3 Big Mistakes That Businesses Make With Data
The data revolution happened so quickly that a lot of businesses didn’t really know how to react to it. A decade ago, companies weren’t collecting a huge amount of data about their customers.
But now, every single interaction that you have with people is collected and analyzed. If you know how to use that data properly, it can really improve your business. The problem is, a lot of businesses have this massive amount of data on business and they just don’t really know what to do with it.
Sometimes, this leads to businesses using data in the wrong way and it can even harm your business. If you’re trying to use your data more effectively, it’s important that you avoid these common mistakes.
#1 Poor Security
Security should be your number one concern when thinking about data. That information is useful to you, but it’s also useful to criminals.
If people can steal customer credit card information or details about them like their address etc. those customers are at risk of fraud. Data loss like that has a huge impact on your business because customers lose trust in you and it’s incredibly hard to build that trust back up again.
If you think that your security isn’t up to scratch, you need to enlist the services of a good IT company to help you implement new software that can protect your data (click for more info on outsourcing your IT security).
If you’re not protecting all of the data that you hold properly, you risk data loss and that can have catastrophic effects on your business so that should be your first priority.
#2 Separating Data
There are a lot of different systems within your company that is collecting data. For example, your website collects data about how many people are visiting, what percentage of them are converting, and how effective your online ads are.
Your marketing software is collecting data on who is responding to your campaigns, how much you’re spending, and what kind of return you’re seeing on your investment. Often, companies will use the data collected by their website to make improvements to their website.
That’s great, but what can it tell you about your marketing campaign? What can your sales data tell you about your website performance? All of the separate data that you collect comes together to help you build a better picture of who your customers are, what they want, and how you can offer it to them.
But if you’re considering that data separately you aren’t seeing that.
#3 Lack Of Experts
The truth is, you’re not an expert in analyzing and utilizing all of that data, so don’t pretend to be. You might be able to pick out some trends in that data and use it to make changes to your business, but you’re probably missing a lot.
That’s why it’s important that you’re employing a professional data scientist to manage it for you.
Big data can be so useful, but most businesses aren’t seeing the full potential because they’re making these common mistakes.
Has your business ever made these mistakes with your data?
