Setting a budget for the next financial year? Don't forget to plan for evolving your data, BI and analytics to drive your FY2023 results.

It’s EOFY time again.

This means you’re reviewing your budget spend for FY22 and setting your business goals for the next 12-months of FY23.

Despite today’s tech-driven corporate landscape, one of the most overlooked aspects in budget preparations is an allocation for data investment, to the detriment of the business. So, as you’re planning for the new financial year, now is the opportune time to think about your data budget.

Investing in data: why it’s no longer an optional line item

Data is incredibly valuable to every business as it allows your team to collect information on competitors and the market, identify potential improvements, assess your operational effectiveness and make more informed decisions.

Businesses that don’t invest in evolving their data capabilities are essentially flying blind, however, businesses that do can utilise it to drive greater efficiencies and ROI.

So, if you’re allocating your FY23 budget, you need to evolve your data capabilities, as it isn't an optional line item these days. Decision-making processes need to be backed by data, and that data is growing in size and complexity. I read a recent statistic (CIO) stating that 80-90% of the data we generate today is unstructured. That's huge – and complex for any organisation to deal with.

Allocating a budget to enhance your data resources means you’re better equipped to manage these complexities and benefit from them as well.

And it’s not just your data that you need to consider.

There are thousands of external data products you can leverage, from many channels. Whether paid for or in the public domain, these complementary data sources could be the key to unlocking a crucial insight for your business or customers.

A great example is a client of ours using external Government Covid announcements and aligning it with their own data to better understand customer sentiment. This, in turn, will help them make decisions to adapt to customer behaviour.

What investing in data means for businesses

By leveraging data as a strategic enterprise asset, companies are able to make more informed decisions and undertake digital transformation, which can contribute to business scalability and revenue growth.

However, analysing the quality and value of data sources is a task in itself, and one that not only requires data expertise but also the context of your business.

This may all sound daunting but it should actually be exhilarating! The potentials are huge and rewarding for those who dig deeper. 

So, what areas of “data development” should you be considering?

Well, that’s very dependent on where your data sophistication level is. 

If you sit where the example company does above, then you’ll likely suffer from analysis paralysis. That’s where data opportunities are significant but overwhelming, and so deferral is often the easiest pathway.

If you are there, I implore you to take action. Bite-size if necessary, but keep biting!

You’re likely sitting on a gold mine of valuable data that could change the trajectory of your business for the better all if you just invested in data capabilities now in this Financial Year’s Budget.

Where should you start

A good starting point is to think about how you’d like to monitor your business. For example,  if everything were optimised in the backend, what are the KPIs you’d love to know and keep an eye on?

By evolving your data capabilities, you’d be able to delve deeper into this to uncover key insights that would make KPIs easier to achieve. For instance, if your Digital Search Advertising was underperforming, you could collect and analyse the data to determine whether it was the advert design and wording, the landing page messaging or even the website load speed.

Once you know the reason, you can fix it and improve performance once again. If you didn’t have this data, you would likely keep investing in these adverts inefficiently.

Here are some questions to get you thinking about the potential of data

• Do you know how many customers you have?

  • How many of those are your top customers and what are they worth?

• How many customers leave (churn) on a regular basis?

  • Are any of your top customers looking like they might leave soon?

• Do you know what your top products are, how many are bought at what time, seasonality, etc?

  • What’s the standard product mix - e.g. which products are always bought together or sequentially?

• What’s your revenue per customer?

• What’s your revenue per staff member?

• If you reduce the cost of product X, what would the likely incremental sales be?

Imagine having all of those answers within reach and constantly updating as time went on. That’s the benefit of investing in data.

Once you have your list of burning questions and KPIs that you want deeper insights into, you can allocate more resources, effort and time, which in turn will allow you to prioritise the list. The ‘effort & time’ part of that process is something we do a lot of at White Box Analytics, so reach out if you need help.

How can White Box help you with your data capabilities for FY23?

We collaborate with businesses like yours to unlock the full potential of your data to enhance your business and give you more control over the decision-making process.

Most likely you’ll need to bring different data sources together and design a data model to facilitate the answer you need. This often falls under the remit of Business Intelligence (BI), where the output might be a visual data dashboard. But that’s the tip of the iceberg, with data discovery, engineering, analysis and implementation all residing under the water’s edge to make your data machine work.

However, BI work doesn’t have to be a mammoth task as proof of concepts (PoCs) can get you to a result in a couple of weeks, proving out the idea, which can then be put into a strategic roadmap for phased development. For every $1 you spend in BI, you get $13 in return! (Source: Infosuite)

So don’t bury your head in the sand. It’s time to understand your data and invest in making it work for you!

This article was written by Louis Keating (Founder / Principal Data Consultant)

We can help you make smarter, data-driven decisions this Financial Year

White Box is highly experienced in providing data strategy, data science and data visualisation solutions. 

As your data consultant partner, we’ll help you realise the full potential of your data and maximise your business success through advanced and innovative solutions that make all the difference.

Get in touch today for your free data strategy consultation.

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