Do You Already Have Valuable Data? You Bet You Do

Studies have shown that for most companies, the data they have lurking in file folders, electronic media, and in the heads of employees is one of their most under-valued assets. If you are not currently leveraging your customer data, order data, production data, sales data and other key types of data, you are missing out on some important opportunities to grow your business.

You may be wondering whether your company really has data on hand – right now – that you could be using to your advantage. The answer is: you bet you do.

Here are 10 examples of data that can potentially be leveraged for better business performance through expert analysis:

1. Order history data currently housed in your online shopping cart, accounting software, or point of sales (POS) system.
2. Customer mailing addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
3. Total historical spend (revenue) data for each customer.
4. Current warehouse inventory lists.
5. Historical call logs for outbound calls to prospective customers.
6. Sales performance history organized by sales person.
7. Advertising response rate data divided by media channel.
8. Company purchase history data from vendors.
9. Pricing and product specification information pertaining to competitors’ products.
10. Website visitor history data.

This is just a partial list: you likely have 10-20 more types of valuable data lying around your place of business right now. You just need to learn where to look, how to collect it, and how to make sense of it.

Now that you have a better idea of the potential treasure trove of data that you already have at your fingertips, it is time to:

a. collect it into one place
b. organize it
c. clean it up & fill missing data portions
d. analyze it
e. start leveraging it daily to make better business decisions – and bigger profits for your organization