Powerful insights exist to guide our business decisions. They define our actions by providing accurate data, grounded in lived experience and fact. But in order to act on information, you first need to be able to access it.
You can have the all the best intentions and drive to revolutionise your business through data. But even with all in the will in the world, your enthusiasm is rendered as pure guesswork without the appropriate accessible insights to hand.
The disconnect often arises when organisations have a distorted view over just how accessible that information is.
According to a recent study conducted by consulting firm, Forrester…
“74% of companies desire to be “data-driven”, but only 29% won the game at connecting analytics to action.”
Forrester
Actionable insights undoubtedly help a company to identify what action they should, or should not, take.
Without an ability to accurately access the data and gauge what that action is, companies are making critical decisions with one hand tied behind their back.
How To Provide Accessible Insights
KPMG undertook a study to explore exactly how actionable accessible insights actually are. Alarmingly, they found that…
“4 out of 10 chief executives pointed towards an inability to implement the right data technology.
85% also stated that they strive hard, yet struggle, to implement the proper solutions from their data insights.”
KPMG
Evidently, the will is there. However, issues arise in the execution.
Looking to the future, businesses of all sizes cannot afford to rely on guesswork for their long term success. Equally, truly data informed teams recognise the difference between actionable insights and vanity metrics.
There’s little point collating surface level insight solely for the purpose of blowing your own trumpet.
By collecting data that has an ability to expose weaknesses and a workforce that can turn that data into actionable insight, companies can make significant improvements to customer experience and business processes.
So how can you actually provide these accessible insights?
The infographic below begins to explore various approaches but ultimately it all boils down to the same point.
Collect the figures that matter most to you and deliver that insight to those who need it most.
Nobody needs everything. Effective, actionable insights emerge from providing people with more of what they need and less of what they don’t.
No surplus noise. No drowning in numbers. Simply the right information, to the right person, at the right time.
Access Insights To Know Your Customers
Ask yourself, how many times have you consciously affected something in the way you intended without having the right information to do so?
Ensuring an outstanding customer experience is too important to leave to chance.
By collecting and reviewing customer data, you can begin to know precisely what they do and don’t like about your business as a whole.
From this position of improved understanding, you can begin to alter your offering to match their expectations.
Whether that constitutes greater engagement through the sales process or a more readily available service team, accessible insights facilitate reactive and proactive process enhancements.
Access Insights To Enact Positive Change
Knowing the “why” when observing any data trend is critical to understanding how to take action.
Having the ability to interpret the answer to this question will equip you with the information you need to replicate a positive result and avoid a negative one.
Roadblocks, bottlenecks and other process problems will, if left alone, begin to multiply and stifle your ability to run effectively and efficiently.
By facilitating accessible insights, you can break down the specifics as to where the chain is broken. Making this data digestible for those whom it affects allows them to use their accumulated expertise to enact a positive change.
Rather than unloading an overwhelming data dump, a supply of focussed information quickly becomes accessible insights which in turn become actionable improvements.
Access Insights To Ensure Consistency
If it’s not easy to access the information you need, the reality is, both for yourself and your teams, you probably won’t make the effort to engage with it.
Any best practices or consistent processes just won’t stick and will become useless relics of a short lived insight burst.
Being able to access a clear, uniform process helps make next steps clear and obvious for all, promoting accountability and ensuring consistency in your service.
Automating alerts when important stages in a journey are skipped over or missed entirely guarantees information doesn’t slip through the cracks. Making this accessible to all who need it ensures a collaborative environment where work is neither abandoned or duplicated.
It’s simply useless to have insights that can’t be actioned. While this may seem obvious, it’s something that’s often widely overlooked.
By making your data accessible, you make it actionable.
Then, and only then, can you ensure consistency, enact positive change and guarantee an outstanding customer experience.
Intrigued to learn more? Check out our Insights Hub to keep your business at the cutting edge.
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- May 4th, 2021