Unlocking the Power of Data for Small Businesses: How Data Implementation Drives Business Growth and Success

Formerly an advantage, data is now a mandatory aspect of doing business at the highest level. For many small business owners, it’s a word that sounds expensive and maybe even a little intimidating. Both feelings are valid. Data implementation can be very complicated, and in certain cases, pricey. 

However, you don’t have to be on the Fortune 500 list to use it either. In this article, we take a look at how businesses of any size can use data to improve their operations and grow. 

READ: Battling the “Data Wheel of Death” in Business Development

Myth: Only big businesses can use data

Fact: Data implementation is more accessible now than it ever has been before. Say you own a coffee shop. 

Actually, I own a boutique—

Coffee shop. And you want to open up a second location in the town of Smallville. You’re excited, but also nervous. What if our opening doesn’t go so hot and we never take off? To make sure that doesn’t happen, you decide to take to social media. 

Your plan is to launch a month-long ad campaign that will generate awareness and get a little bit of a buzz going so that you have a full house on opening day. You aren’t a marketing professional, but you know your way around a tweet. This might work.

And for the first week, it does… some of the time. And other messages? Well, they don’t seem to get noticed at all. What’s going on here?

The answer to that question lies in the data. By looking at the numbers that almost every social media platform supplies either for free or at a low cost to business accounts, you can see when your users are active, and what type of content they gravitate to.

Knowing this, you can further hone your communications efforts so that all of your messages land. You’re using data, and it’s hardly costing you a dollar. 

READ: Don’t Get Left Behind — Top 8 Social Media Trends for 2023

Hiring a business analyst

A business consultant will take data implementation to the next level by using advanced business algorithms to help connect you with solutions that are specific to your goals. Small businesses often hire them at times of great change. Maybe you are expanding. Maybe something in your business model just isn’t clicking the way you expect it to. 

The business consultant will come in, take a look at the numbers, talk to your staff and help you come up with a bespoke solution that is specific to your needs. 

Really big companies might have a business analyst on staff. Most will just hire them on a freelance basis. This is definitely a financial step or two up from using the free analytic tools that come with most social media companies, but at the same time, it is more accessible than many people might first assume. 

And the best part is that like so many other data implementation practices, it will pay for itself in the long run. 

Data in accounting

Data is also used on the financial side of things to help make revenue more predictable. You are a subscription meal plan service. 

I thought I was a coff—

Sending your subscribers food. Your pricing model is such that you have a basic subscription cost, and then optional upgrades. The customer pays a little bit more, and they get premium ingredients or tools that are necessary for the meal or organic ingredients or — use your imagination. 

As a subscription business, your revenue should be easy enough to calculate. Except it isn’t. Because new people come in, but old people leave. Payments come in late, or not at all. Summer months seem to be slow for some reason and — and the bottom line is that you never know exactly how your finances are going to look at the end of a given month. 

READ: How To Deliver a Personalized Subscription Experience

An accountant can help you get to the bottom of things by taking a look at your data. Good, tech-driven analytic reporting will provide charts that help you understand where your money is coming from. They will also supply context. 

For example — each month you get X number of new customers. Y number of customers leave. Z number of customers sign up for premium products. 

Seeing this breakdown, you’re not only well-positioned to plan for the future, but you can also work on boosting the good numbers and reducing the bad ones. “Oh, man. The reason we couldn’t calculate revenue before was because our churn was super high. We need to work on retention.” Or…

“It turns out upper-middle-class women really don’t mind paying a little bit extra for premium mushroom sauce. Maybe we can find a way to expand our sales in that department.”

In business, information is power. Use everything available to you. 

Andrew Deen has been a consultant for startups in a number of industries from retail to medical devices and everything in between. He implements lean methodology and is currently writing a book about scaling up business.