In this post, we reflect on some advice from Carl Reader, a prestigious expert specializing in growing the business model of many small entrepreneurs.
Data analysis, learning to delegate, using the right technology and knowing how to interpret metrics well will be key when making decisions in your company.
If you're going to make data-driven decision making the backbone of your business model, you'll need to be able to generate and analyze data quickly and accurately when you need it, and germany email list without much effort. And, more importantly, you'll need to make sure that making decisions this way becomes the norm in your company.
Below, we share and reflect on some advice provided by Carl Reader , a recognized expert in small business growth.
Sage
Tip 1: Shift the focus from the introduction to data analysis
There is one substantial factor that discourages many companies from making more data-driven decisions: the data itself .
What an irony, isn't it?
You obviously need data to make informed decisions, but gathering the right data and entering it into Excel spreadsheets, forms, or accounting software wastes so much time that you never get around to making the actual decision. Data entry slowly takes up a lot of your time, leaving you with little time to analyze it and make better decisions based on it.
So our first tip is pretty simple, but incredibly effective: automate data entry as much as possible.
Sage
The right software will be able to automatically extract figures from sales reports, invoices and Excel spreadsheets to the accounting department , reducing the number of hours spent on data entry and also limiting the possibility of human error in the process.
Tip 2: Learn to delegate
Your colleagues may be eager to make data-driven decisions, but their enthusiasm can quickly fade if they don't have access to the information they need to think and work more strategically.
Imagine a member of the sales team has a meeting in an hour and wants to present a report on the profits generated by a particular new product compared to the time it took to market.
You will have to wait until the person responsible for accounting has time to get the report, review the data, and send it.
By then, the meeting will be over, decisions will have been made, and the accounting team will have lost valuable time that would have been better spent preparing their own strategic analysis.