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840. Leveraging Data Analytics for Strategic Decisions and Tactical Development (rerun) · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IE Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:38
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• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, everybody, Brian Smith here with the IM team series and your daily influence.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, we're going to talk about leveraging data, data analytics, specifically for strategy, decisions, and tactical development.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this really goes to the heart of what our work is at IA Business Advisors.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that we teach our clients and that we really, really lean heavily into for our clients, because if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really hard to grow an organization without understanding your analytics.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that includes all analytics.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And oftentimes we take them for granted, especially when we're successful.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The number one analytic that I hear, number one and number two analytic that I hear clients talk about our sales and money in the bank.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, sales and money in the bank don't really tell you everything you need to know.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: To have effective strategy, make effective decisions and good decisions and develop tactical solutions for growth and prosperity and viability.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the number one things that I urge all leaders,
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And all individuals in an organization to understand are the measurements, the analytics that influence your specific area of influence.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: anything that will help you to understand what is going on.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: For IA, one of the things that is most important to us is labor utilization.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And labor utilization is a number.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are a certain number of hours available to each person.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The number of hours that they bill as a percentage is utilization.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if somebody has a thousand hours available and they bill 700, they are 70% utilized.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a really important number, but what it doesn't tell you is what's going on with those hours.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: To this day, I am involved in the billing process at I.A.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is part of my process of analyzing the data that drives our revenue.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also the data that drives our efficiency.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also the data that drives what we're doing for our clients.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And within one exercise,
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have a very clear understanding on a semi-monthly basis of what our utilization is by person, what our clients are doing, what projects are being done with our clients, and what our revenues are, all in one process.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't have a dashboard for that.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually have involved in the building process, but you can create dashboards.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when we have dashboards to deliver data to ourselves, we can leverage that data to make quicker decisions, make better decisions.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we identify earlier that there's trends or there's anomalies or there's exceptions, we can make decisions and then deploy tactical solutions to counter the exceptions, to counter the change, to improve
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: our operational integrity and make us better.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we can leverage the data and measure, that which is influencing us, we can support people around us.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I hear people say, well, why would I want to pay attention to that?
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, if you're involved on a team, the reason you want to pay attention to data,
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: and all the data that influences your team is that during a conversation, you might have insight into that data that others don't.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not everybody looks at numbers the same, not everybody looks at words the same way.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not everybody looks at what's going on around them, the same way perceptions are different.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: For example, one person might be looking at numbers from a percentage perspective and another looking at them from an actual specific numbers perspective growth can look good if it's a high percentage, but that doesn't mean that it's good 50% of a thousand dollars is five hundred dollars 50% of a million dollars is five hundred thousand dollars.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you start to express numbers as holy percentages, you better understand what the foundational number is, the foundational measurements are that drive those percentages.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, they're irrelevant.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They can sound fancy.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you hear that a large company only makes 1% net profit.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that company is a $20 billion company.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can start to appreciate the size.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we have clients who are one or two million dollar companies and they're making two or three percent when they come to us.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or two or three percent of a million dollars is $20,000.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, depending on what that business is, that might not be a very good return on investment.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: What it takes to generate that million dollars is relevant.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why analyzing data.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Understanding what gives you that information is so important to strategy decisions and developing the tactics to move us forward.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not all data is numbers.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You also have employer reviews.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have reports, safety reports, other reports that come from operational companies.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have customer service complaints.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And while they can be reduced to numbers,
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: If we just take them at their face value as numbers and we don't drill down to through the data and understand what the foundation of that data is, we will make strategic mistakes, we will make poor decisions and we will create tactics that take us in the wrong direction and we see this happen over and over and over again.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Context matters within your data get the context, understand what is the driving force behind the data that you're requesting.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also understand what your decision might do to that data.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: The ripple effect or the unintended consequences of poor decisions can be measured for a day, a week or even years.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: not handling conflict within your teams, which is a different type of data, and not getting to the root cause of the issues, not understanding of their exceptional or systemic.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can have you make bad decisions, deploy tactics, that have a negative influence, that threaten the viability of a person?
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: of a department, of a team, of a division, of a whole organization.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I challenge you, leverage your data analytics, understand them, talk to the people in your accounting or other areas in your business that understand how to build dashboards and give you the data that you need to understand what's going on within your area of influence.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our on your teams, your managers and your employees, at the same level of attention about the data that feeds them, give them the opportunity to have accurate information, so that they can make good decisions and support the organization tactically, or develop new strategies and tactics to mitigate and to move through some of the challenges you might be facing.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope that you have enjoyed our discussion on leveraging data analytics.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you all have a great day.