Data is the new oil. But what should we do with it? But what can we achieve with it? How can we convert raw data into actionable information in order to help your company grow and succeed? The following five steps will walk you through the process of going from collecting data to presenting results.
Collecting data “To achieve efficient processing, receiving, analyzing, and distributing the customer journey, the organization needs to establish a basis and identify the sources of the data necessary for consuming the data on-site”.
Step 1: Data collection
First and foremost, you need to collect data. There is a plethora of tools and sources to choose from, among them are surveys, web analytics, email tracking, and social media monitoring.
Before you do anything, make sure you understand why you need the data and what you want to do with it. Once you’ve gathered your facts, clean and organize them.
Step 2: Data analysis
With clean and organized data, you can now move on to analyzing it. You can use quantitative, statistical, and machine learning methods to recognize data trends and patterns depending on what you wish to accomplish.
Here are the most typical options:
- Descriptive statistics: Provides data summary, such as mean, median, mode.
- Inferential statistics (or data science): Generally elaborate on the entire population based on specific sample data.
- Machine learning: Machine learning algorithms can learn from data and make predictions.
Step 3: Data visualization
After analyzing your data, you need to see if you can visualize it too. Visualization can be done using multiple charts and graphs to make it easier to see the data trends.
This step is important in the data-to-actionable-insights since visualization can allow seeing the data from a new angle and spot patterns and trends that were not able to see before.
Step 4: Taking action
The last step is acting towards appropriate insights. Action may include changing product and service, launching a new campaign, improving processes or being more efficient.
It is essential to keep track of the actions to understand whether the conducted changes are working as expected while constantly polishing the tactics.
Conclusion
The process of turning the data into actionable insights is time-sensitive and takes a lot of effort. It is definitely something that requires time and energy. However, with a firm wish and desire to open, it can become a powerful tool for better business growth and improved decision-making.
Here are some tips for finding your actionable insights:
- Define the final goal: What outcomes do you want to achieve by utilizing data? Understand the final goal which you would like to reach with relevant data.
- Use appropriate tools: Data analysis tools such as SQL, R, Python, etc., can help to collect and analyze data while tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Excel spreadsheets will assist in making the information visible.
- Collaborate with experts: If you lack expertise on how to analyze data, work with a data analyst or find data-driven marketers or even data consultants.
- Be patient: It takes time to turn data into insights you can act on. There are not going to be results within a day or more.
The mentioned tips would help drive your data from collection to action.
