Control your data and manage it well. Many entrepreneurs manage from their gut, which works well for them, particularly when their enterprise is small. In fact, when the company is new and small, there typically isn’t much choice but to make most decisions from the gut. The reality though is that as the enterprise becomes more complex (and therefore harder to manage and “get your arms around”), it is absolutely imperative that you have a good system for managing and analyzing the data of your business. This data should include data from your operations (financial, production, service delivery, etc) as well as whatever external data (such as market and competitor data) you need to run your business effectively. Effectively planning and executing an information system and data management program is a full-time job, which requires specialized knowledge and experience. Unless you have such training, this is an area that you should outsource to an expert, until such time that you can justify a full-time resource on staff. Although you will likely outsource this function in the beginning, just make sure that you own and control your data, or you could run into serious problems. For many companies these days, the system and the information in it, ARE the business..
