If treated as just numbers on a spreadsheet, data often ends up gathering dust, when it could be unlocking powerful insights instead. In this blog series, we’ll be demystifying data collection, reframing it as something that tells a unique story – one that’s crucial to making smarter business decisions.
Learning to read your business data
At Geared App, we have a lot of conversations with our clients about how they can best make sense of their business data. It often starts with asking questions like: Why do you need to capture this data in particular? What are you learning from it? Is it painting a useful picture? Is it misleading?
That’s because, without digging beneath the surface, data is just abstract figures. But when treated as a narrative, data can clearly show you where your business stands, how you got here and what’s on the cards for the future.
Level up your team’s data literacy
Do your teams understand the data they’re looking at, and how it relates to their overall performance?
By focusing on data literacy – knowing how to read and work with data – companies can equip employees to make decisions that directly align with the company’s goals and values. It could be as simple as investing in some constructive resources or organising a team workshop to make sure everyone understands the data points that matter the most.
For example, it might be best for product teams to focus on user retention rates, session duration and feature usage to understand how customers interact with your product. For customer support teams, it might be customer satisfaction scores, response times and complaints resolution times.
As a result, an increased emphasis on data literacy can encourage a more proactive work culture, giving everyone the confidence to respond to changing business needs in a way that’s genuinely results-driven.
Piecing together your data puzzle
Making sense of your data is often about learning how to read between the lines. For the most part, data shows you what’s happening, but it doesn’t directly tell you why it’s happening. Therefore, we need to go beyond surface-level observation, dig deeper and map out the data in context. That way, we’re not just taking a shot in the dark, but actively using data to our advantage.
For example, let’s say a digital healthcare company notices a high rate of patients failing to complete the onboarding process for their app. At first glance, the data simply shows that X number of patients have started onboarding, but haven’t finished. But with further analysis, the company can begin to understand how to fix the problem.
Perhaps users find the process too complicated. Perhaps they struggle with technology. Or maybe there’s a bug that had previously gone unnoticed. Once the company has put together the puzzle pieces, it can make targeted changes to enhance the user experience, thereby overall helping to grow the business.
Taking lessons from the past to shape the future
Rather than treating your data points in isolation, think about them as part of an ongoing timeline, helping to guide everything from future marketing campaigns to inventory planning. When seen through a wide-angle lens, each individual data point becomes a part of your business’ long-term narrative, highlighting trends and revealing opportunities for constructive change.
For example, if a company tracks its monthly revenue and notices there always seems to be a slump in February, this could point to a valuable trend, which could be mitigated next time around. By examining its data year on year, the business is much better placed to assess its growth trajectory, making decisions that maximise future performance.
Curious about what you could learn from your business data?
The team at GearedApp have successfully helped companies of all shapes and sizes make the most of their data with user-friendly digital solutions. Whether you’re interested in building a dashboard to better understand what’s happening in your business, or you just want to find out more about how we can help improve your systems, don’t hesitate to get in touch.