According to reports, approximately 90% of all data in the world was created in the last two year. This total amount is expected to double yearly – it’s estimated that the world will have generated about 5,200 gigabytes of data per human being on earth. It’s practically impossible to comprehend the amount of data which is produced every single day – and how so little of it is actually used.
‘Big Data’ is a buzzword in business with a definition that varies constantly. Many like to define it as a vast amount of data which comes from various sources and is unstructured and large enough that you can’t manage it in a standard relational database. Crucially, we should strive to make big data useful.
It’s daunting to collect and analyse data from so many sources – such as transactional information, website activity, customer service interactions, social media accounts and other forms of communications. Analytical data of all sorts, however, is able to inform and support operational decisions as well as the direction your business follows – so it’s best to start mall, and keep building up over time.
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There’s no need to worry about ‘Big Data’ from day one, but you should make sure you have a plan that’ll adapt and change your business processes so they’ll be data driven. This will likely help increasing your market share and outmanoeuvring the competitors.
Make Sure Data Is Useful
Some companies have adopted highly effective and comprehensive big data strategies – e-commerce giants like Amazon, for instance, or maybe Tesco’s Clubcard. Others, however, failed to make the most of them. Remember that collecting data is merely one step in the process – you need to be able to sort the data and analyse it, and your findings should bring value to your business somehow. If you can’t transform your data into useful recommendations and information which will help you take action and improve the customer experience and business efficiency of your company.
Small Business And Big Data
Remember – as a small business with limited IT resources, it’s an excellent idea to simply prepare your business to collect, store, analyze and utilize the data in an effective manner, in order to improve the customer experience and/or profitability of your business. For instance, if you have an e-commerce business, it may be a good idea to work on the targeting of your marketing e-mails, by analyzing your user’s browsing patterns and how it relates to purchasing history. You may also consider response rates to previous e-mails, and the sort of content, layout and offers which gets the most conversions out of each type of user.
According to Robert Carter of Virtual Office provider Your Virtual Office London, “Managing data growth is just the beginning for SMEs. However, having never handled such volumes of data, SMEs need to be able to identify the most important and relevant information for business growth; effectively, to deepen it.”
Personalization is important for basically any business – especially when you operate online, it’s essential that you treat customers as individuals whenever you can. Big data helps a lot with this – but the most important aspect is making sure you get accurate data and use it intelligently. Make sure you understand the sort of thing your customers would like to buy, and you’ll be able to serve them with relevant content and offers.
Software and Hardware
The cost of storing data has recently plummeted, and now with cloud technology, SMEs don’t even need hardware in order to analyse information on a small scale – the entire work can be done remotely.
As Big Data becomes an integral part of basically any business, applications which help managing data tend to become more and more user-friendly as well as affordable. It remains a challenge, but nowadays it’s a lot easier for a small firm to take big data into account to achieve big results – embrace this technology, and you’re sure to get large benefits in the future.
