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Analytics Are a Must for Business Success

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Analytics|Analytics Are a Must for Business SuccessBusiness analytics is a process in which businesses improve their operations by using statistical models to analyze data. They compare historical and current data and try to make adjustments where applicable to improve future performance. Business analytics’ first usage was in the late 19th century but did not become standard practice until the 1960s.

Analytics Gives Companies an Edge

Once companies really began to use business analytics, they quickly developed an edge over the competition. There has always been a level of adaptation that companies have made to keep competitive. However, the use of analytics gave companies the ability to look deeper into the data and discover more useful information to improve business.

Gathering statistics and analyzing them to try to find useful information only works if you are collecting the right statistics. It is easy to get bogged down in the wrong information and draw false conclusions from statistical analysis. Any data set taken out of context is likely to lead analysts down a false path. All of the relevant information must be gathered and compared in order for analytics to truly be useful.

New Coke Was Delicious… And Terrible

Gathering a data set in a vacuum can lead to tremendous business blunders. Take one of the biggest marketing failures of all time: New Coke. The blind taste tests conducted by both Pepsi and Coke showed that the majority of people preferred the taste of Pepsi to the taste of Coke.

Then after developing a new formula, Coke ran over 200,000 taste tests. The results showed definitively, that people preferred the flavor of New Coke to both that of old Coke and Pepsi. Then we all know what happened. Consumers hated New Coke and demanded a return of their original beverage. After three months, Coca-Cola Classic made a return, and everyone was happy.

The researchers did not gather all of the relevant information. One of the key pieces of information they overlooked was that people don’t typically only drink a couple of sips of a cola. They usually drink a can or a bottle. Some people drink several cans a day. For many, the sweeter taste of New Coke was not as palatable in large quantities as the original.

They also didn’t gather information about why people drank Coke. Pepsi was working very hard to be the “cool cola”, aiming at taking the youth market. Many of the people who stuck with Coke were about brand loyalty and nostalgia. They liked the beverage they had and were not looking for a change.

Had Coke done a proper analysis of the statistics, they would have looked at who was drinking Coke and why. By doing so, they would not have made such a mistake. Either they would have scrapped the idea of New Coke altogether or offered it as an additional beverage rather than an alternative.

Instead of replacing Coke, if they had continued to sell Coke Classic, but also offered “Coke Youth” to try to pull back some of the consumers they had lost to Pepsi, maybe people would still be drinking Coke Youth today, right alongside Coke Classic.

Sports Analytics

Despite an abundance of usable statistical information, it took a while for sports to follow in the footsteps of business in the use of analytics. Once they started using analytics to improve individual and team performance, however, they began to quickly perfect its usage.

While they may look big, sports organizations are relatively small businesses. Because of this, their analytics departments aren’t nearly as big as big banks or global retailers. As a result, they have to outsource a lot of their analytical needs. This has led to the creation of many sports analytics companies. The use of football analytics software enables these companies to provide needed information to clubs across the league.

One of the best usages of analytics that sports organizations have used, which businesses could greatly benefit from, is the effect of individual performance upon the team. Sports teams are able to assess the potential contributions of players beyond their individual statistics. Some players don’t put up the most impressive numbers but are able to elevate the level of play of those around them.

Some team members, whether in sports or business, are key to the success of the group. They are not valuable because they shine themselves, but because they help everyone around them to impress. Proper use of analytics can help businesses to make these determinations and so much more. The data is all there. It simply needs to be gathered and correctly analyzed in order for your business to thrive.

What’s the Difference Between Influencer Marketing and Brand Advocacy?

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | Influencer Marketing|What’s the Difference Between Influencer Marketing and Brand Advocacy?The terms influencer and advocate often get thrown together and some may think that they’re interchangeable. But they aren’t. Both roles are very different, and they both have different goals and intentions. Simply put, influencers are in it for themselves while advocates work for you. Working with both could help, but there are cases when only an advocate could help, and vice versa. Let’s take an in-depth look at the differences between the two and which one you should go for.

What is Influencer Marketing Anyway?

When someone uses influencer marketing, it means that they’re partnering up with someone who already has a sizable audience. We use the term partnering up loosely since the influencer isn’t obligated to do anything but mention your product or service. They have no obligation to like it. At this point, this would be an advertisement. They could be required to do some product placement, however, or make a review in the format of your choice.

Evidently, you have to choose influencers who you think will appreciate your product or brand and will want to sing its praises. This is where their role becomes similar to advocates. But it isn’t guaranteed that they will like your product and it could eventually backfire if they have serious gripes with it.

What are Brand Advocates?

