For quite some time, data has been used to mainly refer to information stored or exchanged between computers or over the internet. This is why you will hear of internet data, data bundles etc. This is however just one way of looking at it. Data comes in varieties. Precisely, data is information contained in a medium such as a computer, a person’s brain, a mobile phone, or a book (for example, a cash-book or a receipt book contains sales and customer data.).
Note that Data, can exist as text, video, image, or audio.
What Is Data From a Business Perspective?
As we have already discussed above, data is information. In this case, data is information regarding a business entity. This information describes your customers, your products, and your market.
For a business entity, data might include the following.
- sales records
- customer contacts
- customer feedback
- Product/services
- Business Expenses
- Marketing channels
- Number of competitors
- Location of the business
- Capital
- Number of employees/workers
- Number of customers a day
- Reviews and ratings
- Amount of discounts given
- Number of shops/stores
- Types of customers and so on
So far, I hope it is quite clear what data is and more importantly what business data is. In the next segment, we are going to look at information to help us understand this concept even better.
What is Information?
Information is what you get once you organize your data. It is defined as classified or organized data that has some meaningful value for the user. Information is also the processed data that is used to make business decisions and take action. Therefore, information must possess the desired accuracy for decision-making. It should also be Up-to-date and available when it is needed.
A Little About Big Data
As mentioned earlier, Data can be found in different forms and formats. Generally, you will notice that overtime has you gather or store your data, It keeps increasing in volume, variety, and even the speed. As your business grows, you start serving more customers more frequently and also start getting new customers from different places. This eventually will result in you having so much data kept in your books apps or other medium.
Eventually this will result into big data. big data as the words suggest is technically used to refer to large amounts of data that varies and changes and increases quickly.
If, for example, you were to gather all the data of all retailers in Kenya over the last 10 years, you would have big data.
Uses of data for a business – becoming data driven.
It is commonly argued that data is the new fuel. We, at phindor, say that “where there is data smoke, there is business fire”. This means that once you understand the role that is played by data in your business, growth becomes obvious.
Let us look at some of the major ways data is helpful for a business.
- Customer acquisition and retention.
- Optimizing marketing strategies
- Creating a product pricing strategy
- Improving sales
- Optimizing business expenses and more.
The results of you using data to run your business are simple, You improve on your revenues quickly and with lesser resources.
In the next article, we will deeply look at these benefits and explain the processes and what you need to do to achieve this.
Remember, there is no big or small business when it comes to implementing data-driven techniques to grow a business.
Till next time, cheers🥂.
