What story is your data telling you about your business?

Basic reviewing of analytics and data is part of the daily workflow for most businesses. But if you can learn to read between the lines, not just see the obvious, your data can reveal some insightful stories that will help guide you.

For any business, the volume of data can be overwhelming. Retail giant Walmart, for example, really has its work cut out, with more than 240 million customers shopping online and in its physical stores. There may be a mountain of data available, but that comes with some challenges.

In order for the business to effectively sift through the multiterabytes of online and mobile shopping data across twelve websites, Walmart hired technologists around the globe to pull the best insights and improve the eCommerce customer experience.

How to manage and make sense of your data

Speaking at the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2016 Big Show conference, vice president of global data for @walmartlabs, Jaya Kolhatkar, highlighted four steps for making data work for you:

1. Data cleaning: Ensure your data is accurate and high quality, and that names, phone numbers, and emails are anonymised and encrypted where appropriate.
2. Hire talent: Surround yourself with data scientists, business analysts and developers with a wide range of expertise.
3. Make the data available: Ensure your protected and anonymised data is accessible so your team doesn’t have to be slowed down by bureaucracy.
4. Embrace different tech: @walmartlabs was able to build an infrastructure for the data after adopting multiple BI and analytic tools.

The results? Walmart quickly understood that customers needed an app to make the purchase process easy. The app now contains check-in, online orders and item store location features to remove any barriers to purchase.

Use data to report, analyse and forecast

You don’t have to access thousands of technologists or become a data scientist to get value out of your data.

For TrueCar, an auto price aggregation service, the small business needed a way to forecast new car sales and compile data from multiple sources. It was vital they could communicate predicative insights to investors and sell to leading automotive research sites.

The business switched to a SAS solution, Office Analytics for Midsize Business, which introduced a dashboard function displaying site metrics, marketing spend and ability to forecast car sales within 1% accuracy.

For other SMEs, forecasting and reporting might be essential for emerging trends, predicting competition, or analysing customer behaviour.

If you find yourself relying on familiar tools like spreadsheets, or are hesitant to invest in new tech, consider how data can steer you towards new opportunities by better understanding the story that it’s trying to tell.

Written by: Thea Christie