Why Business Moves Are Misfiring

DAR ES SALAAM: WHILE some business owners battle for market share, many don’t realise that their biggest competitor isn’t another business, it’s misinformed decisions.

The real crisis in most Tanzania’s businesses, is not access to capital or talent. Its blind spots in business data. Too many business decisions in Tanzania still depend on “intuition,” “experience,” or the popular go to answer, “Hii ndio tumekuwa tukifanya miaka yote.”

But the data shows just how risky that is. Most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania do not track their monthly revenue or costs in any structured way.

Even among medium-sized businesses, less than 40 per cent use any form of real-time data analytics. And yet, these same businesses are making hiring decisions, expansion plans, pricing changes and supplier negotiations with no dashboard, no projections and no data clarity. We’re not just flying blind. We’re flying blind in a thunderstorm.

Upon a conversation with a friend, business owner in Dar es Salaam, recently shut down one of its branches due to “low profitability.”

But a closer data look, revealed that the branch had the highest foot traffic, but poor sales conversion due to stockouts and poor product placement. In other words, the demand was there but the data wasn’t.

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The cost of such missteps is shocking. If this company had implemented even basic analytics such as a monthly Customer conversion rate, inventory tracking, or customer purchase patterns they would have seen the potential instead of the problem. This story isn’t rare. It’s typical in most businesses.

There’s a dangerous assumption in the market that data analytics is only for big corporates banks, telecoms, multinationals. But that mindset is exactly what’s widening the gap between top-performing companies and struggling ones.

While specific figures may vary, multiple studies indicate that businesses leveraging data analytics for decision-making tend to experience higher ROI on new investments.

For example, a Deloitte survey found that organisations with a strong analytics culture were more likely to exceed business goals. Let’s make this simple, if your competitor knows more about their customers than you do, they will win.

It doesn’t matter how charismatic your sales team is or how many years you’ve been in the game. Walk into most Tanzanian offices and ask the leadership one question: “What’s your most profitable customer segment in the last 90 days?” You might not get an answer.

Ask them how their top 3 products performed this quarter compared to the same time last year. Silence. What we have in many companies is not a performance problem, but a visibility problem. Decisions are being made in a data vacuum.

No dashboards. No trends. No clear KPIs beyond “tunauza vizuri.” And let’s be honest “tunauza vizuri” is not enough. To every business owner reading this, I ask: How confident are you that your business isn’t leaking money? You might have a strong team.

A decent product. But without tracking unit economics, churn rates, acquisition cost, or product-level margins, you might be optimising losses without knowing it. Imagine a tailor in Kariakoo spending more time on custom wedding gowns because they “look fancy,” while school uniforms are bringing in 60 per cent of revenue. It happens more than you think.

As funding becomes more competitive, especially from development partners and investors are demanding data-backed narratives.

Good intentions and slick PowerPoints aren’t enough. You need numbers. In short, you either have the data or you don’t get the money. Now let’s be practical, not everyone can afford a full-time data analyst. But that’s not the only option.

Start with what you have and don’t wait for perfection. Keeping data and analysing it Isn’t just a trend; it’s a survival skill.

Data analytics isn’t a trend for tech guys. It’s a survival skill for Tanzanian businesses. The economy is shifting. Inflation pressures, tax changes, digital payment disruptions all of these require real-time adaptation, not guesswork.

In this landscape, businesses that make decisions based on metrics will dominate those that rely on vibes. Those that invest in data today will become the giants of tomorrow.

The rest? They’ll wonder what happened while staring at another “unexpected” drop in revenue. Behind every great business decision is one thing: Clarity. And clarity only comes from numbers you trust.

The biggest companies in Tanzania tomorrow will not be the ones with the most employees or the biggest shops.

They’ll be the ones with the clearest visibility into what’s working and what’s not. Don’t let your business be guided by opinion when the answers are sitting quietly in your Excel file just waiting to be analysed.