Data have become of the leading drivers of business success. In the beginning, it was assumed that data collection, processing, and analysis was only possible for the industry giants. But all these activities can also be possible in the small organizations in the current marketplace and with the help of technology. Businesses are now able to leverage the insights from the ever-increasing wealth and complexity of the available data to make informed decisions.

One of the most powerful features of Data is to allow the users to better understand and adapt as per the changing behaviours of the customers. In the current context, Data is being used the tackle the spread and consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic. Data allowed the businesses to understand the activities and behaviours of the customers over the internet to make better business decisions.

Most of the data gathering techniques were first used by the finance companies to detect fraud. This was done by tracking the customer behaviour that looked significantly fishy. In the area of marketing, this helps the businesses to get a 360-degree customer review. It is helping the businesses to understand what the people want to buy and what might be their future buying behaviours.

Meeting Customer Needs becomes Easy with Data

The more you understand your customer data, the easier it is to predict what they want. Data will also help you deliver the products and services in a way that is most convenient to them. As we have grown technologically, Data is helping businesses to track and convert their customers easily.

Data Needed to Understand Customers

For a lot of businesses, the initial stage can include transactional and point of sales data. This tells us what the people are buying and how much they are paying for it. It also helps businesses to understand broad consumer trends as well as local preferences. All this will help to design products and services that the businesses can be confident that the people can spend money on. Data also helps to optimize the prices at which businesses are confident that they will sell.

Another important aspect is the consumer demographic data. This helps businesses to understand what people are buying and which group of people is buying what. Businesses can use a combination of data rather than in isolation to generate useful results and make informed business decisions.

Data Governance

Businesses these days are working with the personal data of the consumers. This brings a certain set of risks and responsibilities. Thus, it is important to understand the importance of data governance. It is also important to understand the principles of data governance and how businesses can comply with the necessary regulations. This will help the businesses to develop trust among your customers if they are sharing their personal information with you.

Making the Best Use of Attitudinal Data        

Businesses are also making use of Attitudinal data, which is another source of data. This Data is collected through market research at the basic level. At a more mature level, this is known as social media sentiment analysis.

For this, there are advanced data analytics applications that involve Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The method can create automated reports covering details such as who is using the products and what are their reviews on them. This is all done by monitoring all the chats over the networks such as Twitter and Instagram.

Transaction and point of sales data are the internal data that is unique to every business and is generated by the business itself. This can also be the customer data if it is collected through schemes such as behaviour tracking or loyalty programs. Businesses can also buy customer data through external databases to generate extremely valuable customer insights.

The external data can include economic data and GDP growth to determine where the spending power is. At the same time, the meteorological data can be used to understand all the changing seasons. It is also important to understand the patterns in the changing season that change the buying behaviours of the people.

Google Trends

Businesses can also select the type of data that they can use to take advantage. This can be done with the help of Google Trends, which will tell us what people are looking for online. Another good option is Facebook’s Custom Audience service that helps businesses to get a better understanding of their audiences. This service lets the users upload all the information they have about their own customers. They can then use smart algorithms to put the adverts in front of the customers that have a familiar profile.

 Use Analytics Infrastructure

All this data and information can be put together that requires strong analytics and required infrastructure. All these capabilities let you gain all the insights that you want about the customers and how you can serve them better.

Making the Best Use of Real-Time Data

As data and analytics helps a business grow, its business capabilities get more mature. This gives power to the business to make the best use of advanced use cases such as real-time data. The overall aim is to capture the micro-moments. This also generates split-second buying opportunities that exist for small moments but can generate huge profits for the business.

The most inspiring example is Walmart, which generates petabytes of data which is based on customer buying habits. Only the up to date and recent transactions are used in the prediction algorithms. This is all because these algorithms understand the speed at which customer behaviour changes. Only the data gathered at the most recent time will be useful to tell us what is going on in the market and how the future is going to change.

The data and technology available to manage it today give unprecedented abilities when it comes to an understanding of their customers. Businesses can make predictions if it combines demographic, transactional, and attitudinal data from both internal as well as external sources. This helps the businesses to make sure that it is at the right place and is meeting their customer requirements in the best possible way.

Source – Forbes