3 ways to get the most out of your small data

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Ways to get the most out of your small data 3

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Page 1: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

Ways to get the most

out of your small data3

Page 2: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

What is “small data?”

“Small data” is created by individuals and typically lives on an individual’s computer, shared drive, or personal database.

Field data, marketing campaigns, forecasts, budgets, project-specific, person-specific, or location-specific information can all be considered “small data.”

Just because it’s small by name, doesn’t mean it doesn’t pack a big punch. Tremendous value can be gleaned from centralizing, standardizing, and reporting small data captured by business users.

Page 3: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

1. Collect Complete, Error-free data

2. Standardize Your Workflow

3. Effectively Report and Share Insights

How to get the most

from small data:

Page 4: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

1Collect Complete,

Error-free DataMany companies still rely on Excel spreadsheets to collect or consolidate information across locations, departments, or individuals. Excel is great when working with a single user, but becomes complicated when many users need to update the same spreadsheet. Data can easily be overwritten or lost entirely.

In a Carnegie Mellon University study that surveyed 45 executives and senior managers, the two most common types of errors in spreadsheets were inaccurate data (76%) and errors inherited from the reuse of spreadsheets (49%).

Be sure that your information is accurate and complete by standardizing the data, not just the format for data entry, but the actual columns and fields collected. If you’re missing pieces of the puzzle, you won’t be able to effectively analyze your data or create new strategies with confidence.

Page 5: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

2 Standardize Your

WorkflowComplete and accurate data is the first step, but how you collect your data can have a big impact on quality too. Manually formatting or updating information, usually within Excel, wastes time and introduces human error.

Ideally, you’d want a completely automated system for collecting all of your information. To start, you can identify any weaknesses in your current data-collection process and empower your team with tools designed to help.

Take your business systems into consideration, as well. If separate business systems speak different “languages,” it can be difficult to transfer, standardize, and centralize your information.

Page 6: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

3 Effectively Report and

Share InsightsA company changes with every cost, every sale, and every campaign. Your business is a living entity. If your data updates in real-time, shouldn’t your reports? If your reporting process can’t keep up with changing data, then strategies become moving targets based on assumptions, guesses, and old data.

Additionally, companies can run into problems when sharing sensitive data. If someone from Team A shouldn’t see Team B’s information, then generating specific reports for each team can become a risky and laborious proposition. Conversely, if user-specific reports are not generated then users have to mine through irrelevant data to find what is useful.

The process of collecting data and generating reports should not be arduous and time-consuming, yet organizations that rely heavily on Excel complain about its shortcomings. If you do rely on Excel for reporting, remember that that Excel was not designed to quickly and easily slice and dice data among many people.

Page 7: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

The Ideal SolutionWhat if you could validate data, standardize collection and workflow, and share reports based on user-specific permissions with a single tool? Wouldn’t that make small data more manageable and effective?

You could standardize data-collection to save time and reduce errors. Unlike Excel, users wouldn’t be locked out or able to change someone else’s data. Multiple users could input information into a single location without the need for sharing files, and your workflow would be less complicated and more accurate.

You would have dashboards and reports that automatically update to reflect real-time data changes, and you could share these reports with user-specific permissions to control what everyone sees. You would also be able to drill down at a granular level to see the metrics that are important to you.

Page 8: 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Small Data

Get the most from your

small data

UQube streamlines data collection, sharing, and reporting information into a

central location. Your small data will be more accessible than ever:

• Run reports that reflect real-time data updates

• Set permissions to control what people see

• Benefit from familiar Excel-like interface

• See key metrics on a granular level

• Create and share dashboards and reports

UQube is not a replacement for your current business systems; It's a

gap-filler, solving your “small data” problems.