About Data Science

Small & Medium Business Enterprises (SMBs) are typically characterized by having less than 500 employees. Forbes publishes an impressive list of these ‘small giants’, who showcase the best in American entrepreneurial spirit.

COVID-19 has disrupted the SMB sector and as the US begins to reopen, the US Chamber of commerce playbook recommends analyzing your sales data, customer behavior and ROI in order to understand what’s working and what you may need to adjust.

In many cases, the pre COVID-19 business model no longer works and a new value proposition needs to be evolved. Kickstarting analytics may be a competitive advantage for small enterprises -including non-profits, as the economy recovers.

In order to adopt and jump start analytics, here are a few key factors that need to be considered:

As the CEO of your organization, you understand the vital role analytics plays in gaining a competitive edge. You built an analytics team and invested a significant amount of time and resources building a data-driven culture.

While you understand that an analytics strategy is never a 'one-and-done' task, it is not unreasonable that you were anticipating results more quickly than you are. If you find that your data team is unable to transform your analytics and ML/AI programs into actionable insights and scalable projects on the time table you anticipated, you are not alone. McKinsey & Associates has reported that data-driven companies are slow across the board realizing the real value advanced-analytics initiatives offers. But this doesn't suggest stopping your data efforts, however. Rather, it's a necessary first step towards unlocking inefficiencies and discovering new processes that will transform your business.

With that said, there are trouble spots you can act on to improve the results of your analytics programs now.

In today’s market, customer expectations are high, and competition breathes heavy down your neck. Meeting customer expectations isn't enough. Rather, to gain a competitive edge, you have to anticipate what customers want - even before they know. The key to doing so rests with harnessing the potential of analytics.

As a CEO, you feel the pressure to enhance innovation and create a competitive advantage. Step one is to ensure that you are meeting current expectations, and step two is to use data analytics to help you predict future demand.

As a CEO, you understand the innovation that data and analytics can unleash within your company. You know of course that companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook leverage their information to beat the competition – but more importantly, there are a multitude of smaller to mid-size companies also using Big Data to create opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.

However, you have a problem. Your leadership is not getting the information and insights they need to help them stay aggressively positioned. Without insights on operations and customers, your company can not begin to utilize the power of data and could fall behind competitors in your industry.

To solve this problem, it is important to first understand the causes of your information bottleneck. After you understand the cause, then you can begin to get your leaders the information and insights they need.

Many CEOs find it difficult to initiate or sustain a culture of innovation within their organizations. Yet whether you're competing with companies like IBM, Google, and Microsoft or much smaller start-ups, to remain competitive, organizations of all sizes must maintain innovation as a way of life.

If you're struggling, consider the following five things to maintain creativity and innovation at the heart of your business' operations.