Data Driven Decision Making for Small Businesses

The reader of this book need not be a mathematician. This book is intended for the business-minded individual interested in learning about the strategic advantages which can be obtained from business analytics. Small Business Trends magazine reported that, "you don't need to be a Fortune 500 company with revenue in the stratosphere to benefit from the application of business intelligence. A simple analysis of data your business may already be collecting could hold the answer." Perhaps you would like to reduce your inventory, determine product and customer profitability, gain insight into customer ordering behaviour. Perhaps you would like to know where you are spending your business dollars or how to determine if your cash flow is getting better or worse. Is your business becoming more or less efficient as it grows? Perhaps you would like to predict upcoming retirements to determine the impact of the baby boomer generation on your organization. This book will present some of the simpler approaches to data analysis and will show the value of these analyses to business. The intent is to show the reader what is possible rather than teaching the mathematical techniques. From simple to the more advanced, this book will deliver a series of analytics suitable for anyone wishing to take their business to the next level. I will present a series of real-world case studies from various functional areas, the majority of which will be conducted with every day software that most businesses already possess. The book will go on to examine the advantages and disadvantages of trying to build these capabilities in-house and will provide a realistic view of the challenges associated with analytics in the business world. Finally, I will provide some advice on data analysis and visualization tools. Specifically, I will focus on the tools that are available to the reader for prices that are in line with typical office software.