From my experience building with data in the lighting industry, I've realized that most lighting manufacturers are sitting idle on a goldmine of data. This data is likely filled with useful insights waiting to be actioned and distributed.
In my former career at a lighting manufacturer, I started a data and digital product team and led the development of industry-leading dashboards that were adopted by nearly every department. I've seen the empowering effects and efficiency improvements to each team, and I believe that the successful manufacturers of the future will be data-driven.
The execution of such data capabilities requires a long-term commitment to data governance and investing in data visualization tools. I will write about my experience with how to start on your data journey in another blog post. Here are the major benefits of data dashboards for key departments within a lighting manufacturer.
Empower sales teams to deliver a personalized experience
Equipped with a well-crafted sales dashboard, the sales team was able to drill down and truly get to know their customers. They identified product categories to grow and prepped relevant discussion topics before customer meetings, making each sales conversation much more effective. The result was a more personalized sales experience, which is shown to grow revenues faster.
Distribution customers were also highly impressed with the level of sophistication we showed in our yearly FMS check ins. Many called us the best they've ever seen at leveraging data.
Results: Higher customer satisfaction due to personalization, more efficient & empowered sales reps.
Data-driven product teams make better roadmap decisions
The product develoment engineers used data as a key lever in their product roadmap. Their dashboard was geared toward breaking down product sales into its configurations. They could visualize a product family's sales by the different options in voltage, cct, mounting, controls, or anything else on a product's ordering guide. The data gave them the confidence to push for a particular set of features in a product refresh, or to completely discontinue them.
Results: A more focused product offering, more efficient product development, better decision making around products.
More efficient and accurate purchasing teams
I once spent an afternoon with a member of the purchasing team. They showed me how they were doing most of their purchasing analysis by manually gathering data from our ERP and inputting numbers into excel. If this sounds like what your purchasing team is doing for forecasting, then this is for you.
After tweaking the dashboard to better fit the purchasers' needs, they were able to get the insights they needed much faster and with live data. Less manual grinding in excel, more insights and time spent on careful decision making.
Results: More efficient purchasing, better decision making, more reliable analysis.
Proactive and targeted campaigns in marketing
Data was invaluable for marketing to craft memorable campaigns. With the dashboard in hand, they quickly identified which accounts needed the most help and built the right mix of products to include in a targeted promotion. The data gave them a live glimpse into how a customer is responding to the promotion, allowing them to adjust the promo before it ended.
Reporting campaign results to leadership was also more insightful. Qualitative feedback was backed up by significant data, and when the data revealed a different story it created a pivotal learning moment for future campaigns. The rich post-campaign analysis yielded many learnings, compounding to better and better campaigns.
Results: More effective campaigns, more personalization, greater customer satisfaction.
Effects on leadership's decision making
What gets measured gets managed. It's easy to get caught up on sales when that's the only metric you see. There are many other measures of business health that may be lying dormant in your ERP. The more information you have on the reality of your business, the better your decisions wil be (up to a point). The first step to unlocking those insights is through data cleaning.
Compounding effects
A more data-minded workforce will reap greater benefits of innovations in data analysis that can make your teams even more efficient. AI is exceptionally good at analyzing datasets. The limiting factor is the person doing the prompting and the quality of the dataset. A more skilled workforce will ask the right questions and make the most of AI.
Conclusion
Making the most of high-quality data is a source of competitve advantage, particularly in the lighting industry as most companies don't know what they're missing. Clean, high-quality data helps you get close to the truth of your business. Self-serve dashboards can empower your teams to make high-conviction decisions and be more effective.
