2024 is poised to have significant potential for global business productivity. Every organization’s productivity is based on how coherently it handles its business tasks, including the production of goods or services, and manages its resources efficiently. However, a major challenge that plagues every business is the lack of pertinent insights to make better decisions and a failure to meet customer needs.
Fortunately, the quest ends with analytic solutions. It enables businesses to make informed decisions by analyzing market trends, past performance, and customer insights. By 2026, more than a quarter of Fortune 500 CDAOs will oversee at least one data-driven top-earning product, emphasizing the significance of analytics.
As companies increasingly recognize the value of data, the role of data analytics is expanding and driving organizations to integrate and adapt digital automation solutions (AI, ML and RPA tools), streamline operations and foster IT transformation. In this blog, discover why analytics matters and learn 5 ways to turbocharge your business productivity in 2024.
Importance of analytic process automation for business productivity
Every business strives to improve its goals, scale operations, and stay ahead of the market. With the right data, businesses can be cognizant of their work processes and identify the important areas that require improvement.
- Boost efficiency: Analytics helps improve operational efficiency by analyzing accurate insights to track cycle time and lead time, which helps organizations identify performance gaps, workflow inefficiencies, and cost-effective measures.
For example, imagine a business susceptible to frequent data breaches and losses. Analytics will help monitor the workflow and identify areas of weak security. By doing so, organizations gain insights into threats and vulnerabilities, leading businesses to strengthen their security posture and framework, thereby enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. - Informed decision making: Analytics-driven insights empower businesses to make informed decisions, reducing reliance on guesswork and enhancing accuracy in strategic choices.
Imagine a manufacturing company seeking to increase equipment production to stimulate production rates. Businesses drive data-driven decisions by collecting data on equipment performance metrics and maintenance expenditures, controlling maintenance costs for a better outcome. - Foster operations: Analytics help in resolving business inefficiencies, customer issues and bottlenecks in workflows by optimizing operations efficiently and effectively. This proactive approach helps businesses tackle problems early and capitalize on opportunities in today’s competitive market.
Imagine a scenario where a manufacturing company leverages data about production workflows and inventories. This measure enables them to identify high-defect areas and improve them through real-time monitoring, making the prompt production process better and more efficient
Exploring analytics types for business productivity
Achieving advanced analytics depends on grasping its foundational elements and cultivating a strong understanding of its components. There are four types of analytics (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive) that play an important role in helping businesses enhance productivity.
Let’s break down the types of analytics:
a. Descriptive analytics
The first and easily accessible form of every business is descriptive analytics, which answers the basic question, What happened? This analytic provides raw data from historical events, providing trends, patterns and performance metrics for strategic planning.
Data visualization is utilized in this type to explain trends and performance through graph charts for clear business understanding.
Example:Imagine there is a smartphone company analyzing insights to make decisions. Based on past data, there is a recurring seasonal surge in sales during the holiday season, specifically in the months of November and December. This sets the foundation for understanding exactly what happened in terms of sales trends.
b. Diagnostic analytics
As a next step further, diagnostic analytics cracks the question: Why did it happen? Businesses compare current events with past events, which helps them identify major organizational issues and make informed decisions.
Example: A general prediction shows that smartphone buyers are between 18 and 35 years old. The survey proves this wrong by showing that the majority of smartphone purchasers are between 25 and 45. This survey indicates that smartphone acquisitions are considered gifts, resulting in a spike in sales during the holiday season.
c. Predictive analytics
The most important step in businesses is addressing a question: What can occur in the future? Predictive analytics modeling automation helps businesses achieve valuable insights, including identifying trends, regression analysis, and correlation using predictive models to forecast future outcomes.
Example: The survey conveys that a consistent rise in smartphone sales exclusively during the holiday seasons (November & December) over the past two decades enables businesses to predict a similar trend in the following year. Additionally, this seasonal surge in sales suggests that the smartphone industry is likely to experience heightened sales during the year’s holiday periods.
d. Prescriptive analytics
Businesses gain a competitive edge by leveraging prescriptive analytics to anticipate outcomes, prompting them to ask a question: What action needs to be taken next?
Example: Drawing insights from past customer behavior and market trends, the smartphone company implements strategic changes in marketing strategies and pricing to enhance sales performance during holiday seasons.
