One of our team members recently told their daughter that they were older than Google. Their daughter gave them a crazy look—not sure if she thought they were THAT old or thought they were lying. For someone her age, Google has always been around. If you were born before 1989, you, too, are older than Google. In addition to Google, technology as a whole has evolved considerably over the last 20 years. What once was data we had to spend hours analyzing to come up with a meaningful number (only to have it be outdated by the time we receive it) is now just a click away. Even more, since the smartphone boom in the late 2000s that data is now available at our fingertips any time we want it.
This change in the way we obtain data has impacted our personal lives in countless ways, but for businesses, it goes even further. Today, businesses can monitor a plethora of figures, counts, and percentages all in real-time, giving owners and managers access to KPIs they never had prior. Recently, the Vesta Thrive team discussed a few benefits of businesses having access to data at their fingertips. Accessible data brings benefits like:
- Accuracy and Efficiency – Having payable and receivable data available makes it quick and easy to find items that need to be paid, view funds coming into your business, and monitor balances in accounts. All this combines to provide owners with a live-action snapshot of where they stand financially.
- Establishing Baselines – The whirlwind of the day-to-day can leave businesses assessing performance based on a very narrow or more recent experience. Monitoring KPIs from “fingertip data” can serve as a stable guideline against the storm of what is happening today.
- Proactive Decision Making – A lot of times, accounting/bookkeeping is recording historical information. This is good, but it’s more powerful if you can get that information in real-time and use that for decision making in the future.
- Dot Connecting – Through analyzing the right data sets, we often find simple relationships to explain results. This allows business leaders to interpret and act upon their information more rapidly.
- Responsibility Assignment – Identifying KPIs, and the underlying controllable factors that drive them, enable leadership and management to assign and assume responsibility, own their performance, and know that an essential aspect of performance isn’t being forgotten about.
- Strategy Validation – Having data available to validate new strategies within your business provides clarity. It gives everyone within the organization confidence in the new initiatives and the overall plan.
The fast-paced business world in which we live dictates the need for technology, including the ability to mine data at a moment’s notice. Additionally, we must use that data to make informed decisions, analyze performance, plan for the future, track duties, and validate a business strategy. Using this technology, you can work to position your business to be the best it can be now and in the future. Contact your local Vesta office in Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, Milwaukee’s North Shore, and Greater Madison to learn how data analysis and KPIs can be utilized for your business.
