Compelling Business Stories — Why do they Matter?
Today, I would be showing you the difference between a compelling business story with insights versus a tabular depiction of numbers.
Recently Nestle India announced its Q3 financial results, these results were hailed by industry, news, social media & the stock market.
In a business process, most results are usually represented as visualizations or tabular numbers. Rarely, are these crucial numbers furnished as Compelling Business Stories or Insights.
Here are the tabular results of Nestle India’s Quarterly Earnings:
There exists a simple solution to this problem and it can be done in two ways.
a) Through spoken and verbal communication
b) Through compelling business stories
During our youth, we often heard stories from our grandparents, teachers and mentors related to dozens of topics. These stories had an impact factor that inspired, touched and challenged our mindset. When combined with data visualizations or tabular numbers, stories can further be augmented to showcase a powerful business insight or discovery. Numbers are just numbers, emotionless data points but stories are for our consumers, our families and our communities.
How about we re-create a story using the above tabular numbers and see the impact that it creates? Here’s one version of the story
Nestle India net profit went up by 30% in the September quarter.
Nestle India is on a strong growth path because its consumer values them for high-quality products.
This is evident as Nestle recorded a 30% increase in net profit to ₹446 crore in the quarter ending September 30 compared to ₹343 in the previous year’s quarter.
For the quarter under review, revenue from operations grew by 17% to ₹2,939 crore. Total sales and domestic sales for the quarter increased by 16.8 per cent and 17.5 per cent respectively supported by broad-based volume growth with the implementation of GST.
Raw material costs have increased by 10% on the back of rising commodity and crude oil prices coupled with currency depreciation.
If you look at the above tabular numbers and the story we created, you are better able to comprehend the number’s through a story. It is the stories that deliver powerful information to us in the most efficient way.
