Establishing a data-driven culture at your company allows for more efficient and informed decision-making and better outcomes for stakeholders, employees, and clients.
A critical component of creating a data-driven culture is converting data from seemingly random numbers into meaningful insights. Learn how to make this happen below.
Data vs. Insights
Let’s start by clarifying the distinctions between data and insights. Many people use these terms interchangeably, but they have significant differences.
Data
Data is merely a collection of observation points (or data points) that have been captured over a period of time. Examples of data include survey outputs, metrics, clicks, pricing information, dates, distances, etc.
Data can also be qualitative or quantitative. Examples of qualitative data include user behaviors and quotes. Quantitative data, on the other hand, includes analytics metrics, time-related metrics, and other numerical observation points.
Insights
For data to become insights, it first needs to be analyzed to identify patterns. Then, additional research must be conducted (and contexts considered) to turn those identified patterns into opportunities for the organization.
Say you distributed a Net Promoter Score survey, which asks people how likely they are to recommend a product or company to a friend or colleague. After collecting the data (survey responses), you found that your company had a Net Promoter Score of 40.
Alone, this data doesn’t mean much. Is 40 a good score or a bad score?
The process of turning this data into insights requires additional context. For example, to whom did you administer the survey? What was the score the last time you administered this survey? What changes have you made, if any, since you last administered the survey?
The answers to these questions will help you better evaluate your NPS and your company’s performance. You can then use those insights to make more informed decisions for the future.
Benefits of Converting Data to Insights
Converting data into insights offers numerous benefits for everyone at your company, as well as the customers or clients you aim to serve. The following are some of the top reasons to prioritize data conversion:
Improved Decision-Making
Which of these people is more likely to see better results: The person who looks at the latest data before making a decision or the person who throws things at the wall and hopes they stick?
In almost all cases, the first person will see better outcomes and set the company up for more success.
When you gather data and convert that data into insights by conducting careful analyses and adding context, you can feel more empowered to make decisions that bring your company closer to achieving its goals.
Faster Problem-Solving
Collecting data and converting it into insights can also help you find solutions to problems sooner.
Because you have more context and valuable information to work with, you won’t be guessing and hoping for the best. Instead, you’ll be suggesting solutions based on identified patterns and relevant information from important parties (such as your current customers).
Remember that when you find solutions to problems faster, you can prevent them from escalating into more serious issues -- the kind that would put your company in jeopardy.
Increased Efficiency
Your company’s overall efficiency improves when you make data collection and conversion priorities.
Some people might hesitate at the idea of collecting data, evaluating their findings, and converting those findings into insights because these processes seem time-consuming.
It’s true that they typically require a greater time commitment upfront. However, they can also save you a lot of time later on.
Because you’ve taken the time to evaluate data and make data-driven decisions, you’ll be less likely to make mistakes or take actions that don’t move the company in the right direction.
Enhanced Customer Experience
When you collect relevant data and convert it into insights, you can make decisions that allow for a superior customer experience.
Organizations that care about their customers, gather feedback from them (in the form of surveys, polls, etc.), and then make choices based on that feedback are more likely to have a happy customer or client base that wants to continue working with them long term.
Improved Productivity
Stop wasting time on processes and workflows that don’t benefit the company or bring your team closer to its goals.
By gathering and converting data, you can work more efficiently and get things done on time (if not ahead of schedule). In addition to working faster and smarter, you’ll also see more meaningful outcomes from your efforts.
It doesn’t matter if you’re committed to generating more revenue, increasing website traffic, building your social media following, or anything in between. You’ll be more likely to achieve those goals if you spend time collecting and evaluating data first.
How to Convert Data into Insights
Now that you know the value of converting data into insights, let’s talk about how you can make that happen. Here are some steps you can take for a more successful and significant conversion process:
Define Goals for Business Outcomes
Without clear goals, it can be challenging to know where to start when it comes to collecting and converting data.
Before you try to do those things, spend some time meeting with your team and coming up with goals for your business, a specific department, etc. If you take time to figure out what you want to accomplish, you won’t have to worry about wasting time and resources on irrelevant data.
Ask the Right Questions
Similarly, it can be helpful to think of a list of questions you want your data to help you answer.
