We often look at our business and appreciate the customers, employees, and community relationships we’ve built. As we form bonds with individuals, it’s understandable that personal interactions may impact business decisions. Listening to our customers can provide valuable direction. However, beyond instinct and intuition there’s the hard data provided by sales and profit analysis. True data analytics, opposed to outdated spreadsheets and excel documents, tell the real story of your business’s success.

Knowing how to understand and adjust your practices based on actual data is just as important as reading the customers. Where do you stand on the balance of intuition vs. data? 

How can you tell if your business is not focused on data-driven results? 

Have you ever answered a business-related question with, “Well, they’re a good person,” or “We have always done it this way”?  

While these answers show that you value the individual, they do not address your business needs. 

Employees are the backbone of any business. As such, business leaders must promote healthy conflict amongst staff to push past norms of operation and continuously seek new efficiencies. There’s almost always a way to improve a process. If you always follow the same processes, will that yield a growing business, or a stagnant one? 

The chance of your business achieving its full potential is minimal if adequate technology is not embraced. Operating without reliable data analytics in the 21st century is an immense business vulnerability. 

What steps should a business leader do to break the norms and avoid stagnation?

• Collect factual and quantifiable data through trustworthy technology
• Analyze and understand the “business story” your data is telling
• Organize information to determine if changes need to be made
• Train staff to implement changes that enhance likelihood of favorable behaviors 
• Re-examine data and review outcomes 
• Adjust the process if needed. Success is iterative!

With thousands of products, constantly changing prices, promotions, and countless other moving parts, simple excel files can be cumbersome to manage and risky at best. Imagine the labor and technical knowhow needed to create excel files specifically for your business. How do you teach employees what these files are and how to use them? A system you can’t easily teach is a system that endangers the future of your business. 

Automation is the key (and we’re not talking about robots).

Automation systems are capable of continually working day-in and day-out. Your data is always accurate and up-to-date. This means you spend more time with your most valuable asset - your customers - and less time manually entering data. 

Using a platform allows for faster adoption and employee training, due to its straightforward and easy-to-use design. This is an incredible safety net ensuring that more than one person can understand and manage the system.

Channeling all of your data into one central platform provides a dashboard showcasing all of your reporting in minutes rather than hours or even days. 

Remember that “good” people want to do good for your business. Invested employees want longevity for the business they represent. As business leaders, we empower our staff to be more successful when we provide adequate tools for measurement, decision-making, and process improvement. 

The proof is in the platform. On average, we’ve found that 70% of loss is non-malicious.

The great news is that we have solutions - Automation and data analytics specifically designed for loss prevention.