Driving value in your business with data insights

In today’s digital environment, the effective use of data is key to almost any business. Companies that leverage data insights gain a competitive edge by being able to respond quickly to market changes and customer demands. Data-driven businesses can innovate faster, adapt to the latest trends and make proactive decisions that keep them ahead of their competitors.

Data insights can turn complex data collected from a wide range of sources into actionable intelligence, empowering businesses to enhance efficiency, increase profitability and achieve their goals.

From enhanced decision-making to improved customer understanding, greater personalisation, increased efficiencies and improved risk management – data is a powerful resource across the business.

Data insights: FAQs

What are business data insights?

Business data insights are meaningful interpretations and understandings derived from raw business data. They go beyond simply looking at numbers and involve analysing patterns, trends and anomalies to provide actionable intelligence that can inform strategic decisions and improve business outcomes.

How do you find business data insights?

Identifying business data insights typically involves a structured process:

Define business objectives: What specific questions are you trying to answer or what problems are you trying to solve?
Data collection: Gather relevant data from various sources, which could include sales figures, customer interactions, marketing campaign results, operational data and even external market data
Data cleaning and preparation: Ensure the data is accurate, consistent and in a format suitable for analysis. This often involves correcting errors, handling missing values and transforming the data
Data analysis: Employ various techniques and tools to explore the data, identify patterns, and uncover relationships. This might involve statistical analysis, data visualisation, machine learning algorithms and more
Interpretation and communication: Translate the findings into clear, concise, and actionable insights that stakeholders can understand and use to make informed decisions. This often involves creating reports, presentations and dashboards

What are the key benefits of using data insights?

As highlighted in this article, the key benefits include:

Enhanced decision-making: Making informed choices based on evidence rather than intuition
Improved customer understanding: Gaining deeper knowledge of customer behaviour, preferences and needs
Greater personalisation: Tailoring products, services, and marketing efforts to individual customer segments
Increased efficiencies: Identifying and optimising processes to reduce waste and improve productivity
Improved risk management: Detecting potential risks and proactively taking steps to mitigate them
Stronger transaction readiness: Understanding business value drivers and addressing potential issues before a transaction

Transaction readiness

Crucially, data also matters to transactions. Data insights can ensure you understand where the value in the business sits, or equally importantly where the business is leaking value ahead of a transaction.

The earlier this insight is gained, the more powerful it is to the business. Addressing these issues effectively will ensure a maximum return to shareholders. A data insights suite will also support you through a due diligence process.

Data optimisation in action

A data insights suite is an extremely powerful tool to any trading business and its use is far from limited to transactional purposes.

With data so critical across the enterprise, here are some of the ways in which we have been helping our clients.

Are you allocating your resources to get the greatest return?

Example: A UK leisure business discovered that their Australian customers were three times more profitable than their UK counterparts. This insight changed their focus, increasing their market share in Australia

Could the pace of your growth be optimised?

Example: We helped a fast-growing men’s clothing brand achieve >75% growth in one month by providing insights into better leveraging their marketing investment

What opportunity is there to improve your value creation KPIs?

Example: A wellbeing company increased their average order value by 25%, boosting lifetime customer lifetime value and profitability through targeted insight into their transaction data

Are there trading inefficiencies you can reduce or eradicate?

Example: By focusing on high-performing discount codes, a small home furnishings business achieved a 20% uplift in profitability

And if you are pre-event…

Does the ‘story’ of the business match your numbers/model? Do the materials in the data room stand up to diligence?

Example: We prepared a fast-growing pet business for a partial exit by streamlining data room setup, enabling seamless updates and managing all diligence requests efficiently.

Whatever your data ambitions, at PKF Francis Clark, we listen to your requirements, understand your business and will offer tailored insight suites to ensure maximum insight equals maximum returns for your business.