We all know the saying, “garbage in, garbage out,” right? Well, its especially true when it comes to your business’s data. If your data is chaotic, you can bet your insights will be just as confusing. Data cleaning is the essential process of identifying and correcting errors and inconsistencies in your datasets, ensuring they are accurate, reliable, and ready for analysis. When your data is clean, it’s like having a clear view of the road ahead, allowing you to navigate business decisions with confidence. Keeping your data clean is not just important, it’s essential - when everything's in it’s place, you can focus on what really matters.
What is Data Cleaning
Imagine trying to navigate a city without a reliable map–frustrating, right? That’s what working with unclean data feels like. Data cleaning is the critical process of examining and correcting your data to identify and resolve errors, inconsistencies, and any other issues that may set back your analysis. The goal here is to ensure that you are working with the most accurate and dependable information possible, as the quality of your data directly impacts the quality of your insights.
Why Bother with Data Cleaning?
In any business, prioritizing data cleaning is essential. Here’s why this process should be at the top of your to-do list:
To dive deeper into how data quality impacts business performance, and for more examples of different types of data cleaning steps, read more from ThoughtSpot.
Real Life Data Cleaning
Consider a scenario where you’re analyzing customer data, and one location is mysteriously absent. Instead of throwing your hands up in frustration, you can leverage data from other sources or average out the existing data to fill in that gap. Another common issue is encountering outliers–those data points that seem completely out of place. Identifying and addressing these outliers is essential to avoid skewing your results.
Formatting inconsistencies can also lead to chaos. For example, if some dates are recorded in DD/MM/YYYY and others in MM/DD/YYYY, standardizing those formats prevents confusions and aligns your data.
How to Effectively Clean Your Data
To clean your data effectively, start by using data observability tools to spot discrepancies. Once you’ve pinpointed those issues, it’s time to remove any erroneous entries and ensure that your data is consistently formatted. Merging different data sets into a cohesive unit is essential, while also keeping privacy regulations in mind. Before diving into your analysis, take a moment to double-check that your data is accurate and up to date. Additionally, be sure to store your clean data securely to protect its integrity. Lastly, collaborating with business experts can provide valuable insights that help you identify any lingering issues.
By embracing these practices, you’ll transform your messy data into a valuable asset that empowers informed decision-making. Clean data isn't just beneficial; it’s like taking a breath of fresh air, much like the feeling after decluttering a crowded space.
Data Done Right
As data increasingly shapes our decision-making, it’s essential to keep your information accurate and organized. Just like a well-tended garden produces the best fruits and vegetables, clean data produces the most valuable insights for your business. So, take the time to tidy up your datasets, and you’ll find that decision-making becomes a smoother ride.
If you're looking for tools to simplify your journey, consider exploring Go Fig–our AI-powered business intelligence tool that extracts growth insights from your data instantly. With Go Fig, you can transform your clean data into actionable strategies that drive success. So why wait? Discover the difference with Go Fig.
Alright, so your business has a ton of data—great! But now what? It’s like having a pile of ingredients in your kitchen but no recipe. Data is fantastic, but without a game plan, it won’t do much for you. So how do you turn all those numbers into something that provides incremental value to business leaders that they don't already know?
According to a Salesforce study in 2023, 80% of business leaders said data is critical in decision-making at their organization. They cited benefits like faster decision-making, building trust within the organization, improves focus and reduces uncertainty. However the same study found that 67% of leaders were not leveraging data for complex strategies like pricing due to having inadequate tools to generate insights from their data.
Business leaders are experiencing one of the toughest economic markets of our time, but they have an untapped advantage for better decision-making: their data.
Juan Perez, Chief Information Officer, Salesforce
The CIO of Salesforce is focused on data literacy training for employees to establish a data culture that supports business goals and improves resilience ahead of a potentially turbulent economic future. “The secret to driving true insights is marrying data with analytics. A combination of data, analytics, and the necessary data skills enables companies to maximize their technology investments and uncover opportunities that drive business strategy and strengthen customer trust,” said Perez.
Data literacy is critical for success in any organization in the modern economy where data is everywhere and tells the unspoken tales of potential opportunity and existing waste. Getting value from data is simpler than you might think--we'll break it down into steps with a digestible example.
Step 1: Data - You’ve Got a Lot, but So What?
First things first, you've integrated data from all your business software and stored it in a data warehouse, including marketing, sales, customer interactions, and website traffic data. But just having data isn’t enough. It’s like having a phone book (remember those?), but no idea who to call. What matters is how you are using your data.
Let’s say you are selling online and in-store. Over the past year, you’ve been tracking customer behavior. Tons of people are buying your products, but where do you go from here?
Step 2: Information - Organizing the Chaos
Now that you’ve got all this data, it’s time to organize it into something useful. This is the step where you turn random numbers into valuable information. You do this by segmenting your data into categories. Think of it like decluttering your closet–grouping similar things together makes it easier to figure out what’s really going on.
You might separate your customers into groups–those who shop online vs. in-store, those who subscribe to a service vs. those who make one-time purchases. Suddenly, the data makes more sense because you are looking at it in buckets.
Step 3: Knowledge – Spotting Patterns
Once you’ve organized your data, you can start spotting patterns. This is where your data turns into knowledge. It’s like noticing that every time you put out a curtain display ad, more people end up on your website. Patterns are what turn data into something that you can actually use.
You may discover that customers who see your display ads are landing on your website and buying more often than those who come through other channels like organic search. Now you’re onto something!
Step 4: Insights – Digging Deeper Into the Why
Alright, you’ve got your patterns, but now it’s time to take it a step further. Insights are where you dig into the why behind those patterns. Why are certain customers responding to certain ads or offers? When you can answer that, you’re moving toward actionable insights.
