If you’re an MSP, data is a big part of what you do. You safeguard your clients’ data, and you have your own data to think about, too. The reason your clients store data is the same reason you do – because there’s valuable information contained within that data. In other words, that data has genuine value to your business. Here are 5 ways that being a data-driven MSP contributes to your bottom line.
Data is evidence, and that evidence is used to inform decisions. Data is still a garbage in, garbage out type of thing, so make sure the data that goes into those KPIs, dashboards and reports is of the highest possible quality.
It’s a lot easier to put the present and future trends in context if you understand the past trends accurately. To funnel resources into higher growth service offerings, for example, you need to know what the growth rates on your service offerings are.
Gut decisions are easy, but sometimes your gut lies to you. There are a lot of biases that go into our decision making, and data can provide a check against those biases. Your gut might be right, but data will prove it.
The timeliness of decisions matters, especially in a competitive situation. If you’ve got the right data at your fingertips, you’ll be more nimble, able to make decisions more quickly and with greater confidence. Sometimes being the first one to make a decision is all you need to win.
At the heart of it, having great data at your fingertips, and especially if it’s clean, is an advantage when running a business. You can still make lousy decisions, and are always subject to external forces beyond your control, but data gives you better clarity, and thus better opportunity to drive superior bottom line results.