2020: the year everything changed. Who could have imagined what business would look like at this time back when 2019 was coming to a close? Experienced business veterans are seeing a culture shift among their customer base never imaginable before this year. The unpredictability of 2020 proves out the important value of data analytics. To take advantage of the rapidly changing social norms, only data driven businesses will prove to be a success going forward.
A virus has spawned a new data-driven culture
Social distancing measures, remote work arrangements, and a heightened concern for personal health is changing the purchase behaviors of retail customers and business clients. This new normal relies more on technology to serve as the connecting point between distant parties and data analytics will be the basis for more predictive business decision-making processes. Business management can’t rely on the old business models based on repetitive customer behavior. The new changes in purchase behavior will skew significantly from the former data models we once previously depended upon.
The experiment in social distancing and remote connectivity is proving that technology has solutions that can work, but the mindset of the customer works differently in this remote-based environment. Business leaders of all industries will see it impact more changes in the future. Office spaces will be limited and the interpersonal dynamics affecting productivity and collaboration will be changed. Personalities will have less influence while raw, fact-based digital solutions prove to be more valuable in decision-making. Impulse buying in the checkout lane will be affected as in-store customer traffic becomes more infrequent and shopping behaviors become more purpose-driven. In fact self-checkout lanes may be much more desirable than previous times. Disposable income of customers will change in total value as well as geographically as people trade off income for the ability to work from home. There will be too many other subtle changes in the new customer culture to list here. It requires a sound data analytics program to interpret the underlying metadata that could reveal such pattern changes. That’s why 2020 is the dawn of a new data-driven culture in businesses around the world.
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Economic indicators have gone haywire
Standard economic indicators of 2020 have defied conventional business logic. The US stock market has experienced record performance despite the worst unemployment in over seventy years and the biggest drop in GDP ever. Wild swings in the real estate market have kept experts confounded from month to month. It proves reliance on old business models are failing today, and as the post-pandemic world changes, so will the behaviors of economic indicators in years ahead. Macro-indicators may level out to some form of normalcy in time, but the microeconomics that fuel small and medium sized enterprises will continue erratic behavior as the social characteristics of the new world evolve. The execution of business will require more reliable facts based on raw data to make better informed decisions.
Without the use of data analytics, most business decisions are designed to protect against the worst-case scenario. Even the most aggressive plans are tempered with insulating factors “just in case things don’t work out.” In the new data-driven culture, plans can be developed based on emerging information that can lead a company into uncharted sales territory using richer information revealed with data analytics. Data analytics enable business leaders to see granular-level info shaping into trends and modeling potential outcomes instead of reviewing spreadsheets that record results with a 30-day lag or more. In short, former business planning methods relied on a historically predictable pattern of statistics, but this new model, rooted in data analytics, is a forward-thinking process that gets ahead of the curve by recognizing critical factors occurring closer to real-time.2020 has been a pivotal year for business. The tragic coronavirus pandemic has reshaped our culture. It’s reshaping how we do business too. Changing business conditions are shaping a new data-driven culture in enterprises that require greater vision for a changing business climate. If it’s time for your company to shift to a data-driven culture, contact us to learn more about what it takes.
As a Data Analyst, Taj helped The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics gather, cleanse, and analyze data via observations made with the Chandra X-Ray Space Telescope on the Orion Nebula star region.
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- Business is Turning to a Post-Pandemic Data Driven Culture - August 11, 2020
