As a start-up, you may ask yourself why data analysis is important your business. According to Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, authors of Lean Analytics, taking a long, hard look at some statistics is for “anyone trying to make his or her organisation more effective”.

A useful resource for anyone using the Lean Startup approach, the book offers insight into the fundamentals of why you need data to succeed, and what data that should be to help you get your product to market in an efficient and cost effective manner.

The book starts with the basics, builds up a scenario and then demonstrates a real-life example using case studies, for example, explaining the differences between quantitative and qualitative data, suggesting you need both statistics and user feedback to get a real sense of what’s working and what’s not, then how this was applied to an actual business.

Lean Analytics helps you to grasp not just what a metric is, but what a valuable metric is, and what this can do for your business. You may have a product for a group, but what niche are you attracting? How do you utilise that information? This book will help you make more informed decisions will could potentially save you time and money – and steer you towards a breakthrough moment. For example, did you know photo-sharing site Flickr started life as a chat? Remember, the Lean Startup listens to what its customers want!

From looking at how much a customer spends on an e-commerce platform to website design to software as a service, Lean Analytics helps you to develop the right questions to ask and what to do with those answers without getting lost in jargon or losing sight on what data actually represents – actual people – your customers.

Nadia Kuftinoff on behalf of the Business & IP Centre