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Over 35 years ago, Dean Guida self-started his technology company, Infragistics, and has since expanded the business globally across six countries with a client roster that includes: 100% of the S&P 500.
As CEO and Founder of Infragistics, Dean built a business that withstood a series of turbulent moments as the Internet continued to evolve, including the dot-com tech bubble of the late ’90s, the Internet explosion, and the 2008 recession. I’ve been doing it. . And it’s not because he was lucky, or happened to be in the right place at the right time, or just worked harder than the next person.
He crystallizes his insights at each critical moment along the way, from common growing pains to completely unpredictable challenges, into a hard-won philosophy that he shares in a new book. We realized this.
In an excerpt from “When Grit is Not Enough,” Dean explains why data needs to be at the heart of every business, even professional sports teams, to drive profitability and better business decisions. Introducing how data is incorporated into games.
Until recently, the analytics revolution that swept the sports world bypassed hockey. Thanks to big data, baseball managers are now implementing defensive shifts on every batter and pulling starting pitchers as soon as they throw 100 pitches. Analytics tells a football coach to pass on a fourth down if the team only needs yards for a first down. And he turns NBA basketball games into 3-point shooting contests.
Few organizations focus on deeper analysis in hockey. The Tampa Bay Lightning, my favorite team and back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, were different. More than a decade ago, the company hired mathematician Michael Peterson as director of analytics. Tampa Bay then began to rely heavily on data, moving from pure statistical data and subjective evaluations of players to analytics.
When Tampa Bay hired Peterson, there were probably three or four NHL teams using analytics. These clubs were beginning to try to find statistics that were not just measurable, but meaningful. A statistic like “Tampa won 72% of its games played on Thursday” is measurable, but doesn’t mean much unless the team only played games on that day. What all these teams wanted was information they could use to create a repeatable winning formula.
For example, sensor data collected from a hockey puck can indicate player fatigue based on things like shot speed and passing speed. This allows coaches to make timely substitutions to rest players more effectively. Data analysis also helps with training and planning, leading to better tactics, game plans, and team play.
Sportsnet analysis writer Stephen Birch says, “For analysts to suggest that a metric has value, we need to understand how it contributes to the outcome we want, most commonly a goal for or against. You need to be able to explain why it’s relevant.” “Once you can identify how it relates to winning, you need to be able to prove that it describes something meaningful and that it has a relatively strong relation to goals and winning. there is.”
The same applies to your business. No company can remain profitable and win in the market unless it becomes data-driven and its employees are skilled at evaluating data and using statistical analysis. The most successful companies are those that can find the diamond in the rough and extract compelling, meaningful, data-driven stories, products, or marketing strategies from the numbers.
The following is an excerpt from When Grit is Not Enough: An Entrepreneur’s Playbook for Take Your Business to the Next Level by Dean Guida.
Data explosion
When I founded Infragistics over 35 years ago, we weren’t focused on data. We relied on our intuition as market experts and the research we had gathered, no matter how scanty, to make the best decisions we could.
However, the world around us was changing rapidly. In 1989, software and computer systems began to be widely used to analyze back-office functions such as accounting and operations. Two years later, computer scientist Tim Berners’ Lee announced the birth of the Internet, setting specifications for a worldwide, interconnected web of data that could be accessed by anyone, anywhere. By 1997, Google Search debuted, inspired by the company’s mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible, useful, and searchable.
At the end of the 20th century, business commentators used the term big data to describe the large amount of information that was now available for analysis. At the same time, they were proclaiming the Internet of Things to record an increase in the number of online devices that have the possibility of communicating with each other.
In 2005, the concept of Web 2.0 was born to identify a world in which the majority of Internet content would be provided by service users rather than service providers. Finally, by 2014, more people were accessing their digital data using mobile devices rather than office or home computers, and the amount of data generated had exploded.
How big was this explosion? Just four years ago, at a conference, Eric Schmidt, then Google’s executive chairman, said that since the beginning of human civilization, he was creating as much data every two days as he had created by 2003. It was declared that it was generated in . As surprising as Schmidt’s comparison was. It seems quaint now, back then. In 2023, people will create 1.7 megabytes (MB) of data every secondor 3.5 quintillion bytes per day (1 quintillion has 18 zeros).
The flood of information is only increasing. More and more people around the world are using the Internet. The number of active internet users in 2023 is 4.6 billion, which is close to 66% of the world’s population. (The number of Internet users in 2013 was 2.5 billion.) Access to data is becoming faster, cheaper, and easier every day.
new business world
This is the world we all live in now. Emanuel Younanzadeh, VP of Marketing at Modern Data Company, succinctly describes the reality of today’s business. He’s “data or death.” However, according to his 2021 NewVantage study, only 24 percent of companies have evolved into data-driven businesses. And even companies that are focused on being data-driven are experiencing problems. According to Forrester, only 32 percent of business leaders are able to create measurable value from their data, and only 27 percent say their data and analytics products generate actionable insights. What’s even more surprising is that between 60% and 73% of all company data is never analyzed.
I believe that companies that choose not to adopt this new data-driven approach to their business are prone to inaccurate forecasts, missed revenue goals, poor decision-making, mismarketing, and unnecessary costs. is thinking.
On the other hand, the competitive advantage of being data-driven can be huge. According to McKinsey research, users who engage in customer analytics are 19 times more likely to increase revenue and 23 times more likely to outperform in customer acquisition than those who do not.
data-driven business
Being data-driven puts information and analysis at the center of the decision-making process. At Infragistics, our executives and employees leverage years of statistical experience to prove or refute assumptions. We’ve found that using data can provide a variety of benefits in the following areas:
Launch of new products and services
Creating a successful new product or service activates every aspect of Infragistics: marketing, financing, development, design, and sales. All departments at Infragistics optimize their decision-making processes through data. This is because data zeroes in on customer wants, preferences, and expectations.
Monitor and beat the competition
Accurate and timely data allows you to monitor and analyze your competitors’ actions. And more importantly, you’ll be able to proactively respond to rapidly changing market trends rather than reacting.
Improved collaboration
Data provides your team with real-time information about needed changes and new opportunities. This is important for cross-functional collaboration, but also drives horizontal innovation in infragistics. For example, product development team members may be able to propose new and imaginative solutions to problems that marketing departments are struggling with. Data reveals new ways of thinking about what we should do next.
Cost optimization
Track your profit and loss data to find patterns that help you make informed decisions and optimize your finances. The data also shows important trends. Packed with financial data, the report provides a snapshot of where Infragistics is at any given time. This allows me and everyone in the company to see how things change over time.
Target the right audience
Our marketing efforts, like all business marketing efforts, need to target different audiences. Using data, you can develop optimal strategies to deliver the right products and services to the right customers. This is especially important in a world with so many media channels. Without data, we rely on guesswork. With data, you can know whether you are succeeding or failing, whether to maintain your strategy or pivot to a new approach.
When I first started watching hockey, it was a game of great speed, amazing skill, hard hitting, and usually two or three games a night. While all of this is important, this is also a sport that believes deeply in the power of analytics to improve the performance of all players and give teams that master analytics a competitive edge.
Excerpted and edited with permission from When you don’t have the guts: The entrepreneur’s handbook for taking your business to the next level. Written by Dean Guida.
Zoe Ashbridge is a contributor to Grit Daily. She has been working and writing about technology, digital marketing, SEO, e-commerce, and entrepreneurship for the past 10 years.
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