Businesses answer questions every day. Some are easy, like “How much did we earn last month?” or “How many customers did we have this year?” Some are harder, such as “What is the lifetime value of our average customer?” or “Who should our target audience be in the upcoming quarter?” Then there are the questions that seem impossible to answer: “Which of our customers are we most at risk of losing?” “What marketing expenditures are most effective for our most profitable demographic?” or “What’s the real dollar value or cost of increasing staffing in any given hour?”

Health and fitness clubs are similar to any other business when it comes to the challenges of making data-driven decisions. With data scattered across multiple systems and constantly evolving software and reporting standards, challenges can arise just trying to answer the basic questions, let alone the types of questions that can drive profits over more extended periods of time.

To face these challenges, the analytics industry has turned to establishing a “Single Source of Truth,” or SSOT. The SSOT evolved out of this need for decision-makers to have a centralized data bank from which actual information can be pulled. Rather than the typical siloed queries that provide isolated pieces of the puzzle, SSOTs pull data from all of the company’s systems to paint the whole picture. This means that rather than managing spreadsheets from every piece of software in your company’s tech stack, you can have near real-time dashboards, easily scheduled reports, and targeted questions that get right to the heart of what your business needs to thrive.

Because of the complexity of creating these SSOTs, they’ve remained out of reach for small and even mid-sized organizations. For those few who could afford them, these data warehouses still tended to be clunky and issue-prone - duplications and contradictions were widespread. It wasn’t until recently, with the advent of standardized data storage techniques, massively parallelized data processing, and broad adoption of standard APIs, that they entered the realm of possibility for businesses of all sizes.

So, with all the benefits and the newfound availability, why doesn’t everyone have a Single Source of Truth? Unfortunately, the general understanding of building these systems hasn’t kept up with technological development. Designing and implementing an SSOT for an average company’s systems traditionally required far more technical roles than most organizations are willing to hire. System architects, software developers, visualization specialists, business intelligence analysts, database administrators, and hardware IT support are just a few of the positions typically required to execute a useful SSOT. Because of the perceived investment needed to get started, the majority of business owners are hesitant even to entertain the idea. However, thanks to the growing offerings of cloud providers, many of these roles are now obsolete.

There is a lower barrier to entry today than ever before for integrating your systems and getting answers to the questions you wish you could ask. Having a single source of truth is within the grasp of every business and will be the defining differentiator for data-driven decision-making in the coming years. Take a moment to think about everything you wish you knew about your company. Then ask yourself, “Can I afford not to know?”