may 27th
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By Juan Merodio
The Importance of Business Data in the Digital Age
In the contemporary digital era, business data comes from various sources, such as customer interactions, sales figures, social media metrics, and operational statistics. Leading e-commerce companies, like Amazon, monitor user behavior, purchase history, and browsing patterns to personalize recommendations and improve the user experience. Healthcare organizations, for their part, use data from patient records, clinical trials and wearable devices to improve treatments and develop innovative solutions. Now, the question is: what about your company?
This abundance of data offers both opportunities and challenges for companies seeking to extract meaningful insights and make data-driven decisions. You’re probably wondering, “What data is most important?” This is a key question, especially if you want to make smarter business decisions. While all data has some value, it’s essential to prioritize data that will allow you to be faster, smarter, and more competitive. By doing so, you will be able to increase the effectiveness of your team and, hopefully, grow your business.
The Relevance of Investing in Data
This is not just theory. In early 2023, Google Cloud commissioned Harvard Business Review to conduct a survey for its organization. The results showed that 81% of companies that successfully weathered the economic turmoil of the pandemic years invested seriously in data. In addition, 58% also focused on artificial intelligence solutions.
The message is clear: to be in the group of winners, you cannot afford to ignore your data. However, not all data is equally important. Your goal should be to choose the areas where you can leverage your data to make decisions with greater confidence. Don’t know which areas to focus on first? The following four areas should benefit from routine data collection and evaluation.
SEO Efforts: How Data Can Help You
Competing with other companies and websites on keywords is increasingly demanding. Even if you follow Google’s general SEO guidelines to the letter, you may only achieve a modest amount of traction. To rank faster for keywords and give your SEO efforts a boost, use data. Data- and analytics-driven keyword research tools that track user search behavior and competitor metrics can provide invaluable insights to refine your keyword selection strategy.
Planning and Organization of Content with Data
One way to take advantage of keyword data is to use it to plan and organize content. Consider creating content pillars to publish blog articles, web pages, and other content of your own. Content pillars include pillar pages based on strong keywords, around which other pages can be created as extensions, forming a network of interrelated, highly authoritative content. As DemandJump explains, pillar-based marketing can increase your topic authority. Instead of trying to find keywords on your own, you can rely on a data-rich platform that recommends keywords based on your company’s products or services.
Improving Backlinking with Data
In addition to content pillar marketing, you can also leverage data in other SEO practices like backlinking. Organic backlinks help demonstrate your dominance and legitimacy to search engine crawlers. You’ll need a way to monitor them and make sure they come from authoritative sites. It’s worth investing in a SaaS platform or application that can monitor your backlinks in real time. This way, you’ll have more control in the future and can continue making smart SEO moves based on numbers, not instincts.
Use of Financial Data for Strategic Decisions
Financial data should be the backbone of strategic decision making for any business. Effectively utilizing this data helps business owners gain insights into revenue streams, cost structures, and overall financial health. If you want to make profits, you cannot ignore these figures. By taking advantage of financial analysis and forecasting tools, you will be able to make informed decisions to optimize profitability, manage treasury, and allocate resources.
Identification of High and Low Performance Areas
For example, examining financial data trends can help you identify areas of high and low performance within different product or service lines. This allows business owners or CFOs to strategically allocate resources to the most profitable areas and re-evaluate those that are underperforming. You will avoid wasting money and time by prioritizing those that generate income. Tools like QuickBooks can track expenses, income, and cash flow in real time.
Risk Management and Strategic Planning
Additionally, financial data analysis also helps in risk management and strategic planning. By carefully examining historical data and market trends, you can foresee potential risks and opportunities. This allows you to take proactive measures to mitigate risks and take advantage of new market trends. Overall, the use of financial data leads to sustainable business growth and profitability. If you’re not checking these numbers regularly, it’s time to do so.
Improving Customer Service with Data
Another area where data can be extremely useful is in your customer service department. For example, a predictive data software solution can anticipate problems before they arise by detecting trends. This allows you to implement measures to avoid costly issues, such as customer returns.
Generative AI and Customer Service Data
With improvements in generative AI, customer service data can be more than just numbers. For example, generative AI transcription software can be trained to understand the client’s language and interpret tones. According to a CMSWire report, customer service representatives who use generative AI as a “co-pilot” can be up to 14% more productive. Plus, they’re less likely to want to leave, which is beneficial for your business if you’re facing high agent turnover.
Satisfied customers are those whose problems are resolved immediately with minimal friction. If you’re struggling to retain customers, it makes sense to invest in more data-driven customer service workflows. By using data to predict customer needs and behaviors, you can proactively address issues, personalize experiences, and offer preventative solutions. This helps strengthen relationships and loyalty, significantly reducing churn rates.
Implementation of Data-Driven Workflows
To start, review your customer journeys. You’ll soon find areas where data innovations (and perhaps generative AI products like agent assistants and chatbots) can fill the gap. Once those gaps are filled, you should experience less customer churn. At that point, you can start making changes to improve your customer service now that you have a foundation to work from.
Data-Driven Employee Engagement Strategies
If you’ve followed Gallup’s annual surveys on employee engagement, you know that active worker engagement has fallen to 32%. At the same time, disengagement has increased to 18%. To avoid having unhappy teams of employees, use data creatively to improve the employee experience.
Measuring Employee Engagement
For example, you can solicit employee feedback through anonymous surveys or focus groups at small meetings. With the information obtained, you can create a database that reveals the level of commitment of your staff. Also be sure to choose some key performance indicators, such as historical turnover and absenteeism rates.
Improving Data Engagement
Over time, you’ll be able to get a baseline reading of your employees’ engagement. From there, you can take steps to improve it. For example, you could begin routinely recognizing and rewarding employees to see if it has a measurable effect. Remember: Engaged employees are more loyal and better prepared to defend your brand. With data, you can better understand how to prevent high-performing employees from leaving and help them reach their full potential.
Informed Decisions Benefit Your Company
Every day, you and your team members will have to make decisions big and small. Using data as a guide allows you to move forward more confidently and keep your organization on the right path. Data keeps everyone aligned and provides insights we wouldn’t otherwise have. It is worth taking the time to explore and understand the available data.
Juan Merodio
Juan Merodio is an expert in Digital Marketing and Promoter of Digital Businesses (AI, Web3 and New Technologies). He has founded the company that bears his own name, Juan Merodio, and from where he and his team coordinate and develop business consulting in Marketing and Digital Transformation for companies in different parts of the world such as Spain, Latin America, Japan, Canada and the United States.
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Source: https://www.juanmerodio.com/potenciar-negocio/