5 ways to leverage analytics to boost business productivity in 2024
1. Data-driven decision making
Data plays a significant role in making decisions and shaping actions through statistical methodologies. Businesses utilize data integration and automation strategies to crack patterns and drive insights to initiate strategic decision-making. By using the right data, businesses can elevate their sales revenue and cut overall costs to increase their ROI, thereby enhancing customer loyalty and staying ahead of the competition.
Practical example: Coca-Cola is the first globally acclaimed brand to utilize big data solutions, which helps it make informed decisions about how to approach IT. To initiate geo-targeted marketing, Coca-Cola enhanced its digital transformation efforts and leveraged consumer insights with the help of AI.
2. Operational efficiency through process optimization
Analytics empowers businesses to optimize and automate business processes by offering valuable insights and identifying areas for improvement to enhance operational efficiency. Businesses rely on BI (business intelligence) tools and advanced analytical tools to store and analyze data. This presents an opportunity to view performance indicators, allocate resources, and drive organizations to embrace workflow automation software to systematize operations and improve productivity.
By utilizing pertinent data, organizations take strategic actions to mitigate financial losses and possible fraud, secure vital data, and ensure continuous operational functioning.
Practical example: Coca-Cola invested in advanced analytic tools to make data-driven decisions, capture value creation and enhance its operations.
3. Predictive analytics for enhanced forecasting
Predictive analytics plays a major role in business for relevant predictions. Guesswork and intuitions are impossible in business decisions while adopting quantitative analysis. It helps them forecast the future more effectively by finding customer behavior, being aware of market trends, staying ahead in the industry, building customer loyalty, and customizing strategies accordingly.
By using predictive analytics tools, organizations can compare the quality of customer service and improve overall service delivery. This analysis will help businesses identify factors contributing to service cancellations and losses, facilitating more adjustments in future operations.
Practical example: Coca-Cola leverages AI in predictive analytics to find out how its products will perform at particular locations and analyze market trends, consumer behavior, and demographic data to understand consumer purchasing patterns.
4. Personalized marketing and customer engagement
Every business’s ultimate goal is to build a strong relationship with its customers, which leads to customer retention and an increase in sales. Businesses leverage analytics, using predictive models to understand different buyer segments, proactively tailor marketing campaigns to send offers, and build customer retention and sales.
With advanced analytic techniques, businesses can leverage big data solutions to measure the effectiveness of market campaigns by tracking KPI reports( conversion rate, ROI) to optimize business performance and enhance productivity.
Practical example: Coca-Cola utilizes technology and data to create a personalized marketing strategy where customers can go to their website or in-house store and type their name, quote, or favorite message printed on the bottle to make it memorable.
5. Risk management and fraud detection
The rise of data analytics in risk management is a big help for businesses. AI and ML intervening with these analytics pave a new way to prevent online data breaches with strong authorization, an advanced firewall and regular security audits. It helps enhance workforce efficacy by identifying and resolving security issues before attackers take advantage of them.
Practical example: Coca-Cola established a robust governance and operating model to ensure deployed AI innovations are safe and comply with internal corporate policies.
Facilitating analytic process automation through SquareOne Technologies
Are you looking to tap into the potential of automated analytics solutions but unsure of where to begin? Let SquareOne Technologies guide you through this technology, enabling data sharing, automating complex processes, and transforming data into actionable insights to amplify your operational efficiency.
SquareOne Technologies is one of the prominent digital transformation companies in the UAE. With their expertise in data and AI from the GCC region to the world, they provide end-to-end automation software solutions by unifying analytics to optimize better business outcomes.
Conclusion
The revolutionary synergy between data and automation is reshaping the future landscape of business. Analytics will be the cornerstone of business productivity in 2024, offering valuable insights to drive strategic decisions, optimize operations, and enhance customer engagement. By harnessing the power of analytics, organizations can experience unprecedented levels of productivity, smooth operations, informed decision making, and sustainable growth.
In the future, organizations will become intrigued by the prospect of digital automation solutions as they recognise their potential to revolutionize decision-making processes and unlock insights from large datasets.
SquareOne Technologies stands at the forefront of this transformation, helping organizations automate business processes for democratizing data and streamlined business with realtime data processing to attain predictive and prescriptive insights that drive ROI for unparalleled organizational success.
As we look ahead to the future, it is evident that the astute integration of analytics will be crucial in boosting business productivity. Get started with the seasoned expertise of SquareOne Technologies today!!
