SMBs Often Struggle With Data. Here’s How Humanlytics Can Help.
By: Zach Diamond
Tags: Analytics, Small Business, Digital Marketing, Startup, Critical Thinking

Zach Diamond: So what is the problem that Humanlytics is trying to solve?

Patrick Han: Long story short, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have a ton of data and they don’t know what to do with it. The big players have joined the data revolution; they hire teams of analysts because they understand that data analytics has great ROI (return on investment) for the business. By using these analytics they can better optimize their sales. The problem is that the smaller guys haven’t joined the revolution because they either don’t understand the true value of data or don’t have the capacity to fully extract value from their data.

This presents itself through a variety of problems: collection, integration, automation, adoption, and interpretation. Even if they have collected integrated data, they don’t know how to draw actionable business insights from it. That’s why we think that a highly simplified web app is the best solution. They need something to take care of the whole data process for them. They want all of it to come to a single point of truth: “What do you do?”

ZD: What kind of information can this tool give SMBs?

PH: Data is about measuring things, such as KPIs (key performance indicators), yet a lot of these SMBs don’t know which metrics to track, which ones to focus on, and which ones are the most important. So we’ll take all of their data and see what they should be tracking.

We want to take away all of the noise and find the signals. Actionable insights come from market data. One thing we want to do is build an ideal customer profile. Once we find out who their customers are, we can put forth a hypothesis and then change the marketing strategy to see if it works. For example we could focus on soccer moms or “techy” people.

ZD: How will SMBs know if the tool is helping?

PH: It all comes down to ROI, which is what drives revenue. It’s okay if we spend a lot of money as long as it drives revenue. This is what every business decision comes down to. ROI is the gold standard. If you’re doing it right then you should be able to see your numbers going up.

ZD: What exactly can social media analysis do for them?

PH: This is part of a bigger question. Everything is going digital, including marketing. The three main places in digital marketing that are most important are blogs, SEO (search engine optimization), and social media.

SEO is how you get found. More and more consumers are finding the products they want through google. Blogs are important because they improve SEO. When you write about your industry more and more people link to you which improves SEO and increases the likelihood that your business will be found. Social media is important because that’s how ideas get value and that’s how ideas get spread. This is where people are and where they get their information.

ZD: How will the data analysis Humanlytics provides fit into the context of the business?

PH: A lot of startups make the mistake of assuming that the solution to everyone’s problem is a software tool. We want to make a software tool because of the nature of our problem. People want the right information at the right time. A SMB could hire someone but they have limited resources: time and money.

Thus, they need a tool that delivers the information, actionable insights that can identify problems, and work with it in real time and quickly. A lot of SMB owners aren’t analysts, they’re operations people so we need to give them the insights and actions. If their ROI is going down we can give them a checklist in order to fix their problems. We want to generate task lists for them so that they know what to do. People like checklists.

ZD: People want powerful KPIs. How realistic is it to provide a few all encompassing KPIs? How do you avoid anecdotal KPIs?

PH: Most of the people we talk to have KPIs they really care about already. These can provide a very high level overview. It is very industry specific. Less is more when it comes to KPIs. This is true from an organizational perspective and it’s also true from a design perspective. Based on their data we can tell which tactic makes the most sense.

ZD: If the space is full of tools that provide data visualization then what is the difference with Humanlytic’s tool?

PH: Certainly a lot of tools occupy this space and the good ones are visual. We’re different from all of those because, though visualization is better than nothing, even if it allows you to identify the outliers it doesn’t tell you what to do. If your twitter ad ROI’s are going down there is a repeatable workflow way to solve that. We’re focusing on actionable insights which provides that motivation and call to action.

ZD: Do you investigate SMB’s hypothesis or just provide them with clear numbers?

PH: This could go both ways. Some people are overwhelmed so we need to tell them exactly what they’re looking for. What’s been trending down for them is not profits but revenue. On the other hand, a lot of our users might know what to ask for so we just help. Right now we’re leaning towards the former though there is likely space for us with both.