How Data Management Can Help You Get More from BI

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures ArticleMaking sound business decisions often relies on extensive analysis from a wide variety of sources, which can be a difficult and laborious process without proper data management solutions. Not taking advantage of modern software services made to manage and govern your information stores in an effective manner can diminish your chances of competing with organisations that do. The business world of today moves at a fast pace, leaving little room for error or experimentation.

To show how business intelligence can be improved via better data management, let’s take a look at how proper data management procedures can drive positive resolutions.

Data Management Suites to Handle Automated Processes

Manually gathering, sorting, and analysing relevant data for your business can be a monumental task that requires a massive amount of manpower. Having the ability to more quickly and efficiently store and retrieve your information in a format that is easy-to-understand and reliable can set you apart from the competition.

Without a proper data management tool such as ZAP Data Hub, you risk missing out on a lot of important data that just can’t be obtained using traditional methods. This reduces your chances of making intelligent business decisions. Data management suites and services are offered by a variety of vendors to meet any industry’s requirements.

Expanding BI Availability Within Your Organisation

If you’re not using information gathering and data-driven decision making across all departments, then you could be missing out on increased productivity and metrics. Lower-level management depends on reports and statistics to be able to do their job effectively; their efforts are hampered by the lack of a fast and simple way to acquire the data they need.

Putting more power into the hands of those who actually use business intelligence to make important decisions can liberate their reliance on other groups and allow for much faster solutions.

Real Time Results Can Make for Quick Decision Making

The slow turnaround time from the request of a data report to its delivery can be a huge roadblock that deters the ability to make speedy resolutions on the fly. The time it takes for a team of people to collect, analyse, and extrapolate real information from a chunk of data is monumental compared to the relative ease in which automated systems can process the same data. Lightning-fast collection and reporting – in real time – allows for far greater flexibility for decision makers and speedy response times.

Automation Allows More Time Spent on Examination

Traditional methods of reporting usually rely on IT or executive branches of your organisation to do the heavy lifting when it comes to data acquisition and publication. In today’s heavily data-driven environment, the need for expedient delivery of records is paramount to success. Following traditional procedures puts your organisation at a disadvantage compared to those who understand the importance of proper data management. It has never been easier to automate these laborious data collection and reporting tasks with modern data management solutions, thereby giving your IT department more time to work on their primary tasks.

Companies live and die by the fortitude of their data management and governance principles. Those that have a tenuous grasp of their data and what it really means are doomed to make poor decisions. Getting the most out of your BI tool requires modern methods and technology-driven protocols.

Predictive Analytics Tools Can Create a Better Workforce

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Understanding What Predictive Analytics Is

Predictive analytics (PA) is well known in many business arenas but has never entered Human Resources until recently. PA is a form of technology that learns from other existing data. This process results in predictive results. It is most frequently used to predict very specific individual behaviors in Human Resources.

Predictive analytics examines data or content to answer the question “What is likely to happen?’’ This is important in any business area but is critical to Human Resources who previously depended on intuition to determine future needs of both the company and employees.

With the support of predictive analytics, it’s no longer necessary to make decisions because of intuitive feelings, or ‘’gut’’ reactions to some issue or plan. Data is gathered, analyzed and presented quickly, without stumbling or bumbling on the data or statistics. Intuition or ‘’gut’’ feelings are often unsuccessful, while data mining information that predicts uncertain outcomes is much more reliable and trustworthy.

How Predictive Analytics Affects Recruiting

Applying predictive analytics in Recruiting and Staffing helps companies foresee and enhance several areas, including:

  • Potential top talent is easier to identify with predictive analytics. This makes a recruiter’s job much easier and accurate. Predictive analytics can easily identify the candidates with the most potential, better understand when these talents can be contacted and understand if and why a job opening may be attractive to candidates.
  • Predictive analytics helps companies optimize the responses to their job openings. The analysis can help companies understand how duration, location, occupation and industry will likely affect recruiting results.

Why Companies Utilize Predictive Analytics in HR

73% of companies surveyed said the primary reason they used analytical data was to make the workforce planning process more efficient. 69% believe the main reason to utilize predictive analytics is to more accurately plan for the future and also, create plans to eliminate skills gaps in their organizations. 65% of companies credit predictive analytics as identifying high potential employees.

Other companies indicated that predictive analytics provided better analysis of company needs to align people and company strategy; while others indicated that analysis provided the needed links between performance and compensation; the remaining companies surveyed stated that predictive analytics provided more in-depth knowledge of external talent pools.

