Recommended reading for all entrepreneurs… is this article on Big Data from the Harvard Business Review while most startups in the early stages don’t have ANY data to analyze, let alone enough data that you could call it “big data” and derive any meaningful insight from it…

It won’t be long before many “startups” have data stores filled with information (if you choose to collect it, even 500 customers will provide you with rich data)…

and analyzing that information, deriving insights from it, and acting on it (a three-pronged skill set that few people have… thus the article’s focus on how to find Data Scientists) will be ESSENTIAL.

I’m not talking about being competitive here, I’m talking about survival.

One retailer assumed from their extensive hands-on experience, that service person turnover was a key metric… that would determine customer satisfaction. Makes sense intuitively, eh? You want great service/counter staff, and you want them to stay.

Once they truly questioned their assumptions, re-ran their analysis and plumbed their sales per store… they determined service staff was irrelevant. Store manager turnover, however, absolutely determined if the location was profitable or not.

I’m sure my clients can relate, even though some of them have “smaller” businesses right now. Read and heed!