Ask The Right Questions

Ways to improve your business performance are evident, if you know where to look

- Colin Thornton

While we’ve been hearing about ‘Big Data’ and its virtues for several years now, many small business owners and entrepreneurs have yet to begin to explore and harness their own data. While corporate giants such as Discovery, Momentum and FNB are effectively leveraging massive amounts of data to fine-tune marketing and sales efforts, the majority of SMEs probably haven’t even started.

In many instances, this is simply because small business owners are caught up in the daily struggle of keeping their businesses afloat and growing ahead of inflation – and are thus, by default, wedded to their existing systems and processes. In addition, many of the tools, platforms and resources that bigger businesses use to harness Big Data are perceived to be too expensive, and therefore out of reach.

New scenario Fortunately, while this may have been true several years ago, the landscape has changed. Now, there  are numerous, often cloud-based, affordable software tools that produce real-time reports that suit most business owners.