Want to increase revenue? These 4 things will boost your data insights

Data insights play an important role in the direction a business takes. Data analysis and business intelligence have always been fundamental to making the business decisions needed to boost revenue.

This reality is especially pertinent to the financial sector, where growth is being driven by multinationals adapting to the innovation of fintech companies.

In this uniquely dynamic sector, owners of medium-sized businesses are under pressure to get a better market understanding and a more intimate knowledge of customer requirements.

Commercial performance boost

If your business is successful in optimising data analysis, you are more likely to lead in terms of commercial performance. And while an array of tools and procedures exist to help you obtain such intelligence, their incorrect application can take your business further away from its key objectives.

Trends in global mobility now mean driving revenue hinges greatly on your organisation’s flexibility. Your managers and teams are more likely to be out of the office than ever before but remote arrangements only work if supported by seamless software solutions and sound management.

If different personnel and departments operate on disparate software platforms, collaboration takes a hit. More broadly, it takes more time for various metrics to be collated to create a clear picture of your business to execute critical decisions.

Delays are avoidable and therefore unacceptable in today’s 24/7 business world as they can mean the difference between an opportunity lost or gained.

The era of big data has brought promise of big insight. As technology prices have tumbled, many business owners have jumped into digitisation, embracing app culture with limited discrimination. However, using too many of the wrong kinds of application has proven to be costly both in terms of finances and time.

Boost your firm’s data insights

Instead of spending time and money chasing app culture and digitisation, create a clear path that allows you to achieve the goals you’ve set out. Here are four ways you can focus on obtaining the right data insights for your business.

1. Use leaner approaches and cloud technology

Your business needs to consider lean approaches to data and analytics, prioritising those that shadow organisational capabilities through your employees, operations and technology. Using this approach, your team will get only the metrics it needs, calibrated to specific, revenue-driving business outcomes.

Cloud technology streamlines your business by taking the complexities associated with disjoined environments out of the equation; instead, critical data is fused to your financials, so bosses are always one click away from the whole picture.

2. Use connected metrics

Unprecedented insight is generated through connected metrics that inform at speeds you simply can’t achieve when reliant on traditional business infrastructures.

Sustainable growth revenues, for example, can be analysed against quotations or ratio of leads to orders, which in turn can be tracked to produce sales forecasts of unprecedented detail with minimum confusion or fuss.

In the same way, you can swiftly pinpoint priority accounts, clients that are at risk and business opportunities – and this means any potential pitfalls are identified and rectified with minimum disruption.

Access to more effective data enables you to drive profitability across the organisation. It’s this kind of quality information that allows your executives to pinpoint selling patterns, identify cross-selling or upselling opportunities and obtain crucial insight into business value.

3. Tap into Software as a Service

The cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are just a few of the advancing technologies that can stop the departmental plate-spinning to earn more time and escalate value through all facets of an organisation.

Tapping into Software as a Service is the best way for financial services to retain control as they adapt to the increasing volume of end-points and mine the data these provide.

In the reach for more flexible working cultures, cloud technology helps by breaking down silos due to integrated applications that update and store data in one centralised online space.

4. Opt for personalised dashboards

With personalised dashboards hosting KPIs and other critical performance metrics, your executives can plug into their IT infrastructures from almost any location to receive actionable information on a company-wide scale. It’s this flexibility and weight of knowledge at speed that makes the difference in today’s market landscapes.

When business-critical information is held in multiple locations, you can often get a falsely positive picture of KPIs and this can mask bad news.

Make the move to improve your data insights

Old legacy systems developed for past businesses are notorious for perpetuating poor visibility – important data gets hidden, causing analysts to devote too much time on information of lower value.

Cloud technology removes the old plumbing and brings information back to the surface. In physical terms, the cloud can pioneer a more general reduction in IT hardware ownership, relieving business owners of attached storage and maintenance costs.

In the bigger picture, this streamlining frees up space for innovation, allowing better testing so that products come to market more quickly. Such developments are essential in the long-term push to bring down expenditure through economies of scale.

Armed with the right intelligence at the right time, you can ensure total tailoring of your customers’ needs to new product developments.

What steps is your business taking to improve how it accesses its data insights? Let us know in the comments below.