At any given moment, a single person creates roughly 1.7 MB of data. We’re creating and putting more information out there than at any other point in human history. At this rate, by the end of the year, we can expect the Big Data market to reach 40 trillion gigabytes.
That’s more data than most of us can even begin to imagine.
Now, this data contains everything from the pictures you upload on social media to comments you post on Reddit and everything in between. A certain amount of that data won’t be of use to anyone. But there’s a lot of useful data out there. Especially if you need it for your business.
Today, we’re going to discuss how to start, nurture, and grow a business using big data.
How You Can Use Big Data?
The term big data refers to large amounts or volumes of data, both structured and unstructured. In recent years, due to social media, there’s been a boom in big data. Companies now have zettabytes of data on their hands on a regular basis.
Some know how to filter this data, process it, and use it to cultivate their business. Others don’t.
Your mission is to fall into the first group. If you never dealt with data before, don’t worry, you have numerous data analytics tools out there that will allow you to reap the benefits of market and customer information.
And what are the benefits of using big data exactly? Some of them include:
- Identifying the causes of problems and failures in real-time
- Understanding the full potential of a certain segment of the market
- Creating full customer profiles and catering to their habits better
- Improving your branding efforts through customer engagement
- Creating a loyal customer base out of ordinary shoppers
To enjoy all of these benefits, you need to learn…
How to Start Your Business
Before you can really start using Big Data to your benefit, you need to take care of more traditional business and legal aspects of starting a company first. That means you need to research the rules and regulations in your area in an effort to abide by them.
You don’t want to start a data-driven business successfully, only to find yourself knee-deep in legal problems. Consequently, you may find yourself out of a job too.
Everything starts with contacting a local legal expert, discussing what type of organization you should start, and what you need to launch it. For example, when filing LLC in Texas, you need to do the following things:
- You need to name the LLC
- Select a registered agent
- Filling articles of organization
- Create an operating agreement
Once you handle that, you also need to get your EIN, open a separate business account, and find an accountant, among other things. Remember, not all states have the same regulations, so make sure to check the ones in your state. For example, company formation in Dubai is far more straightforward.
With what out of the way, let’s see what it takes to run a data-driven company.
How to Run a Data-Driven Organization
There are certain principles you need to follow in order to run and develop a data-driven organization. To apply these principles, you need to understand the concept of business and technology you’re starting with and define the concept you want to get to:
- The first principle requires you to define your business objectives first. Then, you can focus your data and digital capabilities on a crucial point of your strategy to achieve them successfully. After that, you need to…
- Work on capacity building. Some of the platforms you’ll be using won’t be up to date nor prepared for handling big data. You need to make sure that you’re using technology capable of capturing and analyzing the volumes of data you want.
- The third principle relies on establishing a governance model that will suit your organization. Keep in mind that you’ll be handling 3rd-party information. So make sure that the privacy and safety of the information you have in your hands are top-notch.
- You also need to cultivate a company culture that values data above everything else. No matter how many staff members you have, everyone in your organization needs to know how to use data to improve business operations and processes at any time.
- Last but not least, you need to think about how you’re going to use the information you have and who is going to consume it. Remember, you’re not the owner of the information, therefore, find a suitable way of using the data and continuing working without it.
The Bottom Line
You’re probably now wondering, how can you achieve all of this? Well, you need to work on three specific business areas. These areas include:
- Acquiring the necessary technology for the job
- Focusing on the right type of big data analytics
- Identifying what’s the real value of big data you have
Once you do all of this, you’ll be able to collect the right amount of data and subsequently, tweak every aspect of your business – both internal and external – to suit your target customers.
