How to use data analytics in business

What do we mean by data and analytics?

Every business has data.  It is simply the record of events that take place across the business e.g. visits to the website, likes and comments on social media posts, expenses logged, emails sent and received.   Much of it is captured automatically.  Some of it we may be recording ourselves e.g. timesheet records for the time we spend working on different tasks.

It is incredibly useful.  If we can read the data, it has the potential to tell us a great deal about what’s going on within the business, and about events further afield across our community of customers, partners and suppliers.  It can therefore help us to see what to do to build greater value into the business, and grow.

To read the data, there are a few steps we need to take – work out what data we want, locate it, and access it to find answers to the questions we have about the business.

All of this is what we call ‘data analytics’, and at FiguringOutData.com we run workshops for business leaders to show them what they need to do to put it to work.

Data analytics at work

Here are some examples:

• The transport company that reduced stress levels for their drivers and therefore reduced the amount of aggressive driving and the number of road traffic infringements.
• The digital marketing agency that increased the performance of their client campaigns and the speed at which they could achieve their best performance.
• The Charity supporting children with specific needs that improved the quality of their services and developed new support programmes that attracted greater funding and new commissioning organisations.
• The Delicatessen that bounced back to pre-Covid levels of revenue through highly targeted advertising and marketing based upon a better understanding of footfall across the town.

In each case, the business leaders formed a clear idea about the questions they wanted to answer, and collected the data that would be able to get them there.

They could see from the data what had happened in the past, and what was happening now, and were then able to draw up a plan that would deliver the transformation they were seeking.

What you do in the workshops

Our workshops take you from the start – discovering how data can be used to deliver value and help a business to grow – through to drawing up a roadmap for using data in your business, which you then put to work.

Along the way you will get to grips with the tools needed to locate and access the right data, and methods for relating it to what is happening across the business.

You should then be able to hit the ground running:

• With a goal for using data to drive growth e.g. by reducing customer churn or finding new channels;
• Having built a roadmap that outlines what you will need to do, and the tools and skills required.
• With experience of the most common tools used.
• Knowing what support you may need and where it can be found.

Next steps

If you would like to know more about our programme of professional education courses and workshops, contact us at

E: hello@figuringoutdata.com

T:  0333 301 0302

Or complete our contact form and we’ll get in touch.