Do you feel stuck in your business right now?
Does it feel like whenever you take three steps forward, you end up taking two steps back?
Sure enough, running a business is challenging. One day, you feel super aligned and know exactly where you’re going but then the next day comes and suddenly, you don’t know what goes where and who does what. It’s okay to have days when you don’t feel overly productive; when you don’t know the next step; or when everything feels like it’ll crumble down at any moment.
But just remember on days like this that you are always stronger than your calling. Otherwise, the opportunity would have never presented itself to you. That dream is planted in your heart for a reason.
Building a business is not for the faint of heart. It requires resolve, grit, perseverance, but most of all, it requires critical thinking (read more). You cannot be an entrepreneur solely driven by ambition. You also need to develop strong critical thinking abilities and logical decision-making skills. Without these two, even if you have the drive, it may not be directed towards the right mediums that can propel your company to success.
In order to do this, you need to hone one of the most important skill sets every CEO should have: Data Interpretation.
How Important Is Data Interpretation In Business?
Every move and decision you make as an entrepreneur will impact your business one way or another. Thus, your thinking process needs to be guided by the right information. Bad decisions are often a result of impulsivity and emotional-charged responses to external stimuli. This means that when you’re in a state of high emotion, whether you’re extremely angry, sad, disappointed, frustrated, or even elated, you tend to make decisions that may not positively benefit you or the company in the long run.
This is why data exists. It gives business owners the information they need to remain calm and logical when met with situations that would otherwise elicit an emotional response. When you have data, and you are actively tracking and making sense of it, you understand how certain things unfold in your business. You are able to anticipate, plan, strategize, and brace yourself so that nothing comes as a surprise.
All that being said, it is of utmost importance that you take action based on what the actual data tells you and not what you personally want or how you feel at a certain moment. Check out if you’re a logical or emotional decision maker here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/5-signs-youre-too-emotional-to-decide-whats-best-for-your/281160.
Before you can even get to interpreting data, however, you first need to figure out how you can integrate multiple sets of data to get a holistic view of what’s really going on inside your company.
Luckily, data integration experts make this task possible but most importantly, more convenient for entrepreneurs like yourself. They can help you see your business from a different angle or perspective and thus, guide you towards possibilities that you may have never even considered before.
Let’s discuss data integration.
Why Is Data Integration The Key To Getting My Business To The Next Level?
Here’s the thing: We can only understand certain things based on the level of awareness that we have. This means that “problems” wouldn’t even exist as problems if we aren’t even aware that they are problems. In the same way, solutions won’t appear as solutions if we are unaware of what they solve. And before you know it, your business is in deep trouble because of a problem you didn’t even know existed.
Let me explain this using a more specific example.
Say, you run a pastry business. You’ve got good marketing since you invested in a very talented team and you’ve had multiple posts go viral. This increased your sales drastically and you keep hitting record-breaking months, month after month. You’re happy; business is booming and your shop is busier than ever. Six months later, you see a drastic drop in sales. A 50% drop, maybe even 80.
What happens next is you will probably fall into a state of panic and start making more dumb choices along the way, like doubling your ad spend or introducing several more items on the menu that would just further increase inventory. What you’ve failed to consider is everything else that goes beyond sales numbers.
Business data comes in many forms, it’s not entirely about sales. There’s sale to expense ratios, new customer buy-ins, repeat customers, item returns, reviews, and many more. In the example above, we could infer that product satisfaction may not have been very high so while the good marketing gave the business temporary momentum, it died down just as fast because you can only serve new customers for so long. Eventually, your business’s survival will rely on customer loyalty and repeat orders.
How does data integration tie up to all of this?
With data integration, you’re not only looking at your business’s data from one angle. You are exploring it through different perspectives, comparing and contrasting one data set with multiple others and deriving your interpretation from that. If you’re able to see your business from multiple angles, you are more likely to spot issues that do not openly present themselves and are hidden in the details. Consequently, you’re able to plan around them as well.
Data integration is an important part of business and implementing it will surely get you to the next level.
