How A Bookkeeper Can Help You with Data Analytics
Data analytics or data analysis. You’ve probably heard of the terms, but what exactly do they mean, and how can a bookkeeper help you with them? What is 'data analytics' or 'data analysis'? Data analytics refers to the various techniques and processes used to improve a company’s productivity and business gain. Relevant data is collected by organisations, such as that associated with customers, business processes, market economics and practical experiences, and is placed into categories. The data is then stored and analysed by bookkeepers, accountants and business owners to study purchasing trends and patterns.
Depending on the type of business, the techniques may vary greatly, but the result should be the same. How can data analytics help your business? As mentioned above, data is collected and analysed to help businesses identify customer trends; thorough and detailed analysis, often with the help of a bookkeeper or accountant, can help reveal customer trends and go on to help business owners develop a strategy to maximise these trends.
Initiatives involving data analytics can help a business in several ways, from increasing revenues, improving the efficiency of operations, making marketing campaigns as targeted and successful as they can be, responding quicker to those trends emerging in the market and helping businesses gain a competitive edge over rival companies. All with the primary focus placed upon maximizing business performance.
What types of businesses use data analytics? Many businesses can gain from data analytics initiatives, for example, banks and credit card companies analyse the withdrawal and spending patterns of their customers to help prevent fraud and identity theft, while E-commerce companies utilise ‘clickstream analysis’ to help them identify visitors to their site who may be more inclined to purchase certain items based upon the patterns given by their page viewings. Patient data is also evaluated by healthcare organisations as they seek to find the effectiveness of treatments for cancer and other illnesses.
How can a bookkeeper or accountant help you with data analytics? Being able to extract value from your businesses data, and turn your company into an organization that uses it and analyses it to improve daily operations, can be achieved with the help of a bookkeeper. A good bookkeeper will help you extract data that your accountant or CPA can analyse, and which can then be passed on and shared with your clients.
What are the different types of data analytics applications for businesses? Numerical data has quantifiable variables that can be measured or compared with statistics, and this is one form of data analytics. The other form is qualitative, which has its focus upon the understanding of data such as text, images and video, that has no numerical content. There are more advanced types of data analytics, too, which include predictive analytics, machine learning and data mining. Predictive analytics is all about predicting customer behaviour and equipment failures, along with other future
events, while machine learning is an artificial intelligence technique that sifts through data using automated algorithms. Data mining is when large sets of data are used to help identify patterns and trends. Big data analytics applies all three of these techniques to large sets of data that are made up of unstructured or semi structured data. Hiring a bookkeeper or accountant will ensure that the relevant data analytics techniques are used, and you’re able to maximize the results to gain the most valuable insights for your business.
Miami Bookkeeping was founded with the purpose of helping small businesses outsource the time-consuming and tedious work known as bookkeeping. For more than 10 years, our company has been providing bookkeeping services in Coral Gables and Miami for hundreds of small businesses. If you are looking for bookkeeping in Coral Gables and Miami, contact us today at support@miamibookkeeping.com