How to Utilize Data and Technology to Demonstrate Your Organization's Value Propositions This piece will help guide you on how to utilize data and technology to maximize and exhibit your organization's services and value propositions to the right audiences.
By Shelly Sun Edited by Chelsea Brown
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Your business's value proposition is one of the most valuable tools it has to attract loyal customers, prospective employees and potential business partners. A value proposition tells prospects why they should choose your business over other competitors and proves why your organization is a leader among others in your respective industry. However, showcasing and directing your company's value proposition to the right audiences is not always a simple feat.
For example, several industry-wide factors exist in my line of business in the home care space that prevent my organization from displaying its own customer outcomes and services. Some of these preventing factors include fragmented policies across states that challenge home care and the lack of standardized measures that exist in the industry, among others.
Aside from preventing factors, often organizations are overall simply utilizing the wrong technology to enhance their value propositions or are not demonstrating their value to a wide targeted audience. As a seasoned franchise expert, home health care founder and CEO, I'm here to guide you on utilizing data and technology to maximize and exhibit your organization's services to the right audiences.
Track, record and gather
There are several ways to utilize technology, data and external resources to display your organization's value, competitive advantage and industry-leading operations. The difficulty often lies in how your organization will obtain this data. To solve this challenge, take a two-pronged approach. First, internally set up a robust tracking system to record your own data, services, customer sentiment and long-term outcomes. Tracking this data is a long and tedious process and will take internal planning and execution to complete it efficiently. Once internal tracking is reached, align with an external organization that specializes in or has the ability to evaluate and analyze the data your organization collected.
Third-party validators
Partnering with a third party is one of the most efficient ways to validate your data and proof points. Align with an organization that shares similar goals and values as yours and can produce the results your organization requires. Work with this organization to conduct a study or survey across a wide net of participants. The outcome of this analysis should generate accurate findings that will later demonstrate your organization's competitive edge. The results they produce will help demonstrate your value propositions and competitive differentiators.
As mentioned above, historically in my industry, it has been a challenge for home care providers to attain adequate data that displays how services drive outcomes for our customers and reduces costs for them. To issue a solution, I commissioned a healthcare consulting and advisory firm to conduct a study to prove my organization's outcomes and benefits. This collaboration produced hard facts and figures that shined a light on my brand's competitive advantage and the effectiveness of our services. This is a prime example of how a third-party partner can bring your data to the forefront.
Investment and timing
Working with external organizations is a significant investment, but it will uplift your company's reputation in the long haul. Plan and find a way to budget this investment into your organization's yearly priorities. Timing is another factor; obtaining results will take time. Your organization will need to track its data over several quarters to ensure it is accurate and illustrates a strong narrative. Once data is tracked, put a timeline in place that aligns with all parties involved to analyze the data and publish it.
Leverage data
Put a marketing plan in place to share your results both internally and externally. This can be implemented via a newsletter, press release, social media, company website and other external-facing platforms. Identify your key spokespeople who can expertly speak about the analysis and seek out opportunities where they can share these findings on a large platform or to a broad audience.
Overall, partnering with an external organization will help validate your organization's value propositions and allow your organization to stand out among competitors. In tandem, this newfound information also opens your organization to attract new partners, prospective customers and employees. Tangible data that can be analyzed will demonstrate to prospects why they should be doing business with your organization. This investment will magnify visibility and enhance the positioning of your company's most meaningful and critical attributes.