Predictive Analytics Helps HR Look Forward

HR has historically been responsible for forecasting the right amount of talent and knowing when to hire additional talent. Unfortunately, before predictive analytics was utilized in HR, the forecasting was more backward-looking than forward. For example, one or more employees terminate, and HR suddenly decides there is talent disproportion.

Unfortunately, few companies have implemented predictive analytics for their HR groups. According to Deloitte, in 2015, only about 8% of global organizations have adopted PA for their Human Resources groups.

The few companies that utilize predictive analytics have had great success and freely share their efforts and results. For example:

  • Google: This company is a strong advocate of statistics and freely admits that it is the most critical tool in their Human Resources group. All interview questions in their hiring process are computerized and perfected to ensure that the best candidates are hired. Additionally, Google’s predictive analysis can estimate the likelihood of future terminations, why they are terminating, and what could have been done to circumvent the termination.
  • Hewlett Packard (HP): HP is also a leader in the HR predictive analytics arena. Recently, HP shared with news media that ‘’when their attrition rates started moving upwards, they utilized predictive analytics to predict which employees were likely to leave by developing a ‘Flight Risk’ score.” This analysis was able to define both the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of their 300,000+ employees who would potentially terminate. For example, higher pay, promotions and better performance ratings were negatively related to flight risk, but the analysis proved that there were strong relationships between these findings. For instance, they were able to analyze that a promotion without a substantial pay increase would likely result in a termination.

“HP’s Flight Risk scores helped managers make better decisions since the early warning signal from Flight Risk allowed time for managers to intervene or if the loss was unavoidable, it prepped the manager to react accordingly. The predictive analysis in Flight Risk allowed HP to save an estimated $300 million.”

The extensive time previously spent on creating charts, reports, quotients, etc., will soon be history because predictive analytics easily allows organizations to analyze the past and predict upcoming trends for both positive and negative analytics.

The end result of having predictive analytics in Human Resources is the ability to predict future needs that are accurate and verifiable. This becomes the organization value to business that Human Resources has long struggled to create. HR has for years attempted to get the infamous ‘’seat at the table’’ and predictive analytics will ensure this happens.

Ways Data Analytics Can Boost Your Business’ Growth

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Big data is here to stay, and although that can present a few challenges to business (storing it, keeping it safe, etc.), for the most part, it is a boon, which if used correctly can easily boost business growth.

If you’re still skeptical about the use of data analytics, take a look at these very real ways it they can boost business. They’ll have you convinced in no time:

It Can Improve Ordering

If you collect and analyze past sales data, you can identify trends in your company’s sales so that you can order exactly the right amount of stock for your needs. This will help to ensure that you don’t run out of anything, thus helping to keep the customer happy, and it will ensure that you don’t end up ordering too much and spending money on something that will just go to waste.

It Makes for Better Product Management

Analyzing sales data is also a good way to find out which of the thousands of products that you could be selling are the most popular so that you can stock more of the things that are likely to sell in big numbers and fewer things that are unlikely to make you very much money at all.

It Can Improve Your Marketing Strategy

If you’ve ever spent a small fortune on advertising only for it to fail and not bring in as many customers as you would like, there is a good chance that you simply were not targeting the right people or you had the right audience in mind, but you weren’t targeting them effectively. If you were to do what the digital marketing agency MyOptimind do, or even hire them, and use data to improve your marketing efforts, you would be able to spend less money and get greater returns because you would know exactly what pushes your target audience’s buttons.

It Can Help You Train Your Staff

If you collect data on your staff and how they work, then you can use it to identify undesirable patterns in their work or areas in which they aren’t as productive as their peers. Why is this important? Because once you know what your employees’ strengths and weaknesses are you can tailor future training packages to target them, thus saving you money while improving your business from the inside out.

It Can Help You Cut Costs Everywhere

Of course, if you collect data, with Zoho, for example, on every aspect of your business from ordering to time spent fielding calls, you could work out where your time is being well spent and where it is being wasted, as well as identifying where you’re spending too much money and by analysing this data, you would be able to make changes to save money and boost productivity.

You Can Find Upselling Opportunities

If you can use data to identify when certain products are bought in conjunction with others, you can start offering cross-promotions that are likely to appeal and which could be pretty lucrative over the years.

You see, data really is important – time to start collecting it!

Why Data Cloud Storage Improves Business Performance

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Technological infrastructure is a real headache for most businesses. Large or small, companies have to be ready for the unexpected, like a hard drive suddenly dying or an employee’s PC repeatedly showing the blue screen of death shortly after every reboot. When systems aren’t functioning right, any kind of strategy goes out the window because when you cannot deliver, your business is toast.

