How Data is driving Business Decisions?

How Data is Driving Business Decisions?

Technology is quickly changing the world as innovations are changing the ways businesses function and think in order to keep a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing environment around them. The world of data is quickly becoming one of the hottest trends in the business world as many companies are starting to invest heavily in the field as it is becoming a pillar of success for themselves. Companies nowadays are using data to find new trends in the market and their business, composition, figure out the way their customers are interacting with their company, and other useful information that helps them make more informed B2B decisions. 

A company who is interested in investing in data analytics teams needs to consider several factors when deciding whether or not it is worth their time and money. Before investing companies need to recognize that the information they're using has the ability to be put to good use to help the company, they can use the information to track the usage of the website by monitoring the traffic of their customers; this will give them the opportunity to better cater to the needs of their customers. A company can use this information better market their company and the products/services that they're offering. This is extremely useful for e-commerce companies as it will help boost their efforts by allowing them to analyze information, even if the individual is not the most tech savvy. Companies can also feed this information to their sales and product development teams to help change the strategy of the organization based upon the needs and wants of their customers. 

When managers start to use analytics in their day-to-day work life, the position themselves at an advantage as they can make better decisions by better managing risk, improve efficiency in their operations, and help increase profits for their organizations. Business models for many organizations are changing as analytics becomes more mainstream as companies are being exposed to information they never previously had available to themselves. The way they used to make decisions is a thing of the past as they're able to use analytics to make quick fact-based decisions. Research has shown that companies who invest in analytics teams are significantly more successful than the ones who do not. The are many forms of analytics that companies can use to give themselves a competitive advantage these include descriptive statistics, predictive statistics, prescriptive statistics to name a few.

Companies can also for deficiencies in their current operations and business model by using analytics. They look for changing trends and abnormally then once they identify the issue they can strategically think of a way to confront the topic at hand in the operations or business model as a whole. In the volatile world that we live managers of companies are always looking for ways to give their organization a competitive advantage to help drive better levels of success for their organizations and the changing business models that make them up. Analytics provide them with the ability to find trends in their organization based upon facts to help better make decisions to increase profits.

Questions:
1. In what ways do you think in your future job you could use analytics to help you make better decisions?

2. Do you think using data has given managers more or less power when it comes to making decisions as fact based stats can be difficult to argue with. Why?

3. Could you see in the future positions that are heavily analytical becoming automated by computers, making the field less demanding for humans?


Sources:
How does Data Analytics Help Drive Better Business Decisions?
https://socialnomics.net/2018/05/01/how-data-analytics-helps-to-drive-better-business-decisions/

Using Analytics for Better Decision-Making
https://towardsdatascience.com/using-analytics-for-better-decision-making-ce4f92c4a025