to functioning at the general premises. They all want to convert their ideas into successful business ventures.
However, the way each entrepreneur accomplish it may significantly vary based on the availability of their resources.
The biggest change lately in entrepreneurship is that the business people largely understand the importance of data. If you are also a business-savvy startup entrepreneur, then you may surely be dreaming of becoming Apple or Amazon one day.
The continuous success of these brands is not an accident, but they all embraced the relevance of data and data analysis to derive actionable insights based on it.
3 Tips to Run a Successful Data-Driven Startup Business
1. Set Some Tangible Goals
A critical aspect of any business which aims to be data-driven is its ability to measure and scale the results. This needs to be applied to all aspects of a business including production, marketing, sales, and growth tactics. One should be able to measure and the results accurately and readjust the strategies accordingly.
With such an approach you will gain deeper, clearer, and measurable goals to operate a successful data-driven business.
So, when you think of data, the objective is not become data-driven, but rather the actual objective is to use the data as a tool to guide the decision-makers to achieve the goals. The measure of success it up to you to decide.
Your primary objective may be to establish your brand or sometimes it may be to find funding for your dream product. You need to analyze data to do all these effectively.
2. Use the data in hand
Once if you have set clear goals and objectives, then next you need to collect the most relevant data which can be used for analytical purposes. This may initially seem to be a very daunting affair for the fresh entrepreneurs who are not fully aware of the data sources and also have limited access to data.
Moreover, finding a proper analytical tool is also difficult for a fresher to make the apt choice.
But technology advancements have now reached to a level that all types and sizes of businesses can now find the most customized solutions by doing thorough research on the internet where you can find an abundance of options.
Even though there are many ways to gather data, here are some primary options:
a). Customer data
Irrespective of the industry you represent and the size of your business, your customers are the decisive measure as to how successful you’d become. Whenever someone from your customer base interacts with the business, you gain an opportunity to collect relevant data as RemoteDBA.com does.
There is an information exchange happening when a customer inquiry about your brand, product, or services. You have many data points here like the name of the customers, age, category, geographical location, address, e-mail, or other demographic and contact info.
Each of these can lead to gaining some actionable insights in that particular case. If you are not already gathering these data, this is the right point to start at.
b). Behavioral data
Irrespective of your business being an online or physical store, in the technology era, the web presence of a business is critical, and all businesses do have a website to fulfill this need.
This website data or data from other online platforms like social media or landing pages etc. can be a gold mine of data for business insights.
Say, for example, if you are operating compliance training, then you have to take a close look at the analytics to notice the behavior of a particular group of people from a particular geographical region has a high bounce rate.
Such an analysis will help you identify that your offerings are appealing to certain destinations only. With such an insight, you will be able to prioritize your offerings region-wise and then reap the best benefits of it.
c). Competitor data
When you begin with a startup, you have next to nothing as your resources. You don’t have tons of data, which doesn’t mean that you have to operate fully dry.
You may look closely at your competitors and other industry leaders. Conduct market research to use some existing data to derive your business decisions from the competitor data visible to you.
3. Considering a database service
When it comes to enterprise database management, there are many ways for businesses to gather and analyze data. An ideal DBMS and support of a good database administration become essential if you have a fair set of data to be collected, managed, and analyzed.
The effective use of your data-drive business management lives or dies in the technology stack you choose. Here is some consideration to make while you invest no database administration technology.
a). Check integration
While choosing a new database service, if their tools don’t integrate with your existing data in hand, then it creates troubles. Some providers want the data to be kept in different silos. This will ultimately limit the visibility and analytical capabilities.
b). Ensure data hygiene
Remember you will ultimately end up with nothing if you use bad data. If you have organized your database structure and invested on the right tools to use, you need to ensure that your data resources share hygienic data which is eligible for analytics.
Every growing start-up business needs high agility in terms of effective decision making. In light of thorough data analysis, many of the organizations again wait for weeks or months to report and discuss the findings to find out the next course of action.
When it comes to a start-up, this is much easier than the data insights can be implemented at real-time. There is no burden of large teams and a big group of stakeholders to agree with your strategic business plans to proceed with it.
Author Bio: Jack Dsouja