For example, if you run a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, you might want to know at what point in the sales funnel your potential customers fall off, or you might want to figure out what questions customers ask the most often.
Like setting goals, asking the right questions will help you stay focused on the most important data and insights.
Gather Relevant Sources of Data
Speaking of the most important data, the next step to converting your data into insights is gathering data from relevant sources.
Remember, “relevant” is relative. In other words, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that works for all organizations when it comes to gathering data.
Reflect on your goals and the questions you want to answer. Then, collect data from sources that can help you achieve those goals and answer those questions.
For example, say you want to know how your customers view your business after your website redesign. In that case, you could use an NPS survey to obtain the necessary data.
Clean and Analyze Data
Before you analyze your data and use it to generate insights, you must clean it.
Data cleaning involves fixing or getting rid of data that is incorrect, corrupted, incomplete, or has been duplicated. Cleaning data allows you to extrapolate more meaningful insights because you can trust you’re working with the most accurate and relevant information possible.
Some examples of strategies you can use to clean data include eliminating duplicate observations, correcting formatting errors (including issues with spelling, capitalization, etc.), filtering out outliers, and getting rid of observations with missing values.
Segment Your Data
Segmenting data involves breaking it down into smaller groups (or segments). For example, you could segment web traffic based on common characteristics, which would make it easier for you to come to meaningful conclusions about your target audience.
Avoid Biases
To collect the most significant data (and use it to achieve meaningful insights), you must do your best to avoid biases in the collection process.
Make sure you’re surveying a diverse group of individuals and not limiting yourself to one age group, gender, ethnicity, location, etc. Doing so will help you make decisions that genuinely benefit your company and bring you closer to achieving your goals and finding answers to your questions.
Visualize Your Results
It’s easier to share your findings with others -- particularly those who don’t have much previous experience with data analysis and converting data into insights -- when you turn them into engaging visuals. Use your data to create charts, graphs, and other visuals that help people understand what you’ve learned and how you’ve reached a particular conclusion (or conclusions).
Interpret Your Results
Interpreting data involves taking your findings and turning them into observations and recommendations for the company.
For example, say you find that your company has a lower Net Promoter Score after you redesign part of your website. You might interpret that finding to mean that you should revert back to the old design or that you need to make additional improvements.
Remember that interpreting results takes time and careful analysis. Avoid jumping to conclusions or manipulating data to try and fit a particular narrative.
Share Findings with Stakeholders
When you’ve finished evaluating, converting, and interpreting data, you’ll be ready to share your findings with key stakeholders. This is where your visualizations come in handy. The more explicit you can make your points and explain how you’ve reached specific conclusions, the easier it will be to get others on board with your ideas.
How Yurbi Can Help in Converting Data Into Insights
In our journey to establish a data-driven culture, we've explored the fundamental differences between raw data and insights, underscored the multitude of benefits of converting data into insights, and laid out a step-by-step process to achieve this transformation. Now, it's time to introduce the powerful tool that can make this seemingly complex process a breeze – Yurbi.
Yurbi allows data to be sliced and diced limitlessly, culminating in comprehensive and cohesive reports that drive decision-making. Its flexible parent-target approach seamlessly integrates multifarious data sources, transforming disconnected strands of data into coherent, insightful information.
One of Yurbi's standout features is the smooth transition of criteria from dashboard filters or report prompts to the drill-down reports. This ensures that the whole context of your data is passed on to all target reports, maintaining coherence and internal consistency. Moreover, Yurbi prioritizes your data security, applying multi-tenant and data-level security across various data sources even when drilling down.
Yurbi also caters to all your visualization needs. Whether it's data grids, KPIs, charts, or your unique custom visualizations, Yurbi's comprehensive support for drill-down functionality delivers clear, easy-to-understand visual representations of your data. Plus, Yurbi allows you to pass data as parameters in a drill-out link, meaning you can connect your reports to other forms, webpages, or API calls.
Having traversed through the essentials of converting data into insights, it's time to put this knowledge into practice with Yurbi. We invite you to experience firsthand the transformative power of Yurbi's data conversion capabilities.
Try our live demo sessions for free or schedule a meeting with our team if you prefer a deep dive into what Yurbi can do for your data transformation journey. Unlock the hidden potential in your data with Yurbi today and step forward in your quest to become a truly data-driven organization!