In management, we often overlook the fact that it is numbers that reveal the truth of management, not the manager's personal estimates, predictions, or feelings. In fact, if managers ignore or are unaware of the value and role of numbers in management, they may be deceived by their own intuition, emotions, and experience, leading to completely wrong judgments and conclusions.
For example, in a certain FMCG trading company, overall sales declined for three consecutive months, and the boss, overwhelmed by the declining sales performance, hired a consulting firm to find the cause. Through systematic research, analysis, and diagnosis of the sales department's work plans, records, and various departments of the company, the consulting firm found that the sales department's work and efforts were 1.5 times that of the same period last year, while the return amount of sold products grew at a rate of 20% for three consecutive months.
From this case, we can see where the cause of the company's sales decline lies. It may not be closely related to the "incompetence of the sales department." Through analysis of the numbers, we can accurately determine what is causing the increasing returns. This shows the important value of digital management.
Let us organize and see the role of data-driven management in our management activities:
It provides us with clear management basis. Data-driven management helps us clarify management thinking, solidify management instructions, procedures, measures, and other management behaviors. It makes our work goals and plans clear at a glance, and enables various business indicators to be quickly transmitted in management activities. The sender or receiver of instructions is clear, reducing errors in transmission and understanding.
Data can be widely used in enterprises. Data-driven management encourages us to record, analyze, and archive data in management activities, allowing us to accumulate more experience and develop good habits. Data is rich material and a resource for the enterprise, providing a true basis for further operations and first-hand information for improvement and innovation.
Data-driven management is the basic standard for refined management. It advocates fact-based management, fundamentally preventing or reducing management errors. It is also suitable for quantitative management at all levels of the enterprise, optimizing processes, establishing standards, and improving structures. Data is also the best way to explain management status and is the basic basis for various management results.
It facilitates performance appraisal. Data-driven management sets an evaluation standard for assessment, motivation, punishment measures, and performance management, providing the most direct and true basis for evaluating management efficiency, product quality, and employee performance. It helps establish a fair and standardized management mechanism.
Data improves our management effectiveness. Emphasizing data management will strengthen your process management. For example, whether inventory is reasonable, finances are healthy, sales networks are normal, and after-sales networks are complete, as long as we reflect them with charts and data, it will surely prompt the enterprise to find root causes, thereby further improving management level.
It can promote enterprise informatization. Today, enterprises must face the wave of "information management," which is built on data-driven management. Many enterprises' informatization results are unsatisfactory or distorted, one important reason being the low degree of "digitization" of positions, functions, and processes, directly leading to the lack of "repeatability" of positions or processes. Positions or processes that cannot be replicated or repeated become the culprit of arbitrary work based on personal experience, leading to non-standard management.
Data is an important basis for our decisions. For important decisions or investment activities, no matter what procedures or methods are used, data is the best judgment standard. As long as data collection is true, our research, analysis, and argumentation are persuasive, and we can make optimal judgments.
In fact, as long as our enterprises value data-driven management and put effort into it, its role is far more than these. Today, our management activities are inseparable from data-driven management at all times. From what results our work should produce, who will complete it, where and when it will be completed, the degree of completion, and what information and data are needed to assist in processing, data-driven management corresponds to content management, competitive intelligence, knowledge management, business intelligence, data warehousing, cost-benefit analysis, summarizing and analyzing information from various business subsystems, and using statistical methods to segment consumers, etc. It is the most direct and effective method in management activities.
If an enterprise lacks digital awareness and digital management, then today's enterprise management will be half the effort with double the result or even impossible to move forward, and even the most basic management results and personal performance achievements cannot be estimated or measured, let alone how to manage the enterprise. In fact, if our enterprises value or are willing, almost all management elements, modules, and results can be digitally designed and managed.
-END-
Editor's PS: The editor has selected 1,067 articles from nearly 1,900 articles published on this official account, divided them into 14 categories and 57 knowledge points, and systematically compiled first-line marketing management content into a library for everyone to learn. From market to customers, focusing on practical combat and management, all are dry goods. After following the official account, reply with the number "1" to browse and view related content.