Big Data For Small Business For Dummies

Chapter 11

Applying Data in Your Business: Decision Making

In This Chapter

Identifying strategic business questions to improve your business

Finding and analysing the data to help answer those questions

Communicating and acting upon what the data tells you

I believe data should be at the heart of strategic decision making in businesses, whether those businesses are huge multinationals or small family-run operations. Data can provide insights that help you answer your key business questions such as ‘How can I improve customer satisfaction?’ Data leads to insights; business owners and managers can turn those insights into decisions and actions that improve the business. This is the power of data.

In this chapter I look at the process for applying data to your decision making – from identifying your key business questions to finding data, analysing it and incorporating insights from the data into the business.

This process is broken down into ten steps and I explore each step. Don’t be tempted to skip steps or jump ahead to juicier parts – the strategic steps are as important (if not ...