How Big Data Benefits Businesses

Big data has a huge potential to benefit businesses in any industry. It is much more than just a massive amount of data. Combining sets of data will give businesses real insights that can be used in making decisions and improving their financial condition. Before you can understand how big data can benefit your organization, it is important to know what big data really is. Big data can be best explained according to the 3 Vs – Volume, Variety and Velocity.

Big data has a huge potential to benefit businesses in any industry. It is much more than just a massive amount of data. Combining sets of data will give businesses real insights that can be used in making decisions and improving their financial condition. Before you can understand how big data can benefit your organization, it is important to know what big data really is. Big data can be best explained according to the 3 Vs – Volume, Variety and Velocity.

Volume

It is expected that the amount of data in the world will double every 2 years. The sheer volume of data produced is massive and a great contributor to this is the internet. Creation of so much data would have caused big problems in the past. Today, with better storage options, algorithms to gain insights from all that data and decreasing storage costs, the sheer volume of data is not a problem at all.

Velocity

Velocity is the rate at which data is made, visualized, analyzed and stored. Batch processing was common in the past. Receiving an update to the database every night or week was normal. Servers and computers required ample time to process all the data they get and update databases. Today, data is made in real-time or close to real-time. The availability of internet-connected devices allowed data to be delivered the moment it is made. The rate at which data is created is incredible. Every minute, more than 200 million emails are sent, around 2.5 million searches on Google are done and almost 20 million photos are viewed. Organizations need to cope with this speed and utilize it in real-time to benefit their business.

Variety

90 percent of the data that’s produced by organizations is unstructured data. Today, data comes in various formats such as semi-structured, structured, unstructured and complex structured. There are various kinds of data and every type requires a different kind of tool or analysis. Sensory data, for instance, will provide you with information about how a certain product is used and social media such as tweets and Facebook posts can give various insights like sentiment analysis on your brand.

How Big Data can Benefit your Organization

Know the risk your business faces

Knowing the risk your company faces is crucial. Detailed profiles of customers are usually created and placed in certain categories with specific risk levels. This process, however, is too unclear and broad and often, suppliers and customers are placed in a wrong category and receive wrong risk profiles. Too low risk profiles could be harmful to your organization. Big data allows you to determine a risk category for every supplier or customer based on their past and present data in real-time.

Get to know your audience in real-time

Questionnaires and focus groups were used in the past to determine customers, but the information gathered from these methods was always outdated the moment the results arrive. Big data allows organizations to get to know their customers in real-time. Knowing customers can help you sell to them successfully. This will also allow you to display promotion or provide recommendations that meet their specific needs.

Personalize your pricing and website in real-time

A/B tests and split-test have been used for years to determine the best layout for customers in real-time. Big data will change this process. Different web metrics can be analyzed and combined in real-time, allowing companies to have a system where the feel, layout and look can be changed to reflect various influencing factors. Organizations will be able to provide visitors with a website particularly tailored to their needs.

Combine public data and the data you’ve collected to find new business opportunities and markets

Big data can help organizations determine unmet customer desires. Conducting regression or pattern analysis on your data can help you find the desires and requirements of your customers you didn’t know before. Combining various sets of data can give a new meaning to existing data and help you find new business opportunities, markets and target groups you are not aware of.

Better understand the competition and stand out

Big data can help you better understand your competitors and know where they stand. This can give you a great head start. Through big data analytics, algorithms can determine if your competitors are changing their prices and automatically alter your prices in order for you to stay competitive.

Save money and manage your organization more effectively

Analyzing of your data can help you find areas that can be organized better and improved. RF tags and sensors in trailer, for instance, help off-load and on-load trucks more efficiently and combine traffic information, weather conditions and road conditions with customer locations to save money and time.

Improve customer service support

Big data allows you to monitor machines from afar and check how they’re doing. Data will be delivered to you and stored for analysis in real-time. When the algorithm senses a difference from the usual operation, your service support will know it right away. They will also know what to do due to the information available to them.

How Big Data Affects Web Design

Data is going to influence the design of everything. Web design is one of the more direct areas big data will affect. The web will have much more sponsorships and fewer banner ads. Big data can greatly benefit branded content as people like to see their favorite brands support content on their trusted sites. It is possible to customize your site based on the data you gathered so that you can better serve your customers or enhance your current processes. Big data will definitely change the way the web is used and monetized. With the absence of banner ads, web design will have so many options that can benefit organizations.

Many leading companies from AUstralia, UK and UK are already using Big Data to boost their businesses. Many Melbourne based and Sydney website design head offices are providing such services to clients from all over the world.

These are cases are only a small part of the massive potential of big data, but one thing’s for sure. Big data offers a lot of opportunities to benefit from. Every organization has unique needs that require a different approach. Properly using the possibilities offered by big data will add value to your business ad help you stand out from the competition.