Sadly, differentiating facts from fake or biased news in politics is challenging these days. Fortunately, it’s a very different story in the business world! Company’s facts and important data are typically stored in their databases. By looking at the company’s data, one can find—even down to the penny! —their business revenues, expenses, inventory, and other trends such as what’s growing or declining and what’s causing such changes. Now more than ever, businesses need real facts in real time.
Data Drives Decisions
Literally, data drives decisions: a 2017 study performed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that tail-gating actually worsens traffic and increases commute time—not the other way around.
Data also drives decisions figuratively. Say you’ve noticed a decrease in product sales and aren’t sure why. Is it because consumers are no longer interested in the product your business is selling? Is it the economic landscape? Many companies use Excel and other reporting tools to dig around into massive piles of data and research to find answers. Such an approach works but tends to take time and resources and the critical trends and outliers might not be easy to spot. What’s more: refreshing, changing the reports, and drilling down can also be time consuming. One of our clients had a weekly reporting cycle that was taking a full day to get all reports updated and distributed to all users. Sometimes it was taking two days because of mistakes.
DataSelf saw these challenges and has been helping companies with an automated and easy to find “A-ha!” moments approach. In a nutshell, DataSelf provides data warehousing that can automate many manual tasks such as data gathering, linking information, and calculating key performance indicators. DataSelf also leverages easy-to-use reporting tools such as Tableau, Power BI and Excel that extract the data warehouse data and present it in easy to understand formats such as charts and dashboards while providing the ability to easily drill down to details. Our client from the paragraph above has automated their weekly reporting process—now actual reports are automatically refreshed daily for people who want to monitor trends more closely and a weekly report-booklet is automatically emailed to all users.
For the case in which clients have declining sales, DataSelf provides several ways to make it easy to find out top and bottom performers via charts and grid reports. The video below (no sound) shows an example of a stock dashboard and how to slice and dice the data to find out top clients by sales decline and which territories and products are driving the decline.
Facts on the Fly
We don’t always have the time to dig around and cross reference information to decipher what is factual and what isn’t. Take for example St. David’s Hydroponics based out of Ontario: their salespeople need fast, accurate information at every call because the market literally fluctuates by the hour. Their success and customer satisfaction can’t depend on guess-work or data from earlier that day; they need facts and they need them now. (Read their success story here). We never know what to expect when we open up the news in the morning but opening up your DataSelf dashboards can help you know what’s real.
Confidence in Control
Our world is changing fast enough with uncertainty jumping out at us from all directions. The pandemic, protests, and a swiftly changing economy are enough to leave decision makers questioning what’s best for their businesses. By taking control of your company’s data, being able to easily navigate and customize the information you need and when you need it, and knowing for a fact that the information is accurate, you can confidently make informed decisions for your business. It’s an opportunity to be certain in an otherwise uncertain time.
DataSelf is a person-centric company. We see the humans behind the numbers and understand the value of fact-based decision making. We understand that in nearly every way, the world is changing by the second. As more and more resources, content, and information become readily available at our fingertips on a global scale, being able to know with certainty what’s actually factual is key to our collective success. There is a way that you and your business can make decisions quickly and confidently while leaving the guesswork and stress behind. Contact us to see how we can help deliver you up-to-date facts anytime, anywhere.
