Knowledge is power in business, and data is the fuel that creates this power. It is estimated that by 2020, data volume will reach 44 trillion gigabytes. Being able to harness the power of this data through data science is extremely valuable. Data science uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge from data and leveraging this data to take major decisions is a key strategic practice for any business.
Taking an analytical approach based on numbers, facts, and statistics can supply a reasonable solution that might not have seemed apparent at first. Because of insights that data science can offer, more and more businesses are utilizing the power of data science to make evidence-based decisions, promote employee training, and understand their customers. Investing in a data science expert or data science technology can begin to add value to your business in these five meaningful ways:
1. Better decision making with quantifiable evidence
Data needs to be at the fingertips of every company’s decision maker. This can be problematic at times, since roughly 80% of all data is unstructured, and needs predictive analytic tools to gain insights on that data. By pulling numbers and statistics through data science, your business can create predictive models to simulate a variety of possibilities.
With this, businesses can learn which solution to take for the best possible outcome and be prescribed logical, best-case scenario actions to take to improve performance. Plus, by recording performance metrics and analyzing them over time, your company becomes smarter and more efficient at making decisions based on recurring trends.
2. Improving the relevance of your product
Data science methodologies can explore historicals, make comparisons to competition, analyze the market, and ultimately, make recommendations of when and where your product or services will sell best. This can help a company understand how their product helps others and, as needed, question existing business processes.
This constant analysis and reflection using data science provides a deep understanding of the market’s response to your company’s products and services. By taking a hard look at how your product is being used the most, you can rethink your model to ensure you’re offering the solutions that your customers need.
3. Recruiting the best talent
Recruiting can be an exhausting effort, but with data science, this process becomes faster and more accurate. With all of the data points available on talent due to social media, corporate databases, and job sites, companies can work through these data points and use analytical methods to find the candidates who best fit the organization.
Mining this existing data on your applicants means finding employees who will actually fit your company culture, and not just look good on paper. This is especially important if you are receiving a high number of applicants and looking to fill a role quickly. Working smarter and not harder through data science methods can ensure you’re still filling that position with the most qualified candidate.
4. Training staff
Even with the right staff, keeping everyone informed and up-to-date can be a daunting task. Data science can pull insights that your employees need to know. The insights and knowledge gained can then be used to populate online knowledge base software or IT documentation software that holds crucial knowledge for employees to refer.
By pulling hard data and providing the statistics and facts for employees that they can access anytime, you are creating a smart, savvy team that can use these insights to drive more business.
5. Finding your target audience
It is estimated that we create roughly 2.5 billion GBs of data per day. With this ever-growing amount of data, collecting what’s important for your customers and your business can be a struggle. Every piece of data that your company collects from your customers – whether it be social media likes, website visits, or email surveys – contains data that can be analyzed to understand your customers more effectively.
By using data science with the information your customer provides, you can combine data points to generate insights to target your audience more effectively. This means you can tailor services and products to particular groups. Finding correlations between age and income, for example, can help your company create new promotions or offers for groups that may not have been accessible before.
Implementing data science methodology throughout your business can add value in a variety of ways across decision making, recruiting, training, marketing, and more. Data analysis can lead to making well-informed decisions that allow your company to grow in smart, strategic ways. Taking the time to use data science and discover the evidence behind your performance is a tool that every business should find valuable.
About the Author
Robin Singh is a Technical Support Executive. He is an expert in knowledge management and various Knowledge base tools. Currently, he is a resident knowledge management expert at ProProfs. In his free time, Robin enjoys cycling and sky diving.
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Excellent Article. I am new to this field and I admire the way you explained it. I will try my best to implement these process in my company.