Businesses must value statistics – Prof Nsowah-Nuamah

President of Regent University College of Science and Technology, Professor Nicholas Nsowah-Nuamah has entreated entrepreneurs and businesses owners in Ghana to employ statistics to adequately evaluate information on their operations.

Prof Nsowah-Nuamah recommended the use of statistics and statisticians in the day-to-day activities of “all businesses whether small or large; it is only then that businesses can develop new products and be sustained.”

These were contained in his introductory remarks when he chaired the university’s 9th public lecture held in commemoration of its 10th anniversary.

The lecture delivered by Dr Satyendra Singh, Professor of Marketing and International Business with the University of Winnipeg in Canada was on the topic ‘How business intelligence and outsourcing can build new product development capabilities for firms in emerging markets.”

Prof Nsowah-Nuamah charged businesses to value the importance of statistics and statisticians in the success of their operations.

“As responsible members of the business community, learn to interpret and use undistorted data intelligently or employ experts to do that, with the understanding that statistical thinking and analysis form a major integral part of success and development of your products,” he advised.

When used correctly, statistical reasoning can help businesses distinguish between informative data and useless noise, Prof Nsowah-Nuamah pointed out.

“With its correct usage, we will be more critical in our analysis of information and will not be misled to accept deceptive claims; we will be watchdogs against bad information so that we can make informed business decisions,” he added.

The Regent President was unhappy over how businesses in Ghana and most African countries lack business intelligence and even where it exists it fails because it is wrongly applied.

“When it fails, you know what can happen? The business is in trouble. The business will fail; your business intelligence should help you decide what product to develop, when to improve on it, when to develop new ones, for which customers to develop the product and when and to whom to outsource what aspect of the production of products.

According to him, the running of a business is an art and requires intelligence.

Professor Nsowah-Nuamah explained that business intelligence helps to make decisions and form conclusions but noted that “when such decisions and conclusions are made on erroneous or deceptive information, then your intelligence has failed; and the consequence can be grievous.”

He warned that businesses will collapse if they are run on wrong intelligent information.

“If we want to build a sound knowledge base, make intelligent business decisions, assess the reliability of conclusions, and form worthwhile opinions on our businesses, then we should be able to filter out the incoming information that is erroneous or deceptive,” he pointed out.

Dr Satyendra Singh during his lecture defined business intelligence as knowing customer needs.

According to him, “it is information that you can transform to develop your products; business intelligence has become important because of globalization and the internet of things.”