This article is sponsored by Eide Bailly.
As the world becomes increasingly data-driven, organizations across all industries must adapt and adopt better data practices to remain competitive.
An ineffective or non-existent data practice can result in lost sales opportunities, inaccurate forecasts, wasted time, and reduced productivity. Conversely, implementing a strategic data practice that leverages advanced technology solutions can help streamline financial processes, improve efficiency, and enhance data accuracy.
Improve Your Data & Increase Performance
As an organizational leader, these are the steps you must take to build a comprehensive data practice.
1. Understand What Data You Have & What It Represents
Before you can effectively use data to improve your construction business, you need to know what you are looking at. This includes identifying the different types of data you collect, such as project information, resource utilization, and financial data.
Once you understand your data, you can begin to identify the key metrics and indicators that will be most important to your business.
2. Centralize Your Data for a Single Source of Truth
One of the biggest challenges in the construction industry is the lack of centralized, accurate data. To overcome this, consider investing in robust data collection and management systems. These systems should be able to handle a wide variety of data types, from project plans and resource utilization to financial data and customer feedback.
This will help ensure that data is accurate and up to date, which is essential for making informed decisions.
3. Use Visualization Tools to Make Data More Accessible
Your employees are often busy on the jobsite and may not have the time to sift through large amounts of data.
To make data more accessible, consider investing in data visualization tools that allow them to quickly and easily view key metrics and indicators. These tools should be intuitive and easy to use so that even non-technical employees can understand and use them.
4. Invest in Data Analytics & Modeling
Once you have acquired and organized a robust data collection, you can begin to use data analytics and modeling to improve your business. This includes using data to optimize project schedules, identify inefficiencies, and improve resource utilization. These tools can also be used to predict future trends and make more informed decisions.
5. Automate Data Solutions to Improve Operations
As your company grows, it will inevitably create technical debt — older, legacy systems that don’t make sense to replace, yet still need to interact with the new, cloud-based tools you implement.
One solution for this technical debt is robotic process automation (RPA). RPA can automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as data entry, data extraction, and data processing, freeing up employees to focus on activities that provide more value and reduce the risk of human error.
This can help to improve the accuracy, efficiency, and speed of data collection, processing, and analysis.
6. Create a Data-Driven Culture
To reap the benefits of improved data practices, you must create a data-driven culture in your organization. This means that data should be integrated into all aspects of the business, from project planning and execution to decision-making and resource allocation.
By creating a data-driven culture, you can empower employees to make better decisions and drive business success.
Get Started One Step at a Time
The rate of technological advancement will only continue to increase, and businesses that are unable to adapt to the ever-changing business landscape will fall behind.
By understanding your data, implementing robust data collection and management systems, using data visualization tools, investing in data analytics and modeling, and creating a data-driven culture, you can improve your organization’s operations and make better decisions, ultimately driving business success.
This sponsored content is adapted from version of this insight that first appeared on eidebailly.com.