Using data to mine business growth points? These 3 methods are super practical!

In today's highly competitive business environment, data is not only the basis for corporate decision-making, but also the key to exploring business growth points. However, many companies often fall into the dilemma of "hindsight" in data analysis and find it difficult to truly find opportunities with actual value.

“Data analysis cannot just talk about what has happened, it must also find business opportunities.”

Whether it is work or interview, students often hear this statement. The question is: how do you "find the opportunity point"? Today we will explain it systematically.

01 What is considered an opportunity point

In many places, the word "opportunity" is just an empty slogan: "We must seize the great opportunity of the current industry recovery..." It sounds good, but:

1. “Industry recovery”, is it really happening?

2. “Industry recovery”, where exactly?

3. How do we catch them?

I don't know.

So if you want to make the opportunity point clear, you have to meet the following criteria:

• Based on clear facts
• Have clear business logic
• Positive impact on an outcome indicator
• There are specific persons in charge and work processes
• Such outputs are opportunities. Our work is aimed at this.

02 The correct way to seize opportunities

The first step is to clearly define what kind of result is considered an opportunity point.

There are four typical data forms (as shown below).

Figure 1: Suggestions were made and adopted by the business, but performance did not change much

Figure 2: After making suggestions, the performance has continued to rise as before

Figure 3: I succeeded once before, and then I replicated it after summarizing it.

Figure 4: No one noticed it, but you proposed it, everyone adopted it, and the result was a big rise

Obviously! Figure 4 is the most perfect opportunity point performance: the business side was originally unaware of it, but it was discovered by the data, and then action was taken, and then the indicator soared!

Therefore, if you want to analyze the opportunities, you need to understand:

1. Which department and business line should be analyzed?

2. The core indicators of this business line are sales/number of new users/product gross profit…

3. The past performance of the core indicator, whether there is a continuous trend (as shown in Figure 2) or a single point of outbreak (as shown in Figure 3)

4. What is the internal and external environment for the continuity trend? What is the development stage? (Excluding natural growth in the early stage of the life cycle)

5. What is the corresponding business scenario for a single-point explosive action? How reproducible is it? (Excluding one-time good luck)

6. Under the premise of no trend/no single point, are there any successful cases in the segmented field that can be used (segmented customer groups/niche products/segmented channels)?

In this way, by locking in key indicators and setting clear benchmarks, it will be easy to extract business practices that can be utilized, which is much faster than sitting in front of a computer and thinking hard about it.

03 Three ways to seize opportunities

The simplest approach: assessing growth trends

By analyzing the current growth reasons, eliminating the factors of natural growth and cyclical growth, find out whether there are parts that can be affected by adjusting the input. If there are, evaluate the output that can be brought by additional investment (note, avoid the occurrence of diminishing marginal benefits). If the effect brought by additional investment is very objective, this is a mature opportunity point: earn more profits through additional investment (as shown in the figure below).

The second simplest method: assess the possibility of reproduction

By disassembling past successful cases, we can see if there is a possibility of recurrence. Whether successful cases can be reproduced requires disassembling business tags from the perspective of business logic and analyzing feasibility.

For example, if a salesperson successfully signs a customer, it can be broken down into:

• Customer Industry
• Customer needs
• Signed products
• Signing amount
• Signing salesperson
• Signing cycle

Then review the success rate of these tags. If you find that this order is really a single order and cannot be reproduced, then give up. If you find that some of the practices of this order can be copied by others, then do an experiment to see if it can be promoted (as shown in the figure below).

Finding opportunities in niche areas is the most difficult analysis

The difficulty lies not in the analytical thinking, but in the argumentation. In essence, opportunities in niche areas are actually to break down user groups/channels/product lines when the overall performance is not good, find a relatively good branch, and then try to promote it.

It is very simple to decompose the data in this way, just pull the cross table. However, it is very difficult to prove that this point can be generalized (as shown below):

Because it is very likely that an isolated point is difficult to generalize, for example:

1. The channel is niche, the user group is niche, and the product line itself has little demand;
2. Due to policy and resource constraints, we are unable to do this;
3. This point has been tried and suffered losses, so it is only this big;
4. It may work on a small scale, but once it is expanded, problems such as diminishing marginal benefits, insufficient core customer base, etc. will emerge.

In short, if a business is easy to do well, it must have been done long ago. The business department is not stupid. If it is not doing well now, there must be deeper reasons.

Therefore, when looking for opportunities in niche areas, it is best to use growth experiments to solve problems rather than relying on past data analysis to draw conclusions. For example, if you find a potential opportunity, communicate with the business side in advance:

• Have you noticed this point in the past?
• Have you tried this before?
• How do you view this opportunity?
• Is it possible to add additional investment?
• If possible, is the first wave scheduled to try

In this way, you can avoid pitfalls in advance, design a good growth experiment plan, and gradually explore a path. Only then can you find opportunities.

04 The wrong way to seize opportunities

The above is the basic idea of ​​finding opportunities. Finding opportunities is not a one-time thing. It requires in-depth business and combined experiments to get reliable conclusions. What many data analysts like to do most is:

1. Because this indicator rises quickly, it is an opportunity that must be seized

2. Because this channel has good indicators, it is an opportunity and you should go long

3. Because you have succeeded once before, it is an opportunity to continue

4. Because this indicator is low, it is an opportunity. It would be better if we raise it higher.

No evidence, no logic, no experiments. Just repeating the formula of revenue = number of customers * payment rate * average order value over and over again, it would be a miracle if such a product without three things is not criticized.