From the course: Data-Driven Decision-Making for Business Professionals

Data drives decision-making

- You're at a restaurant. You think you might want to order the crab cakes, but you read the menu and the crab cakes are, well more than you expected. So you pick the pasta dish instead. This is the power of data. Data drives our decision-making. The restaurant, the crab cakes, the pasta, the price, these are all data points, data points for your decision. So if every decision uses data, then we want to make sure we have good data. If it turns out that your crab cakes were actually on sale that day, and you didn't order them, wouldn't you be disappointed? Now think about if that was a decision about a equipment purchase, office lease, or merger. You need to ask yourself, which elements are relevant to the decision I need to make now or tomorrow. And will it still be applicable, both the data and your decision in the future? Insightful data and informed decision-making leads to things like, improved customer experience, higher productivity, reduce risk, ability to act on opportunities, increased revenue, and a serious competitive advantage. Consider this, if you had access to data, about an organization, you could use it to your advantage. Imagine a new restaurant start selling crab cakes nearby for half the price. What do you think about? Why so cheap? How, great? Now, imagine you own one of the nearby restaurants. What are you thinking about? Are you wondering how the competition compares to your operations? Things like supplier costs, labor, overhead. Or do you speak to your team? Why are those crab cakes so much cheaper? Are we going to lose money? And what about your own fears? How am I going to compete? How am I going to last? Or is there anything, do you even worry about? Knowledge like this, is a form of competitive advantage and organizations use data in the same way. Data drives organizations to make informed decisions, to beat their competitions, and stay relevant. The data helps them with decisions that lead to more profitable products, happier customers, and retained employees. Data insights drive decision-making, and the choices we make for tomorrow's success depend on drawing the right insights from the right data today.

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