Use Data Wisely
In every line of business, you can leverage data to extract extra value. In fact, data manipulation could possibly become one of your most fundamental business processes.
For example, if you were to become a real estate investor, you could study market trends with help from computer database queries. When you have collected all available data on the properties sold in your target region, you could easily import that information into a variety of databases and then merge it with the standard Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data set, which is the most fundamental and up-to-date data that real estate brokers and agents rely on to conduct commerce.
Next, you could assign various field names (like neighborhood, average income, growth rate of community, recent sale prices in neighborhood, school quality, distance to subway, highway and shopping, and so forth) to classifications of data and thereby effectively store and manage the characteristics of each record.
Then you can browse and run queries on the data to start discovering market trends and inefficiencies that haven’t been fully exploited by your entrenched competitors. If you’ve discovered statistical anomalies in your market that others have overlooked, or failed to leverage appropriately, your business will have an advantage to exploit these opportunities.
It could be of benefit if the category of data you require doesn’t exist currently in the marketplace. You could have an extra strategic advantage by developing and controlling the data set and being a “first mover” in the market niche that you have been studying. If the data already exists where you can easily find areas of low hanging fruit to exploit, you need to start using it in a faster, more effective way than the competition.
Understanding information about your clients and prospective clients is critical. So document and study the data on their spending habits, demographic and business information, subjective notes, and so on over a long period to gain valuable insight and act accordingly.
