How Analytics Can Benefit Business

Companies that mismanage data miss out on business opportunities and incur unnecessary expenses – losing money.

Analytics is one of the few marketing tools that doesn't directly help in making money, but it enables businesses to reach their goals via the most optimal route.

Analytics aids in following the plan, spotting deviations in trends, and making timely corrections. What sets a leading company apart from others is, among other factors, the effective use of data about customers, expenses, and revenues, and risk management — all of which are impossible without analytics.

If analytics are properly implemented and configured within a company, making the right management decision becomes easier.

Let’s explore in more detail the tasks that analytics solves.

If business users - those who make business decisions - clearly understand KPIs and metrics, it enables them to act quickly and confidently move towards their goals. They also understand which data are needed, and when, for monitoring and decision-making. For example, if top management conducts a daily crisis status meeting at 10:00 AM, the analyst must provide the data for the report on time.

The set of analytical tools for collecting and monitoring metrics depends on the goals pursued by the company.

If online transactions on the website are important to a company, it is sufficient to connect Google Analytics and import advertising expenses into these systems. This allows for monitoring quantitative and qualitative metrics, such as ROAS or ROI, without additional effort.

When a marketer's task is to manage campaigns taking into account offline sales, a comprehensive solution for data integration, visualization, and KPI control is required - end-to-end analytics.

End-to-end analytics combines a company's product, marketing, and sales into a single controllable system, where reports are linked to actual profit and order fulfillment, considering returns.

As the portfolio of products and services diversifies, other tools are added: BI systems and predictive models using ready-made solutions or programming languages like R or Python.

End-to-end analytics is often understood as a reporting system. However, businesses do not need reports for their own sake — they need to identify growth areas in the funnel and manage risks. And do this faster than their competitors.

At the same time, a company may implement analytics tools, but making quality managerial decisions can still be a problem area. According to a McKinsey survey, 72% of surveyed top managers stated that unsuccessful strategic decisions are made in their companies as often as successful ones, or even more frequently.

The biggest area of growth in marketing and business in general is the quality of managerial decisions. Analytics plays one of the key roles here.

Analytics is important for business efficiency as it allows for making the right decisions, identifying growth areas, and managing risks.

Let's move on and see when to implement analytics tools to stay one step ahead of competitors.

In practice, there are numerous cases where managerial decisions are made without considering internal data. For example, in the early stages of a project when data has not yet been accumulated, but there is an urgent need to identify growth areas.

Businesses reasonably invest resources in product development where the Product Market Fit is being explored, and decision-making is based solely on external benchmarks and the project leader's intuition ("I feel it", "we've always done it this way").

Companies that start collecting data earlier and optimize processes with its help gain an advantage over competitors.

Following the rapid growth stage, there often comes a phase of market saturation with the product. In some cases, this leads to a diminished interest in the product or intensified competition. Many companies then start to realize that a decline in growth rates can be compensated by effective work with internal data.

The demand for analytics grows - professionals who can organize data collection, reporting systems, and help project managers and teams regularly get answers to ad-hoc questions, essentially introducing a data-driven (making decisions based on data) and data-informed (combining experience and data) culture into the company.

It sounds appealing to "introduce a data-driven culture," but more often, during the saturation phase, businesses panic about immediate issues like "why are sales dropping?" rather than building processes. To answer this, analysts need data - which may not be available.

Marketers might be familiar with another scenario: a large-scale advertising campaign focused on growth. When the campaign concludes and it’s time to assess its impact on sales, it's found that there's insufficient data for a comprehensive analysis. The analyst cannot assist the marketer in this case.

The conscious need to establish an analytical culture from the start is present in a very small fraction of projects. Even rarer are cases where analytics is specialized to meet the needs of different teams: product, marketing, sales. However, hiring an analyst is not enough to become a data-driven company.

What distinguishes a leading company from others, among other factors, is the effective use of data on customers, expenses, and revenues, and risk management – all of which are impossible without analytics.

The biggest area of growth in marketing and business as a whole lies in the quality of managerial decisions, where analytics plays one of the key roles.

Companies that start collecting data earlier and optimize processes with its help gain an advantage over competitors.

There is a growing need for analytics, which organizes data collection, reporting systems, and helps project leaders and teams regularly get answers to ad-hoc questions.
Gain valuable insights and optimize your budget with the help of analytics.