The Zen Value of Business Analytics in Startup

Essentially when we hear someone say something about startups, they will typically think of a huge chunk of issues. Starting from budget limitations, team management and ending with lots of uncertainties, inexperience, and lack of clear actions. The key solution that will come forward to assist every startup business process is business analytics.

It may sound very strange at first since various startup roles can solve all of those issues. Even though it is true, it may not be exactly like that. You see a financial manager can properly distribute his resources required to complete a project. But he does not know what are the base requirements of how much he should invest in developing a product feature. That’s also where business analytics in every startup will join the force.

A bit confusing isn’t it? Don’t worry about asking yourself: “How exactly business analytics can impact my startup?”, cause we’ll explain that shortly. By the way, stick to the end of this article, to find out a bonus we prepared for you!

Business analytics? Never heard of that!

Business analytics is a data analysis that focused on achieving business goals and predicting the milestones on the product development path. To be more precise, every business analyst is processing business information through various methodologies to make smarter data-driven business actions.

Some of the key points for any given business analytics team are:

• Forecasting: Analysis of historical data to an approximate estimation of either future events or behavior of the market.
• Predictive Analytics: Various techniques for making predictive models that will identify the patterns and provide estimates for organization outcomes.
• Optimization: Simulation process of techniques that will identify the best scenario for the right business actions.
• Data Visualization: Either a dynamic or a static mockup of how the product’s future vision can be implemented.

To give an example let’s take an instance that happened during our Design and Discovery Phase. “Sortly” project came into our hands and the client had trouble with the further product vision of his idea. After conducting thorough research among the product competitors, our team identified the best development branch. According to the past market trends and the users’ requirements, we specified which functionalities had to be developed first. This decision was reasoned by combining both must-have features and the client’s desires in the modern inventory app. That was back in 2015, now “Sortly” is the #1 inventory app among its competitors.

Most of the businesses, before they began to expand and grow spontaneously, have always analyzed their products and tried to predict the right development path. Together with various platforms, tools, and observations, they utilized them to achieve the results where they are right now. Ergo, it is rational and important to lay down your ground requirements for your startup product.

How important it is for startups?

Business analytics allows various organizations to correctly set product outcomes, according to the founder’s goals. It is extremely important for any type of business. As it can give a future insight on how the product can operate and function without the actual code or software product itself. Any entrepreneur who is using it can outcompete the ones who don’t. This is happening because business analysts show why some specific results are achieved while predicting certain outcomes.

First of all, for startup business analytics offers coverage for businesses to produce the most effective decisions. Also, it allows you to correctly automate the decision process. Since most of the risks will be already covered and all of the solutions will already be in your hands.

By collecting the right data to work with, it allows various organizations to gain core business insights. That makes your decision-making process much easier and coherent.

Improving the efficiency of your business organization is one more area where business analytics can greatly assist startups. By comparing and analyzing various volumes of data on time, allows various businesses to make a concrete decision much faster.

Risk reduction of any business decisions is yet another useful feature every organization will benefit from. By correctly identifying project decisions based on the received information (project scope, customer types for example) and by applying it at the right moment, a business unit can greatly benefit from both the long or short-term project risks.

All of that combined can be used to build a solid ground for your beginning business. Yes, you heard me right, it helps you understand certain patterns and take actions far before the development phase. Since JetRuby was a startup originally, we understand how, where, and why data behave in specific ways. During the Design and Discovery phase, we define all of the required steps for your successful business path and can guarantee that your project will not fail as 80% of all others do.

Business analytics impact on startup

We clarified how business analytics is important for every startup. The next step is to understand where and how exactly it can apply to a given scenario. That’s why here we want to give you an insight into how it can result in a real-world scenario from our perspective.

