How to Navigate Data Overload: Turning Information Into Insight
You’re not alone! Cisco estimated in 2019 that the Internet of Things would produce over 500 zettabytes per year in data. Years later, the world is producing data at an even more rapid rate, and will only to continue to grow from here.
Every day, businesses are flooded with endless amounts of information. From employee performance information to customer habits post-transaction, it can be overwhelming to differentiate the important information from the white noise.
The endless amount of reports is overwhelming – and is it really worth it?
Of course! Studies show that companies who experience a 10% increase in the usability of their data enjoy an average revenue increase of $2 billion.
What is Data Drown?
You know that feeling when you’re trying to use data to help you make a decision, but instead of making things easier, you start to feel more and more overwhelmed by the second?
That’s data drown.
Globally, there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data produced every day. This amount of information provides both a wealth of possible insights, and an overwhelming place to start when making business decisions. So overwhelming that only 26% of business execs report using big data in their decision making.
Chances are, the remaining 74% are drowning in data rather than using it to drive their business!
If this is sounding all too familiar, there is still hope for you to swim, rather than sink, in your company’s data lake.
Determine Where You’re Going
Data is too important in today’s business operations for you to get out of the pool. Instead, you need to make the conscious effort to swim.
We know that there are endless amounts of data available to us, but do we even know where to find the data that we actually need?
If you needed to increase productivity using the data you have, would you know where to start? Would you even know what data you have access to and where to find it?
If your answer wasn’t a resounding yes, you’re in the majority. In fact, up to 60% of time spent on data dives is just looking for the relevant data. When you take 60% of all the time you spend pulling reports in a day, it really adds up! Imagine what you could do with all that free time!
As idealistic as it sounds, easy and time-efficient access to your data is closer than you think. In order to start the process, you’ll need to know what decisions you can make with data. The most common decisions revolve around:
- Finance
- Growth
- Marketing & Sales
- Customer Service
From here, you can start to determine what decisions need to be made in each department. Think of planning your data-based decisions like a funnel, you start broad and gradually drill into precise information you need.
Map it Out
Now that you have a broad idea of what you want to accomplish, you’re ready to become a data-based decision maker. According to Super Office’s blog, you can use data to make decisions in 5 steps.
- Determine and Prioritize Objectives
- Find and Present Relevant Data
- Draw Conclusions from the Data
- Plan Your Strategy
- Measure Success and Repeat
Determine and Prioritize Objectives:
Take a hint from ZIZO, and start by Zooming Out, what is the biggest piece of information that will provide you with the most insight towards your goals? Outline your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and determine what information you need to track those KPIs and where that information comes from.
Staying at a view above the trees, consider all the pieces of data that you need to gain insights about each KPI. Determine which KPIs are the most important to you and start mapping out what sources have the information you need to monitor them.
Find and Present Relevant Data:
When we’re considering massive amounts of information, there is typically way more available than necessary for business decisions and planning.
So how do you decide what you need?
This answer is deceptively simple; start big and reevaluate regularly, adding small additions until you have the big picture that you want to see.
As you map out the large pieces of information that you need, the smaller data will become less and less overwhelming.
Learn to Swim
Draw Conclusions from Data:
Once you have the relevant information, you’re ready to finally turn your drown into something useful!
Take the hard data that you’ve found and use it to draw insights about your KPIs. What is going the way you wanted it to? What isn’t?
Plan Your Strategy:
Evaluate the data and determine how the information would need to change to be better. Next, decide what factors will move that data in the right direction ad start mindfully making adjustments.
Measure Success and Repeat:
Of course no business process is complete without evaluation. After implementing your strategy, pull the same data for the same KPIs, have they improved?
If they haven’t, what other changes can improve the KPIs? What other insights would help you to create a better solution in the future?
Repeat the process and continue to do so on a regular basis. Before you know it, you’ll go from drowning in data to driving business objectives with data!
Let ZIZO Throw You a Line
Still feel like you’re treading water? The process can be overwhelming, trust us – we know! ZIZO was developed to eliminate the entire headache causing process.
By now, we know that aggregating and using your data is an incredibly powerful tool and performing data dives is a necessary and worthwhile way to use your resources in order to see your business grow.
However, it is still time consuming toperform repetitive tasks every day to pull the reports you need on KPIs and business performance. Instead,automate the process with ZIZO!
We connect all of your operating software into our common data warehouse, to eliminate the need for data dives. Using a centralized warehouse allows you to access all of your company’s relevant information without the hassle of jumping from system to system.
In addition to the ease of access, one integrated data warehouse provides you with peace of mind knowing that the information is coming directly from it’s source, leaving little room for clerical and human errors.
Once all of your information is housed in one place, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of your companies information in one place. Now, instead of spending 60% of your data dive trying to figure out what data you need and from where, you can quickly and efficiently pull reports from one easy dashboard.
ZIZO utilizes company-specific needs to determine what type of reports we map for easy access. Then, we provide all stakeholders with a completely customized dashboard that provides quick views of the most important data to them.
If swimming seems a little to exhausting for you, you don’t have to drown! Just float and let ZIZO do the work.
