4 Ways You’re Wasting Time with Your Business Data (and What to Do About It)
When you have a question about your business, how long does it take you to dig into your business data to find an answer? And once you have that answer, how long until you take action on what you’ve learned?
However long it takes you now, I’m betting it’s too long. Maybe you’ve thought, “There has to be a more efficient way of doing this!” And there is!
The first step in improving how you track and use your data is to pinpoint areas of inefficiency. Let’s talk about how you can save more time tracking (and leveraging) your business data.
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1. Checking business data on multiple platforms
How many pieces of software do you use on a regular basis for your business?
There are tools for managing and editing your website. There’s everything you need to sell your offers, which can vary based on what you sell: courses, memberships, programs, and so on. There are your tools for managing the people you serve, like booking and scheduling software, CRMs, email lists…do you see where I’m going with this? It’s a lot!
With so many sources of data available to you, it can be difficult to know what’s really happening in your business. You might gather data from all of these sources and piece things together, but that takes too much time.
The solution to this time-waster is to have all of your data in one place, like a data dashboard.
A data dashboard collects your numbers and organizes them for you. They can even be customized according to your business needs. As the sole source of truth for data in your business, they save you stress, confusion, and possible mixups if you work with a team.
2. Collecting and managing your numbers manually
Let’s say you don’t have a data dashboard yet. All of those sources of data we just talked about? I’m guessing you’re pulling the numbers you need from each source and plugging them into something like a spreadsheet.
That is another time-waster. Unless you really, really love spreadsheets, you probably don’t want to spend your time doing manual data entry! It’s inefficient and prone to errors, no matter how good you are.
The solution to this is automated systems and processes. Take yourself out of the equation when possible.
Ideally, you could set up a custom data dashboard to answer your business questions for you. But if you’re not ready for that yet, you could schedule data reports for each of your sources and schedule a time to review reports yourself.
Automation not only makes your life easier, but it sets you up for success in the future. As your team grows and your business scales, the easier it will be to spend time doing what’s most important in your business — without worrying about tasks like tracking your data.
3. Tracking data you don’t need
But wait. What if you haven’t begun tracking your numbers yet?
That’s okay! The wonderful thing about using your business data is that you can always start right now. In fact, I think it’s easier than the alternative: tracking too much that you don’t really need.
In my work, I’ve seen many people track so much data for fear of missing key numbers or not knowing something about their business. It’s hard to be sure that you’re tracking data that you actually need for your business.
If this sounds familiar, you’ll need to take time to reflect on what you’re tracking now and how you can improve your methods. Look at each number you’re currently tracking and ask yourself, “What am I learning from this data? What action will I take as a result?”
This will help you get clear on the numbers that actually require your attention for your business.
Depending on your offers or business needs, I suggest tracking these important numbers first:
4. Failing to use the data you collect
Last but not least, we’ve come to the ultimate time-waster: not using the business numbers you’ve collected at all.
If you’ve ever tracked your data and failed to use it, I’m not trying to make you feel bad! This is actually fairly common. You may not look at your numbers because you feel overwhelmed or you’re short on time.
Luckily, this time-waster has a simple fix. I want you to make an appointment with yourself to look at your numbers on a regular basis.
Set a recurring event in your calendar, and view it as a non-negotiable meeting. Give yourself lots of time to review your data, outline the actions you want to take, and take those actions. This will help you get into the habit of actually using the data you collect. It will get easier!
Save time tracking your business numbers
Whether you struggle to manage data across platforms, manually enter your numbers, collect data you don’t need, or fail to use the data you track, there’s good news to all of this.
The solutions for these four time-wasters boil down to two simple actions you can take:
- Getting clear on what you want to learn about your business through your data, and
- Improving your systems and processes for using your data!
That’s it! All you need is a clear purpose and solid systems for collecting, organizing, and evaluating your data. A data dashboard can help you tremendously.
If you’d like to learn about how we can work together to improve your data tracking and boost your confidence in using your data, let’s chat.
