There is no business too small to benefit from data analytics

Let us set a quick scenario. Kevin is an entrepreneur who owns a kiosk selling locally brewed beers. Kevin keeps a log book of all his sales, so that he always knows how much profit, or loss, he is making. That’s good recording of business data – but it could (and should) be much better.

Kevin could be recording how many customers he has on Mondays and Wednesdays. What beer they are buying, and how many customers are paying with cash, or bank cards.

If he did this all manually, he’d drown in log books and paper, not being able to make head or tail of it. However, with the affordability of cloud technology there is a way for even a kiosk owner to record and draw conclusions from data.

Do I really need data?

With data, small businesses can start picking up trends and patterns beyond just profit and loss. Kevin, for example, would see how most of his customers come in on a Saturday and buy a specific beer using cash. He therefore may decide to ensure that beer has the optimum shelf space (boosting his sales and attracting new customers) and he can run promotions on Thursdays (incentivising more customers to come in during the week).

This is the concept of data analytics.