Maybe you find that families with young kids are way more likely to become repeat customers after clicking on Ad A. That’s a huge insight! It tells you something important about your audience that you can use to shape your marketing strategies.
Step 5: Wisdom–Telling the Data Story
Now it’s time to put all of those pieces together and tell the story your data is revealing. This is where your data turns into wisdom–understanding the bigger picture. You can now see how everything is connected, from the initial ad click to the final sale, and what it means for your business.
For example, picture that you now know that families with young kids are a key audience, and they love your messaging in Ad A. That’s a golden nugget of wisdom you can take straight to the bank (literally!).
Step 6: Impact–Taking Action That Moves the Needle
Finally, the big moment. This is where all your data work pays off. The impact comes from taking what you’ve learned and actually applying it to your business strategy. It’s about making changes that lead to real results, like increased sales, better customer experiences, or more targeted marketing.
Imagine you decided to shift your marketing strategy to focus more on families with young kids. You create more ads like Ad A, tweak your messaging to speak directly to an audience, and watch your sales soar. That’s how you drive impact!
Data isn’t Just Numbers–It’s your business GPS
There’s no shortage of data, but the real value lies in how you use it. More and more companies are investing in data infrastructure solutions to support decision making at a faster rate than ever before. To make a lasting impact on your business, don’t just collect data–proactively organize it, analyze it for patterns, extract insights, and make informed decisions based on the data your story tells.
Remember, the key to unlocking the power of your data is taking a problem-solving approach at each stage–moving from raw information to insights and, finally, to impactful action that drives growth.
Did you know that 90% of the world’s data was generated in the last two years? Crazy, right? Despite this surge in information, most businesses are still struggling to use it effectively; so what’s the secret sauce? In the current data-driven landscape, businesses have more access to data than ever before, but just having access to the data isn’t enough - It’s how you are leveraging your data that could determine the rise or fall of your business. While many companies focus on monitoring current performance, true growth comes from balancing this reactive approach with innovation that comes from proactive data analytics. Businesses that are too focused on day-to-day metrics are missing out on valuable opportunities to differentiate themselves.
Almost every business you know of is monitoring its performance in one way or another. This is what we call reactive data analytics. This provides leaders with a real-time snapshot of performance metrics, enabling them to monitor processes, address issues, and ensure that everything is running smoothly. Businesses use reactive data analytics to track sales numbers, monitor inventory levels, or evaluate customer satisfaction scores. Businesses utilize this data to quickly react to problems. This is essentially data used to keep the business operating smoothly.
While monitoring operations is essential to business stability, it doesn’t drive future growth or differentiate the business in any way. This is where proactive data analytics comes in handy. In contrast to reactive data analytics, proactive data analytics is strategic. While reactive data analytics looks to the past and present, proactive data analytics is all about the future. It requires a forward-thinking approach. This means using data to explore possibilities, challenge the status quo, and push beyond what’s possible. Instead of waiting for problems to appear, businesses actively seek out areas where they can improve, experiment, or differentiate themselves from the competition. This is business innovation - using data to fuel exploration and identify opportunities before they become obvious to everyone.
A recent Forbes article builds on this concept, emphasizing the need for businesses to balance reactive and proactive data analytics to truly thrive. While reactive data analytics is crucial for managing day-to-day operations, focusing solely on it can cause businesses to miss out on growth opportunities. Proactive data analytics use, as Forbes explains, is what sets innovative businesses apart - it involves using data not just to respond to problems but to anticipate them, test new ideas, and discover untapped potential. This balanced approach - using reactive data analytics to manage current performance while leveraging proactive data analytics to innovate - ensures that businesses can maintain stability while also driving future growth and differentiation in competitive markets.
A recent study by Harvard Business Review and ThoughtSpot shows that empowering frontline employees with data is the key to unlocking business success - and safe to say it’s a game changer for growth. Think of all the doctors, retail staff, or customer service reps making critical decisions every single day. Now what if they had access to the right data at their fingertips to make those decisions even smarter?
The research found that organizations empowering their frontline workers with data-driven insights are seeking big boosts in productivity, customer satisfaction, and innovation. Here's the kicker: only 7% of businesses are fully giving their teams the tools they need to make these game-changing decisions. While 86% of companies know their employees need better tech to perform at their best, they haven’t quite made that leap yet.
Companies that are considered leaders in this area have seen huge benefits. This includes higher revenues, better customer engagement, and improved product quality. These businesses are training their teams and creating a culture that thrives on data. On the flip side, many businesses are falling behind, with many managers holding back their frontline teams from making empowered decisions.
The message is clear: empowering your frontline employees isn’t just a nice tool to have in your back pocket, it’s essential for differentiating and driving growth in your business in any competitive market. When workers have the tools and insights to make smart decisions, everybody wins - your business, your customers, and your team.
Let’s face it - every business today is swimming in data, but here’s the thing: just having access to it doesn’t magically solve all your problems. Data isn’t a genie in a bottle; it's more like a toolkit. You’ve got to know which tool to grab and how to use it if you want to build something incredible. Whether you're using reactive data analytics to keep the lights on or proactive data analytics to push boundaries, it's all about turning those numbers into real-world action.
And here’s where the real game changer comes in - empowering your people. Frontline employees are the unsung heroes of your business, and when you give them the data and tools to make smart, in-the-moment decisions, everyone wins. Your team feels more empowered, your customers get better service, and your business grows like never before.
So, remember this: having data is great, but it’s what you do with it that counts. Use it wisely, mix it up with some proactive thinking, and watch your business stand out from the crowd. Your future success? It’s in your hands - and in your data!
