If you are a small business owner, there is a good chance that you are not yet using data or analytics to help maintain and expand your business. It is never too late to get started though, and there are so many online tools and resources that you can use to help you begin using data analytics. 

Data analysis can be extremely beneficial to small business owners. If you know how to use the data given to you through software programs, business tools and reports, you can make informed decisions that can help rapidly expand your business. Keep reading to learn six ways small business owners can optimize performance through data, analytics and reporting. 

Outsource your financial reporting to a CPA

Before you start using expensive data analytics tools, one of the best, most cost-effective ways to optimize the performance of your business is to find and use a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to run your books. A CPA can optimize the performance of your business by helping you organize and achieve your financial goals. A CPA is especially beneficial for small business owners who do not yet have much experience running a business, or who are experiencing rapid growth and need help managing their business.

One of the best parts about using a CPA is that you can find one in-house to help you save money in the long run. If you already employ a bookkeeper or accountant, you can pay for them to take a CPA review course and to earn their CPA license. A review course is important to help make sure that your accountant or bookkeeper will be able to earn a passing score on the four sections of the CPA exam. 

Use real-time analytics

Real-time analytics can help small business owners gather and analyze data about their business in real-time. Real-time analytics programs can organize data for you in an easily understandable executive dashboard — eliminating the need for an IT specialist or data analyst to help you understand the data. 

The best part about using real-time analytics for your business is that everybody on your team can access the data from the program at any time. If you have access to the internet, you can access the data from your program on a smartphone, laptop, or tablet. Since everyone on your team will always have access to the most recent, up-to-date information, you will be miles ahead of your competition in optimizing the performance of your business.

Present information with an interactive executive dashboard

As mentioned, real-time analytics programs can organize data for you into an executive dashboard. Executive dashboards are organized, effective ways to communicate data to your team. By using an executive dashboard, everyone on your team will be able to understand complicated data to make actionable changes to your business operations.

Executive dashboards can be much better for communication than programs like Microsoft PowerPoint because they allow team members of any skill to interact with data. Since executive dashboards present data in real-time, this means that anybody on your team will be able to help you make informed decisions about the operations of your business. 

Use Google Analytics

One of the best data analytics programs for small business owners is Google Analytics. Google Analytics works with your website to find trends in the behavior of your online customers. Google Analytics can provide you with long-term data about these trends to help you optimize your website for customer retention and can even help you grow your business by helping increase your web traffic.

If you know how to effectively use and apply the data from Google Analytics, you will be able to dramatically increase traffic to your website — but this is not even the best part! Google Analytics is so popular with small business owners because there is a powerful free version of the tool that offers much of the same data as other, expensive data analytics tools. It is a good tool to use to familiarize yourself with data analytics in a low stake setting.

Ask insightful questions

Now that you have a CPA or that you have found data analytics software to use, you need to ask insightful questions to get the most out of the data. While it may be important to know your sales or gross revenue, this data does not help you grow your business. Important questions could relate to finding areas of your business that need improvement, or to creating the best profit margins.

Asking the right questions can help you make actionable change based on the data from your CPA or data analytics software. If you can identify places that need improvement, you will be able to make effective changes to your business operations.

Use the data to learn about your customers 

The data from a CPA or from data analytics software helps small business owners learn about their customers. You need to know as much as possible about your customers so that you know what kinds of products appeal to them, and how to best market your product to them. 

One effective way to organize all this information is by creating a customer profile for your target customers. This customer profile should include information like age, occupation, education level and purchase habits. With all this information, you will know exactly how to use the data from your CPA or software to make changes to better appeal to your customers. 

Conclusion

For any small business owner, data analytics can be a highly effective tool for optimizing the performance of their business. Data analytics programs will allow you to understand your customers, communicate about the needs of your business, and make actionable change to create growth and expand your business. 

By using data analytics software, you will be able to work effectively with your team regardless of varying skill levels. It is never too late to start using data analytics to optimize your business, so hire a CPA or find a data analytics program to help rapidly expand your business!