Brand advocates are not workers. Instead, they are clients that are so appreciative of what you do that they will be willing to sell your product or services to others unsolicited. It’s a modern version of word-of-mouth marketing.
What makes brand advocates so powerful is social proof. Research has shown that people are more likely to make purchase decisions after recommendations from people in their social circle. Advocates become opinion leaders within their group and can help you get referrals, introduce new products, boost interest for product launches, or even get directly involved in the research and development stage.

What About Brand Ambassadors?

This is also a term that gets conflated with influencers and advocates, but ambassadors are different. Unlike influencers, it is their job to promote your brand. However, unlike advocates, ambassadors will be paid for their work. Ambassadors can drive efforts and help you reach objectives with more predictability, but campaigns have to be executed properly to get results.

Can Ambassadors and Advocates Work Together?

Of course! Actually, this is when they become more powerful. Advocates can be great content creators, and if you can find a way for ambassadors to collect, manage, and re-use this content in your social media campaigns, then you will be able to harness the power of both. Brand ambassador management software streamlines social content development and sharing and will allow you to gather content from a network of advocates, ambassadors, and even employees to boost engagement and traction for your brand across all platforms.

Influencers, ambassadors, and advocates play very different roles. This doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t complement each other, so try to see where each could help.

Designing a Home Office That Aids Your Professional Development

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Home Office|Designing a Home Office That Aids Your Professional DevelopmentOver the past year, many professionals within business, management, and analytics – and, indeed, across many other sectors, too – have found themselves working from home on a more regular basis. This has led to a huge shift in the ways in which staff are able to communicate and interact with one another, in addition to affecting the very nature of their work.

Inquiring about an aspect of a document you’re uncertain about, querying decisions, and monitoring the effectiveness of staff have all been rendered much more difficult, while working from home has become the norm.

This new way of working limits human-to-human interaction, making it difficult to observe and question exemplary staff to help your own development, and making feedback a much lengthier process. However, as remote working seems to be becoming the norm in large corporations such as Spotify and BP – at least for part of the working week – it makes sense to start considering the ways in which working from home can help aid your development.

In this article, we discuss office set-ups and designs that are conducive to focused work patterns and that can help enhance your professional development even while you’re not sat in the office.

Finding the Perfect Spot

Many workers underestimate the benefits of a designated space within the home that is entirely dedicated to the production of work. The key is identifying a space within your home that has a surface you can work at (preferably a desk or a table), lots of natural light, is not affected by noise as much as other areas of the house, and that has all the equipment you will need. Ideally, the room you choose requires a door that you can close, to avoid interruptions from pets or children when on conference calls, and block out any distracting noises throughout the day.

A Comfortable Space

While you obviously would prefer to avoid creating a space that is too comfortable and disrupts your working frame of mind, you also need an area that doesn’t distract you from your focus – heightened feelings of discomfort can prevent you from concentrating as effectively as you would otherwise.

A key element of this is the maintenance of the room temperature. Too cold, and your digits will stiffen and your brain will work slower, slowing your progress down and inhibiting your thinking and problem-solving skills; too hot, and you’ll become lethargic and spend a vast proportion of your time trying to cool yourself down. Investing in a variable heating center for your home office could make all the difference! Refurbished PTACs from ptac4less.com/ are perfect for room renovations or additions. They allow you to control the temperature of your working space to make it optimal for you.

Additionally, investing in ergonomically designed seating will do wonders for your posture, enabling you to sit in an upright position comfortably and type at the same time, while cushioning your lower back. Combined with a raised, padded mousepad and a screen that can be adjusted for your comfort, this will allow you to focus entirely on your work output.

Maintaining Calm

An often-underestimated aspect of a home office is the requirement for calm. Busy rooms with lots of visual and auditory distractions can cause sensory overload and make it more difficult to focus on your work. A room painted in neutral colors is preferable, as busy patterns and bright, popping colors again can disrupt your thinking process and add to feelings of stress. Instead, it would be beneficial to invest in calming artwork, depicting soft seaside or country scenes, or paintings with soft blues and greens. This also means that you have a professional-looking space for those inevitable Zoom meetings and conferences!

If you are the type of person that benefits from music when working, curating a playlist of instrumental music and themes is generally best. Studies have demonstrated in the past that classical music is particularly conducive to focus and concentration.

Keeping plants and fish has also been suggested as a way of invoking calm in a space; creating your own aquarium (well-researched, of course) would not only add to a relaxing yet focused atmosphere, but they also provide a calming visual that you can use to stimulate ideas and configure solutions.

Many believe that working from home has negatively impacted the professional development of staff, particularly those transferring from other sectors or who are just starting out in their career. However, there are ways of designing your home office set up in such a way that you are not only able to complete your work effectively, but that enables you to flourish.

Which Qualities Define a Successful Entrepreneur?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Successful Entrepreneur|Which Qualities Define a Successful Entrepreneur?Let’s face it: everyone wants to be a ‘successful’ entrepreneur. The harsh reality is that few entrepreneurs become successful in their careers, irrespective of whether you use money or popularity as metrics to measure success.

