The idea that data is important for driving decisions is not new. That said, I think that in a time when we are immersed in dashboards and business intelligence, the actual benefits get overlooked. If you\u2019re like most financial professionals, you have a lot of data available to you, but are you able to access it in a digestible format\u2014and is it adding value to your practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you know what percent of your annual revenue is made up\nby your top ten clients? Do you know which client relationships you invest the\nmost time and money in? How about projected revenues based on your\nlead pipeline, or ROI on your marketing initiatives? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t make guesstimates. Do you know the actual facts? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are important questions to ask, and the answers to these questions can and should be answered by data, not your opinion. The path towards allowing business intelligence to drive effective decision making requires that you have data, in a useable format; and it requires that you foster a dedication to being objective for the long-term success of your practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most important piece of the equation is clean, useable\ndata. If you don\u2019t have your systems integrated with each other, you are either\nspending too much time (and therefore money!) updating multiple systems to keep\ndata consistent; or (more likely) there is variation across the\nsystems you use, causing confusion and frustration for you, your staff and\nyour clients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As technology has evolved, it has gotten easier and easier\nto bring data together. If data aggregation and business intelligence are\nimportant to you, it is important that the systems you use have open\nAPIs and robust integration options. This allows for simple,\nreal-time data connections and provides you the best foundation\nto create the next layer of your decision-making stack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dashboards are aggregated visualizations of disparate data\nsets. A good dashboard will funnel data from various sources and synthesize raw\ndata into something that is easily interpreted. Looking at raw data can\nlimit your abilities to maximize value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, if you look at a spreadsheet with hundreds or\nthousands of rows of data, you might be able to pick out a few interesting\nthings (if you are really paying attention). Maybe. However, with a dashboard\nyou are able to apply data analysis on top of that raw data to create\nvisualizations that make it easy to see patterns or anomalies and bring\ninsights to the surface more easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Making decisions can be difficult; making good decisions,\neven more so. While each person brings their own motivations\nand reasoning to the table, at our core we all\nhave a desire to reduce risk and increase value. Oftentimes, our emotions\nor feelings drive our actions, but in business that isn’t always the most\neffective option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do you do make decisions today? How do you decide if you\nshould expand into a new line of business, or hire some new talent? Or perhaps,\nwhen do you decide that it is time trim your clientele to focus on more high net\nworth clients; and who would you trim?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of just using your intuition, bring data to the\ntable. Not only will this alleviate pressure in your decision-making, but will\nalso improve quality, helping you to maximize the value of your decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reality is that in the busyness of running a practice,\nthe gathering and analysis of business data can often go by the wayside to\nthings that are more pressing in the short term. However, the return on using\ndata to understand where you are and guide where you want to go, is far higher\nin the long term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The idea that data is important for driving decisions is not new. That said, I think that in a time when we are immersed in dashboards and business intelligence, the actual benefits get overlooked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grow-your-business","category-practice_management"],"yoast_head":"\n