Here are a few reasons why cloud storage supports business performance.

Distributed File Architecture Supporting a Global Workforce

Companies no longer rely on an internal network to provide file access to everyone who needs it. With the increasing use of outside contractors, part-time employees, and home workers that require access to documents, spreadsheets, and other files from the company server, it becomes a real headache for IT departments. For smaller companies that don’t really have an IT department at all, the inconvenience is felt even more.

Using a cloud service designed for businesses that enable anyone with a mobile app or web browser to access the necessary company files, once they’ve passed through two-factor authentication, makes it simpler. There’s no complicated setup necessary because everyone can be given access to the folders they need in the secure cloud. File audit trails and multi-factor authentication protocols ensure that companies can keep track of who’s accessing what and verify that only the approved people can access shared files.

Stay Focused on Core Competencies

Running a proper data center with all the equipment and staff required is expensive and involved. Trying to do so on a small budget or as a small business takes the focus away from providing services to customers and the technology team that is supporting that effort.

Whether looking to place group files on a secure cloud service or purchasing a sales package that works in the cloud, taking advantage of professional companies that already offer excellent data cloud services ensures you get the talent without having to find and hire it. Be sure to compare one cloud service with another, like they do at cloudstoragebuzz.com, to see which one is right for your business.

Scalable Storage as Needed

Growing businesses need ever-increasing amounts of storage. This puts a strain on the existing network and requires adding larger local drives to PCs while ensuring there are enough network drives to handle the storage capacity requirements as they grow. Needless to say, this is one problem that the IT team could well do without.

The beauty of using a cloud service is that they have sufficient storage capacities to allocate increasing storage to businesses on an “as needed” basis. Basic plans sometimes have an unlimited data capacity, but most business plans require additional payment for extra terabytes of storage at affordable rates.

In many ways, cloud storage takes some of the heavy lifting away from IT departments – and people tasked with this responsibility in SMEs – so the company can focus on its core operations. The cost per megabyte or gigabyte is low with so many cloud providers competing, so it just doesn’t make sense to try to handle it all in-house any longer.

5 Ways to Incorporate Data Science into Business Operations

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The field of data science has been making plenty of waves, having been credited with many of the advancements in medicine, software, computing, and artificial intelligence. In fact, this ubiquitous field of science seems to now be having an impact on almost every industry, as intelligent entrepreneurs and business managers recognize the need to make data-based decisions while conducting everyday operations and setting long-term goals. With that said, here are five ways businesses can incorporate data science into their operations to enhance functionality and improve strategic planning.

1. Utilizing Competitive Analysis

Any business that operates in a highly competitive niche should be benefiting from competitive analysis, which is essentially just a more straightforward term for using data science to outdo the competition. Thus, if someone wanted to strengthen their skills in competitive analysis it would be wise to take a course in data science. You can even earn the fields highest level degree in the field by studying for a Master’s of Data Science online.  In addition to gaining valuable business analysis skills, you’d also gain a shiny credential for your resume.

2. Using Software that Relies on Data Science

Most businesses are already using software that is capable of facilitating data analysis. Any program that can generate reports or export data can be used as a source for data analysis and interpretation. Thus, company leaders and data specialists should strive to become highly proficient at generating and analyzing specific statistical reports using their company’s most essential software applications.

3. Conducting Keyword and Topic Research

Every business should be looking to expand its web presence, and doing so typically involves creating and distributing content that spreads brand awareness and attracts traffic to your official site.  Having a thorough understanding of data science will help you effectively use keyword research and trend tracking tools.

4. Preventing Past Mistakes

Since history often repeats itself, one of the best ways to prevent future mistakes is to assess and analyze the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, some oversights and missteps aren’t so obvious until you look at the entire situation in retrospect, which is where data science comes into play.

5. Strengthening Board Room Meetings and Conferences

With comprehensive reporting and analysis capabilities, a company will a have much more to address during each weekly or monthly board meeting/conference. It’s particularly important to have at least one team member that is capable of creating data-driven presentations, as you want to be able to view and comprehend the data in all possible forms, from charts to lists and graphs. The more ways you can flip the data to extract meaning from it, the more likely you are to spot a crucial insight that could lead to a game-changing thought process.

Basing Decisions on Data is the Safest Way to Success

Ultimately, basing mission-critical decisions and software on data is the most sensible thing for a company to do, especially when you compare it to the alternative of relying on hunches and simple analysis. Although a good brainstorming session can go a long way, it can go much further when you have access to useful stats and you’re capable of extracting insight and guidance from that information.