In an ideal world, your business could consistently store data in the right place each and every time you absorb a swathe of data during a marketing campaign. Have you wondered what’s the best way to organize data?
It would massively improve productivity, improve your operations and therefore, make your revenue skyrocket. However, this is the ideal world, not the real world. You may be experiencing deep flaws in your data storage and or organization that is costing you time and money. Every business, large or small, is knee-deep in this task. To manage masses of data in today’s fast-paced world seems almost like an impossible task. But with these 4 tools, you can climb over and above your own expectations to meet this challenge.
Looker
If you need a big data tool, then Look no further than Looker. Big data is incredibly complex but with the best tools, you can group, target and understand your data much easier. On Looker’s platform, you’ll be able to better your reporting skills and habits. It allows you to explore your reports in a wide range of ways, so you can access and read reports wherever you are.
Looker also allows you to easily share reports, fostering better communication among managers. If one manager is working from his tablet in the manufacturing part of the business, they can be given new sales reports from a manager at office headquarters. Communication is seamless, with text communication inside the program allowing for a free exchange of questions, opinions, and comments.
The Looker BI tool is a cloud-based platform that will collect all your data and analyze various types that you have preset in the options list. You can also compare different data reports and types, to see if there are patterns emerging and or having knock-on effects. The dashboard is very easy to read, and the clear visuals make the large complex data reports seem linear and easy to digest.
Their features include:
- Great data security. In-built firewalls, encryption, and password gates make your data secure within their cloud network.
- Brilliant easy data access has been one of the best bits about Looker. No matter what platform you’re on, you can always get the latest data reports you need.
- If you want to, send alerts when the platform detects strange behavior such as fraudulent purchases, maybe abnormally low sales, or perhaps patterns that link campaigns to failure.
- They have amazing reporting features. This includes graphs, charts, infographics, and simpler text blocks, and plenty of simple number data explanations such as percentages.
CRM platforms
CRMs hold perhaps your most important data. Customer data such as purchase history is accessible by any department. And yet, the data is stored in a secure and fluid manner.
A program like Apptivo has a full suite of applications that you can use to automate data and workflows. Across the organization, you can give access to reports, campaigns, and visualizations of problems to have a smoother working day.
Some of the CRM features you may be familiar with.
- Automate your reporting. Managers don’t have to wait for someone to write them a report every week or month. A great CRM will give your managers a summary of the data collected.
- Emails will be stored along with customer profiles, so you can access not just email addresses for marketing campaigns, but customers ’ purchasing history, their communication history, and their responses to marketing campaigns.
- Every employee in the business can access customer data from anywhere, on one platform. So managers, executives, and the average office employee can look at the one report or mass of data, at once.
- You can also organize your future campaigns and collect data for them as they wait to be released. This allows for your data to be collected in real-time, and your campaigns to be shamed in real-time too.
- Basic customer information is stored away from data that is not being used or being analyzed. However, profiles are updated automatically, as responses to emails and ads are interacted with.
You spend less time with the task of manual data logging and more time selling. Automation is perhaps the best feature of CRMs. The automated plans for tasks, i.e. what to do with that data, are given to employees in daily reports and plans. This means you don’t have to give everyone their daily objectives, they will be ready waiting for them inside the CRM.
Tableau
An interactive platform, Tableau is a visual dashboard that stores raw data and converts it into a readable format. Their key feature is their worksheets, which give tasks to do for those with the responsibility for real-time analysis. The platform will analyze data in real-time, and it will give options to managers for how they want to present this data in their reports. They can create groups of data into graphs, images, infographics, and more.
Their features include:
- Data collection options. Only certain data can be analyzed if you are targeting certain groups. Maybe you have a campaign that is targeting 20-30-year-olds. If you just want to analyze how the 20 year-olds are responding, you can split the data to only show their reactions to campaigns.
- Their data-driven approach is not boring at all. Their visualizations are interactive. An icon can be clicked on so it opens up. This means managers can have fun in how they present the data. Open up little boxes to see how females in their teens are reacting to video ads, and open another box to see how males in their late 40s are reacting to your latest email marketing campaign.
- A holistic approach to presenting data is a natural side effect from their simple dashboard. Everything is neatly spaced out, so your data can easily be grouped and categorized. There’s no chance of clutter confusing an employee when they are at the end of their working day, and a little less attentive.
- They also have a scalable server, so you can increase your storage capacity when you need to. Data goes into their servers but is accessible through their cloud platform.
- Their data architecture makes it easy to process, handle and share data, no matter what size it is.
Dell Boomi
If you’re looking for flexibility, then look no further. Dell Boomi has been accepted as perhaps one of the most flexible data storage and management platforms on the market right now. It gives employees the ability to easily make data reports for their own tasks, so these smaller data reports can be compiled into larger data reports. All devices, channels, and applications are merged together in their report and data collection activities.
The cloud platform is also easy to deploy, as it operates on every single device you can think of. The scalable and secure design will grow with your business demands. If you need larger data gathering but not storage space, you can scale up your need for a short span of time.
Some of their features include:
- Synch all your data into one central location. This allows for employees of all roles and ranks, to get access to the data they need, without needing to go through separate channels.
- The data is processed quickly, so you can give them to employees along with their task briefs. Workflows are thus filled with the data that employees need on the day, instead of later on. This can mean, real-time marketing campaigns can be conducted whenever you wish.
- It also supports the integration of third-party applications. So if something cannot be downloaded and merged into the platform, it will recognize data in the reports and patterns of the data in the third-party and present it in its own way on your dashboard.
- IT teams are alerted when something is going wrong, such as errors from employees who are manually logging data, i.e. the same data being logged twice.
There are lots of ways you can manage your data. Cost-effectiveness is definitely high up on the list of your demands, but you should never be too afraid of spending the right amount to get a fast, reliable, secure, and easy-to-understand database system. However, you should always demand a few things from whatever platform you decide to integrate.
1. Always demand high communication options. Teams should never be held off from accessing the data they need to get on with their tasks.
2. Data storage should always be secure, so cloud-based systems should have excellent security.
3. Your marketing and sales campaigns should be integrated seamlessly, allowing for real-time data sharing, processing, and reporting.
4. The reports should be automated so managers can spend more time, making decisions, chasing up leads, and running their teams more effectively.
If you would like to know more about data storage and organizational tools, you can ask us a question here. Or if you’d like help selecting an effective CRM platform then try out the free CRM Finder Tool and you’ll get a shortlist of CRMs that fit your business.
