Do you really know how well your business is performing?
When you’re making a profit, you may lull yourself into a false sense of security. Although you’re making money, there’s always a chance that you’re not doing as well as you could.
When that’s the case, only detailed levels of data will propel your business into a more profitable state.
When you start using a data dashboard and data visualization techniques, you’ll gain a thorough understanding of what’s happening with your business. You may want to think of your data dashboard as being like your car dashboard.
It moves beyond simply telling you that your engine (the business) is running and lets you know how well it’s performing in certain areas. If you use yours correctly, you can generate more profit for your company.
Analyze what’s working
When you’re trying to drive sales and increase profits, you probably use a range of tactics. From advertisements, special offers, and discounts, it’s important to link each one with a measurable change in sales to determine your ROI.
If you employ a sophisticated data dashboard will analyze where you’ve made money and where you’ve lost it. Using the data it presents to you, you can separate effective marketing techniques from those that aren’t worth your time.
From there, you can ditch the practices that don’t work and embrace those that do. You might even want to take your analytics a step further by experimenting with improvements.
Focus on the moves that helped you make money and decide with your team whether there are changes you can make. Introduce the changes gently and continue using them if you see your profits start to rise.
Monitor customer feedback with interactive data
As one of your strongest Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), customer feedback makes a big difference to your profit margins. When you’re not listening to customer feedback, you’re missing out on ways to improve. Your customers are your eyes and ears when it comes to profit-killing mistakes or opportunities to make more money.
The right business intelligence data dashboard will take customer feedback and present it in a way that allows you to spot trends. Using this interactive data, you may notice that your customers love a particular product or service, but that they’d love it even more if you took a different approach.
Similarly, you might find that they want you to do something more often during a particular season. When you start introducing the changes you want your customers to see, you can analyze their success.
Doing this prevents you from blindly investing money on a new approach and failing to realize that it isn’t working. It also helps you to see when your investments are resulting in a significant increase in profit.
Assess and adjust poor performing areas in real-time
A lot of top-level data dashboards now provide real-time results.
So if one area of your business begins performing poorly, you can start making adjustments and measure their impact in real-time.
When you’re not having to wait for delayed analytics, you’re able to ditch tactics that don’t work before you lose too much money.
In some cases, your business may start to suffer because of factors outside of your control. International events, adverse weather, and political disputes can all force your profits downward.
By using a data dashboard, you can see how each area is performing as an event happens and implement contingency plans to prevent them from having too much of a negative impact.
Create alerts for events you can action quickly
Your dashboard is constantly ticking along in the background. Because of this, you’re free to check it for changes at any time. Although checking it for changes is effective to an extent, you’re a busy person who may fail to notice an event before it’s too late.
To prevent that from being a problem, you can create alerts for events that you’re able to act quickly. One example of this is taking a different approach to your social media campaigns. While some campaigns will see your profits soar, others will have the opposite effect.
By setting up an email alert that lets you know a campaign has induced a drop in profit, you can pull it before the situation worsens. Similarly, you may want to set up an alert for KPIs such as a spike in customer complaints.
By giving yourself the chance to respond to complaints quickly, you can save your reputation and reduce your risk of losing too much money.
Encourage your employees to perform well
Don’t treat your dashboard as a document that’s for your eyes only. Although you don’t want to make all the data open to everyone, there are certain types of data you’ll want to share.
If a particular department is performing well, make sure you share the data with them. Employees who see their success in a data format may feel more motivated to try their best later. When they remain motivated, they’re more likely to turn a profit for your organization.
Similarly, if your employees have battled their way through a slump recently or they’ve been charged through a challenging season, share their success with them.
This is particularly effective when they’re working toward a bonus or when they have shares in the company’s end of year profit. Being able to see how far they’ve progressed and how far they have to go can help them push themselves toward their target.
Target the right markets
When you want to branch out with your business, you need to make sure you’re targeting the right markets. For example, if you’re currently targeting Millennials successfully, but you don’t feel as though they’re the only people who’ll love your product, where do you go from there?
Your dashboard will allow you to experiment with targeting different markets. You can refine your niche as much as you see necessary and see where the real money flows in. Once you have the data in front of you, you can use it to refine your marketing campaigns and see your profits improve.
From looking at big data to tracking your business’s KPIs, you need to be able to look at and digest what the data is telling you quickly. With the right data dashboard design, you can increase your business’s profit and limit mistakes. Now all you need to do is find an analytics data dashboard design agency that your organization can work with.
How much do you really know about how your company is doing? Don't stress, we can help.
Understanding your company’s performance is not just about getting access to increasing and decreasing numbers; real understanding comes from getting answers to questions that begin with “Why?”