App Visualization

An app design is a complete responsibility of a designer lead or a team in any given business. However what we meant here is an actual representation of an app, before the development stage can kick in. Since, once you know all the fine points of your working business model, you probably need to have a set of wireframes along with the graphical prototype. And business analytics will come in to help in accomplishing this early task. By carefully analyzing your product vision, technical requirements, and your mind perspective on the product, a business analytics team will present a set of rough mockups. Only later on, based on the approved sketches and dynamic visual prototype, the designer team will be able to construct an actual graphical representation of your product.

You can easily take an example from a client of ours who came with an idea of a business selling marketplace. He explained his concept to our team, citing some common functionalities that he wanted to see in his product. However, what he had trouble with is visually expressing how the app should look like. Here’s how our startup business analytics team assisted him.

They gathered the necessary business-related information and began to do their research. First of all, they go through the business canvas model, research your product competitors, and determine the entry requirements for a new product in its niche. Next, they analyze the success path through the user story map, and only in the end they will have a real basis for producing the prototype (aka Wireframes). Meaning that the design is the logical continuation of justified business decisions. Not several assumptions based on a wild guess.

After that, they produce a few frames of the graphical design, and together with the client, they make some changes, according to the wishes of the client. As a result, they managed to produce not only some sketches, but a whole interactive prototype, and the client enjoyed it. Together with him, we gave his business a name: “Beazzy”.

It is not an easy task, however, the combined effort both from your side and JetRuby can become a gem. Even if you don’t understand some specific technical requirements or even the cost of your product. We are here to assist you. So check out the Design and Discovery Phase, to see how we helped others and we can help you.

App Unique Aspects

To have an outstanding position among your competitors and have more confidence in your product, you should have features that are both unique and solve the customer pain points. However, it might not be exactly an easy task to pinpoint the right features at the first sight. Since, you may listen to anybody, even your gut, but the real truth will lie directly in the competitor’s research that you should do. By investigating your product analogs’ weak and strong points, a business analyst will be able to tell where exactly can you add unique value to your product.

One of our clients has stumbled upon this typical, yet deadly issue that some startups tend to do inaccurately. During the Design & Discovery phase of, “Cash Out My Car” project our client didn’t know how exactly can his product be both original and at the same time solve customer’s pain. After long research, our business analyst informed him that a specific feature can be developed from his simple marketplace. To be more precise it was to instantly set the bet to the specific product via SMS without even connecting to the Internet. That way he managed to score a goal in the customer’s gate of pain points.

App Target Audience

Every company has to research and investigate its potential customer audience. What parts do they find annoying or what kind of service they find uncomfortable? A business analyst can analyze both things simultaneously without the implemented product. After understanding an approximate social profile of your product, he draws two more profiles: current customers and potential customer groups. By comparing both of them not only he will understand where the perfect middle profile is, but also see where exactly you can take advantage of your product or special offers that you can advertise. A business analyst dives even more by analyzing your product with the competitor ones.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, analytics plays a huge role in various businesses. The presence of an expert team that will estimate and correct the pathway for your product vision has huge benefits. As you’ll research your way towards the right approach for your product development path, lots of opportunities will be revealed. That’s why without an analytical consultant, you would have to keep reinventing the wheel again and again while staying in the dark. Since business analytics can assist in many ways. It can tell you what you should do first and what can be less important, what outcomes you can forecast, and what has to be done to eliminate the blind spots. When you’ll truly require assistance on the black spots of your project, business analytics will be able to put you on the right track.

We suggest that as much as every other part of your startup makes an irreplaceable place, so don’t ignore business analytics. Motivate and encourage your entire startup team to make more data-driven business divisions. And when you finally integrate business analytics at every iteration stage of your product development, eventually your business will begin to make its first successful scale.

JetRuby is one of the globally recognized companies that are actively involved in assisting startups with new product launches. We believe that every person can implement valuable and unique products, after deep and thorough research. That’s why we offer you a free Product Development Strategy session with our Business Analyst to assist you in the early stages of your product planning. Make sure you leave your contact details below and we will be in touch shortly!