It might be challenging to decide which course of action to take when faced with a dilemma at work. Following our instincts may give us adequate confidence in the decisions, but will they be the best ones for the team? We can feel more at rest knowing that our decisions are supported by the data and intended to maximize the impact on the organisation when we use the facts to inform them.
In the modern business environment, enhancing data-driven decision making is an essential component of data-driven business strategy, whether the goal is to boost profitability or enrich the business stakeholders with reliable data points so that they are able to drive actionables accordingly or outperform competitors.
It is the process of using data to inform and guide business decisions, rather than relying on intuition, guesswork or gut feeling. Data driven decision making, if acted appropriately and in timely manner, can help businesses improve their performance, efficiency, profitability, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage.
Let’s explore the advantages of data-driven decision making how we've enhanced our decision-making processes through robust reporting structures and frameworks.
The importance of data-driven decision making
Data-driven decision-making focuses on gathering, analysing, and utilizing data to inform strategic business choices. This approach reduces risks, uncovers opportunities, and enhances overall performance. In a world where data is plentiful, effectively leveraging it can distinguish businesses from their competitors.
At Tally Solutions, we recognize the transformative potential of data for achieving success. Our Data Analytics & Engineering team has played a pivotal role in developing a robust reporting structure and framework that empowers our employees to:
- Address and resolve customer concerns and feedback regarding product releases.
- Collaborate effectively with the partners to achieve sales targets and boost productivity.
- Provide partners with actionable insights to better serve their customers.
- Build short and long-term data-driven strategies inline with organisation’s vision.
Here's how we've achieved this:
1. Setting up a robust data infrastructure
The foundation of effective data-driven decision making is a solid data infrastructure. We've invested in modern data warehousing solutions that consolidate data from various sources, ensuring it's clean, accurate, and readily available. This infrastructure supports real-time data processing, enabling timely insights that helps our Sales team to keep a tab on the sales performance real time, product team to glance through the release adoption across our over 2 million customers, our Customer Support team to updated with CSAT score, telecall flow, desk sizing, etc. and partners to be up-to-date on their customers’ interaction touchpoints on both acquisition and retention front – happening on real time.
2. Creating comprehensive dashboards
Dashboards are powerful tools that provide a visual representation of data, making it easier to interpret and act upon. We've developed a range of dashboards categorized into Operational, Analytical, Strategic & Executive dashboards that track key performance indicators (KPIs) across sales, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency and product adoption. These dashboards are tailored to meet the specific needs of various departments, ensuring relevant, reliable and actionable insights.
3. Implementing advanced analytics
While descriptive analytics helps us understand the past performance, predictive and prescriptive analytics enable us to predict future trends and make proactive decisions. Our business team leverages advanced analytics techniques, including machine learning, to uncover hidden patterns and provide strategic recommendations which are deployed in the reporting engines for the team on the ground to act.
4. Fostering a Data-Driven Culture
Technology alone isn't enough; fostering a data-driven culture is equally important. We've conducted training sessions and workshops to inform employees on the importance of data and how to interpret it effectively. By encouraging data literacy across the organisation, we've empowered teams to make informed decisions confidently with the help of Business Intelligence analytical tools.
5. Ensuring Data Security & Privacy
With great power comes great responsibility. As custodians of sensitive business data of our customers, we prioritize data security and privacy over everything. Our robust security protocols and compliance with industry standards ensure that our customers’ data is protected at all times, fostering trust among our customers and stakeholders.
Data analytics at Tally Solutions
At Tally Solutions, we offer a comprehensive and integrated suite of accounting, inventory, taxation, payroll, and compliance solutions for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Our software is used by over 2 million businesses across more than 100 countries, and we have a network of over 28,000 partners who provide sales, service, and support to our customers.
As Data Analytics department, we are responsible for creating and maintaining a robust and scalable reporting structure and framework that equips our employees with various reports and dashboards that show the progress and performance of our business in various dimensions, such as sales, customers, features, partners, and key indicators. Our reports and dashboards are designed to help our employees make data driven decisions that align with our business goals and strategies.
Among the most important dashboards and reports we have created and that our stakeholders frequently utilize to drive actionables are:
- Sales Performance Dashboard: This dashboard has been designed to provide key business stakeholders with data driven insights into various aspects of sales performance (product, regions, partners etc.), enabling informed decision-making and strategic planning. This intuitive and visually appealing dashboard aggregates and presents critical sales data in a comprehensive manner, empowering users to assess performance trends, identify areas of opportunity, and address challenges proactively.
- Customer Summary Dashboard: This dashboard while leveraging the advanced analytics, glances through the customer base, active customers, new customers, and lost customers for our products, regions, and various customer segments that provides prompt actions for the specific group to be acted upon.
- Release Adoption: This dashboard offers comprehensive view of adoption of different releases by the customers as on a given date. It gives a glimpse of success metrics of the release which helps Product and Business stakeholders to act accordingly.
- Key MSME Indicators: Key MSME Indicators heatmap showcases globally for external & internal parameters like population, MSME count, addressable market, our customer base etc. with the objective to gauge the size of the business universe, our opportunity and market coverage we have been able to achieve.
- Partner’s Performance Dashboard: This dashboard shows the performance and productivity of our partners, such as the number of leads, opportunities, conversions, activations, renewals, and referrals.
How data analytics enhances data-driven decision making
Our reports and dashboards are not just for information and presentation. They are for action and decision making. We use our reports and dashboards to enhance our data driven decision making in the following ways:
- Our reports and dashboards are being used by cross-functional stakeholders and partners to monitor and measure the progress and performance against the Sales targets. We use data to track and evaluate our results and outcomes, and to identify and address any gaps or deviations for example measuring release adoption of Beta/Gold release against the planned GTM (go-to-market) strategy by Business & Product teams. We use data to celebrate our achievements and successes, and to learn from our failures and mistakes.
- We use our reports and dashboards to analyse and understand our customers and partners. We use data to segment and profile our customers and partners, and to understand their requirements, expectations, and satisfaction. We use data to personalize and customize our products and offerings, and to enhance our customer and partner experience and loyalty.
- Our reports and dashboards are being leveraged to optimize and improve our product releases and processes. We use data to test and validate our assumptions and hypotheses, and to experiment and innovate with new features and modules. We use data to optimize and improve our product quality, usability, and functionality, and to streamline and automate our processes and workflows.
- Our stakeholders plan and strategize the next steps and initiatives using our reports and dashboards. We use data to spot and investigate new markets and possibilities, as well as to foresee and address contemporary trends.
Making decisions based on the data is a continuous process that requires customized solutions. A culture of data literacy, a framework for data governance, and a set of instruments and methods for data analysis and visualization are all necessary for improving this ongoing and iterative process. It also necessitates a thorough comprehension of the strategy, goals, and objectives of an organisation as well as how data can support them.
At Tally Solutions, in our data analytics journey, we have embraced data driven decision making as a core value and a competitive advantage. We have made significant investments in developing and sustaining a solid and trustworthy data analytics infrastructure, which allows us to generate and utilize a wide range of reports and dashboards that illustrate the development and performance of our company from different perspectives. We establish better judgments that help us reach our objectives and provide better service to our partners and stakeholders by utilizing our reports and dashboards to improve our data-driven decision making.
