This Is The Biggest Analytics Mistake Startups & SMEs Are Making

Is your startup or SME is not using data analytics? This is your wake-up call!

Tech giants, global enterprises, and large-scale businesses have been cashing the benefits of business analytics for a long time. However, startups and SMEs are falling behind. A recent study from One Poll stated that 56% of SMEs rarely check their business data, while 3% have never looked at it.

The advantages of using data analytics to run all sizes of enterprises are common industry knowledge. It has a significant impact on an organization's ability to make better business decisions, identify areas to cut costs, and drive more profits.

How Will Startups Benefit?

The fundamental benefit of analytics is that it will enable growth that will drive the business towards profits. For startups and SMEs, business analytics will reveal hidden opportunities, identify trends and patterns, problem areas, and success flows that people previously could not ascertain. Risk is a vital part of any startup. Looking at data and numbers can help avoid those risks and ensure steady ROI.

The foundation of every startup is the idea, which determines the success of the business. To know if the idea is solid, extensive market research is the answer. Through market research, a startup can gauge its target audience, customer demands, and understand data analytics. Going through engagement metrics and feedback from the customers is equally important. Google Analytics is a free tool that can be used.

Another advantage of analytics for a startup is motivation. Startup launches no longer attract the same kind of attention that they used to. Tech journalists nowadays are more focused on stories around growth and success. To show a glimpse of your business in the public eye, it is important to use analytics to keep the necessary metrics ready. The same metrics can be shown to the staff to keep their morale boosted and let them know of the progress they are making.

What Is Holding Back Startups?

A major reason for startups to not adopt analytics in their business practices is the prohibitive costs. While the technology is cheap and open source programs like Tableau are as good as some expensive tools, the task of undergoing training is a tedious process. The One Poll survey also revealed that SMEs failed to look at data because they devoted their time elsewhere. SMEs need to appreciate the value of the insights that data provides and allocate time in analyzing the data.

Of course, hiring a dedicated data analysis team might be an expensive task for startups and SMEs but because the amount of data is way less, a dedicated person can do the job. Few basic data courses are enough to do what a startup needs and then all one has to do is have a strategy that aligns with the business goals.

Another reason that is holding startups back is the belief that smaller data sets will be limited to only a few factors that won't be worth it. This is untrue because a lot of other established businesses also depend on smart and fast data that concerns small data sets. For SMEs, smaller data sets are an advantage hiding in the shadows. In most cases, smaller data sets mean fewer queries which allow the business to focus on precise problems.

The most powerful business insight will mean very little if the startup lacks the ability to act on it on time and leverage it for its advantage. With clean, properly categorized, and correlated data, analytics can single-handedly change a startup's outlook of their business future.