You’re likely reading this article today because you have an entrepreneurial spirit brewing inside of you, and now is the time to do something about it. However, you don’t want to try your hand at business and fail at the first hurdle.

With that in mind, which qualities define a successful entrepreneur? The following points illustrate the qualities you will find in any entrepreneur that has made a name for themselves in their industries:

Hard Work

The path to success, however you measure it, is not an easy one. It requires a lot of hard work and determination to get to the stage where you can begin to reap the fruits of your labor.

Hard work is just one of many qualities found in all successful entrepreneurs, of course, but without it, you are unlikely to achieve your goals and aspirations in the business world.

It’s not uncommon to hear that many successful entrepreneurs like David William Sherrer have sacrificed a lot of their time and dedicated it to achieve their ultimate business goals. Hard work does pay off; you just need to be in the right mindset to follow through with it.

Education

People aren’t born with the knowledge they possess in their latter years; they educate themselves and get educated by others. Knowledge is wonderful, and it can also make you powerful as an entrepreneur.

Some people are born with an entrepreneurial spirit, while others learn the skills to become entrepreneurs through education and experience. Education can teach us about entrepreneurship and how we can use this knowledge will help to start or grow our own business.

For Australian entrepreneur Kath Purkis, to be a successful entrepreneur you need to educate yourself on the market to the point you become an expert. Understanding the market allows you to find gaps and profit from these opportunities when they arise. With constant education your business can stay ahead of competitors and continue to grow.

Passion

Imagine there are two people in a room selling identical products. One of those individuals is highly passionate about what they’re selling and projects positive energy from themselves by talking with almost encyclopedic knowledge on their products.

The other person isn’t particularly interested in what they’re selling and appears disinterested, even to the point of seeming rude to potential customers that ask questions about the products.

Which of those two entrepreneurs do you think is likely to finish their day and go home with no stock and a pocket full of cash? Passion is a crucial element you’ll find in any successful entrepreneur.

Passionate business leaders love what they’re doing and don’t mind putting in the extra hours and hard work into making their enterprises a success.

Conclusion

Success is a metric you can measure through different metrics. When talking about successful entrepreneurs, most people mean individuals that have profitable and popular businesses.
There’s no reason you can’t become a highly successful entrepreneur, as long as you have certain traits like those discussed above.

3 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need Managed IT Services

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Managed IT Services|3 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need Managed IT ServicesRunning a small business isn’t for the faint-hearted. Competing in a global market with limited resources is challenging, which is why it’s essential to have the right resources to hand. Managed IT services give you the opportunity to outsource every element of your tech infrastructure, from installation and maintenance to procurement and future proofing. To learn more about the impact outsourcing your technology can have, take a look at these three reasons why small businesses need managed IT services:

1. Reduced Costs

Instead of hiring your own IT employees, you can avoid costly recruitment processes and minimize your expenditure when you rely on managed IT services instead. Managing a company’s tech infrastructure requires input from a wide range of IT specialists, such as network administrators, developers and cloud engineers. Hiring a full IT department is beyond the scope of most small businesses, but you won’t be at a competitive disadvantage when you outsource your needs to a professional IT company.

2. Access to Expertise

Some small business owners assume that hiring one IT employee will be enough to manage and maintain their tech resources while still keeping costs relatively low. In reality, there are numerous specialisms that are required to implement and maintain the right infrastructure, which is why you need access to a team of IT specialists, rather than just one individual.

When you choose a leading managed IT services partner, like Fidelis, Inc., you gain access to all the expertise you need. From IT consulting and hardware installation to helpdesk support and business continuity, you’ll benefit from having a wide range of resources at your fingertips.

3. Increased Security

Today’s businesses face a wide range of online threats, which often equates to financial risk. If you’re hit by a data breach or a DDoS attack, for example, it’s going to affect your professional reputation and reduce operational efficiency. To prevent this from happening, you need a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy in place. Furthermore, you need the tools and expertise to implement, monitor and update your security strategy.

Small businesses often overlook the importance of cybersecurity. After all, it’s easy to assume that major enterprises are a more likely target. However, the relatively limited security implemented by small businesses makes their systems a prime target for hackers. Fortunately, you won’t need to worry about your company’s digital security when you access managed IT services. By incorporating cybersecurity into your IT solutions package, you can protect your business and your investment.

Finding the Right IT Partner

Managed IT services offer a wide range of benefits, providing you find the right partner. As well as working with an IT firm that offers the services you need, it’s important to find a solutions provider who takes the time to get to know your business, your operations and your goals. This ensures they understand your pain points and growth plans, which allows them to provide maximum value when it comes to virtualization, business continuity and future proofing.