Making business decisions with your gut can only get you so far. While experience can help you make quick choices, your intuition can’t replace cold, hard facts.

When it comes to strategic planning, advanced analytics provide the data needed to see the big picture, like how to enhance efficiency and achieve sustainable growth and success.

Here are five major ways data-driven decision making can help your construction business move the needle:

Identifying Trends and Patterns: Analytics can uncover trends and patterns that might not be immediately obvious. For example, time-tracking analytics can reveal that electricians consistently log 15% more overtime hours during summer months, or that new hires in concrete work have 25% higher absenteeism rates in their first 90 days.

• Improving Decision-Making: Analytics provides data-driven insights that help make more informed decisions. Analytics showing which recruiting channels yield the longest-tenured employees can guide hiring budget allocation, like perhaps trade school partnerships produce workers who stay 40% longer than online job board hires. And benefits analytics might show that increasing mental health coverage reduces sick days more cost-effectively than raising wages.

• Enhancing Efficiency and Productivity: Analytics can highlight areas where processes can be optimized for efficiency by tracking productivity. Time-off request patterns can reveal staffing gaps before they occur, enabling proactive scheduling. Analyzing time tracking data across crews can identify top-performing supervisors whose methods can be replicated companywide.

• Predicting Future Trends: Predictive analytics uses historical data to understand what changes are needed to impact future events. Consider how historical recruiting data might forecast that you’ll need to start hiring six weeks earlier to fill summer positions due to increased competition. Benefits enrollment patterns can help predict healthcare cost increases and guide budget planning for the following year.

• Supporting Strategic Planning: Analytics provides a solid foundation for strategic planning by offering a clear picture of your current situation and potential future scenarios. For example, workforce analytics showing average time to fill positions can inform staffing budgets and project timelines. And compensation and retention analytics across different markets can inform expansion strategies and regional pay scales.

The construction industry’s most successful companies aren’t just building projects, they’re building competitive advantages through smarter workforce decisions. Advanced analytics boost your integrated HR systems, giving you the ability to outbid, outperform and outlast the competition.

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