Every market is crowded these days, and standing out from the crowd has become imperative to any brand that wants to survive. Companies do this through a range of activities, creative branding, product benefits, marketing activities and more. All of which create data.
In order to compete effectively SMEs need to use this data to help drive sales and really understand how their business is performing, which products they are being accepted in the market and which customers are the key to success. This is where data analytics comes in.
Organising and analysing data that is already present in the business in a way that both short-term decisions and long-term strategic goals can be made, removing any ‘gut feel’ that may exist and basing the decisions on factual data.
What is Data Analytics?
Data analytics is the process of modelling data to enable an understanding of historical sales trends which in turn can help decision making.
The way in which the data is modelled and displayed is key to how effective sales analytics can be, but yet an effective model should provide key metrics, filters and information that can be used as part of an overall sales analysis process.
Do SMEs have enough data?
Many SMEs don’t think they have enough data to analyse effectively. Which is why they don’t really bother with analysing it. They have heard terms like ‘big data’ and think that it doesn’t apply to them.
But they are wrong.
For example, with every purchase there are at least five bits of data that are collected; what was bought, how many, when, where and how much was paid. Multiply that by all of the purchases made every month, every year. That’s thousands of bits of data that can tell you a story.
What are the benefits of Data Analytics?
Having an effective sales analytics platform will allow for a simple analysis of a company’s data, providing answers to some of the key questions that businesses have, such as ‘which products are driving growth’, or ‘what are the most profitable products or customers’, helping drive future decisions around product positioning, customer retention, pricing, marketing, innovation, and more.
SMEs need to make sure that they can get the answers to their key questions quickly and easily in order to make timely decisions in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Getting the most out of your data.
Most SMEs are trying to manage data in spreadsheets. But while spreadsheets have the capability these days to handle large sets of data the end result is usually a large spreadsheet full of numbers that is hard to read, hard to understand and takes hours to update every month. None of which is of any real benefit to a business.
The best place for any business to start with its data analytics is through a Business Intelligence (BI) tool. Modern BI Tools have the ability to ingest large amounts of data, process it and display it through dashboards and reports that are easy to interpret. But BI Tools are complex and require specialist data knowledge, which is something that is most likely beyond most SMEs.
Introducing Prebuilt BI Dashboards from Sontai
Sontai has developed pre-built BI Dashboard solutions allowing SMEs to leverage all the power of BI Tools, without the need for specialist knowledge or IT support. The Sontai dashboards plug and play into systems that SMEs use every day, providing quick set-up and easy-to-understand visuals, eliminating the need for copying/pasting data into spreadsheets and reading large grids of numbers.
Saving time, improving data-driven decision making and helping drive your business forward.
With Sontai you can have all of the data analytics capabilities you need, giving you a complete picture of your business right at your fingertips.
If you want to learn more about how you can implement the Sontai prebuilt data analytics platform can help your business, book a free, no-obligation discovery call today.
What our Clients say:
“There are some well thought out, pre-made reports which are really good. Easy to set up and use and didn't have to break the bank for it.” Igor Toma, CEO; NUACOM
“Working with Sontai has step changed how we view and understand our business performance. The platform has enabled us to integrate all of our business and finance models which gives us ease of access to our data, all in one place.” Neil Hubbard, Commercial Director; Noisy Snacks
“These simple to use reports have been invaluable. This will help my business grow from strength to strength. I don’t know where I would be without it!” Tim Bisson, Founder & CEO; Tack Room Distillery