Most businesses have more data than they realize. The challenge is to maximize the use of data for insight, turning it into a competitive advantage.
Here are three questions you ask to make a shift from collecting data to distilling insight for faster decision-making, waste less time in meetings, and identify threats and opportunities before your competitors do.
- What is the cause?
Data is a measurement that tells what happened. For instance, revenue is down 18% this quarter.
When you ask “why revenue is down,” you reveal the cause. It could be due to a major discount campaign your competitor ran that targeted your customer base. The insight on cause enables you understand factors that led to the current state.
- What to do now?
To connect cause with information on what your competitor did, you add context to the situation.
This question triggers effort to combine business direction and judgement to develop response options. While it takes minutes to pull data from your application(s), compiling the findings enables you do a proper evaluation of the options and choose one action that is most effective.
- How urgent is it?
Comparative analyses of data give you a reason to act to correct course.
For instance, sales data on your top salesperson shows that the close rate was 60% in the last quarter. It is 50% higher than other salespersons.
If your top sales person is the only one who follows up within 2 hours when the rest average 3 days, you know you are losing deals due to slow response times. The cost of inaction is clear. You need to change the behavior quickly.
These three questions provide guidance to your team to cut through noise and be proactive. When your team establishes the discipline to address them consistently, they become proficient in challenging themselves. The end outcomes are better informed decision-making and more coherence in how they tackle problems, leading to impactful results.
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