Big Data is more than a trend or a buzzword. It’s one of the fastest-growing industries. In 2020, the size of the global Big Data market reached 56 billion, and it’s on track to exceed 103 billion by 2027.
Consumers are generating huge amounts of data at a rapid rate, and it is estimated that up to 90% of all data was generated only in the past two years. For businesses, the advent of Big Data offers several key benefits, including helping them with customer acquisition, lead generation, targeted marketing campaigns, identifying potential opportunities and challenges, and creating new products based on the needs of the market. In general, Big Data can help businesses in all fields – it’s not something reserved for tech companies. However, some industries have more to benefit from Big Data than others and have reached impressive milestones because data science and data analytics have helped them streamline their operations.
Healthcare
The implementation of Big Data has huge potential in the healthcare industry, and the past few years are only the beginning. On the surface, the use of data analytics in hospitals and clinics offers an easy way to streamline operations and avoid human error. With everything doing digital, managers can make smarter decisions based on hard data such as patient satisfaction, follow-up rate, patient turnover rate, and bed occupancy rate.
Big Data can also reduce costs, and it empowers medical professionals to focus on what they do best instead of worrying about analyzing paperwork. But, beyond these administrative perks, Big Data can literally save lives. By tracking patients’ health, drug interactions, and forecasting their needs, Big Data helps medical institutions deliver targeted solutions. Even last year, Big Data had a major role in predicting the pandemic patterns and creating models to contain the spread of the coronavirus. With Big Data, we might not have been able to adapt so quickly, and we might have taken longer to track the virus. Outbreak analytics, which everyone checked every day, such as the local and global infection rate, traveler flow, and contact tracing, were all possible thanks to Big Data.
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Recruitment
Before the advent of Big Data, recruitment was an industry severely slowed down by manual processes. It was only after specialized tools started being used that recruitment became more streamlined and more agile. These tools, which offer exactly what recruitment agencies need in terms of timesheets, expenses, accounting, and payroll, made life easier for recruiters. Also, thanks to Big Data, recruitment is now more accurate. Keep in mind that recruitment agencies have to deal with huge volumes of unstructured data, and analyzing all this data by traditional means is not only slow, but also ineffective. With Big Data, recruiters can match employers with skilled candidates much faster, while at the same time reducing the cost per hire. Moreover, the use of data in talent acquisition helps build more relevant offers, increases retention, and forecast talent demand.
Retail
In a report titled Analytics: The real-world use of big data in retail, IBM found that 62% of retail leaders were able to create a competitive advantage thanks to data analytics and predictions. In the age of online shopping, Big Data plays a crucial role in analyzing customer patterns, understanding their preferences, and building hyper-personalized shopping experiences to keep them coming back to the store. Big Data can also provide valuable insights on the customer’s journey: how they found out about a product, and what path they took before eventually purchasing it.
Finance
Finance has changed considerably in the past decade, and most of the innovations that we now take for granted are now possible thanks to Big Data. In the past, financial services such as insurance and banking were built on an inflexible, one-size-fits-all model, which meant not only that clients couldn’t get the services they needed, but also that people with low credit scores were rejected these services. Big data is becoming a lot more important in the field of finance.
Now, Big Data has made it much easier to understand each client’s financial situation and deliver customized services. FinTech, as a whole, relies mostly on Big Data, helping the industry overcome regulatory obstacles and create innovative solutions such as virtual banking assistants and risk management tools for trading.
Public services
Until not that long ago, Government and public services were largely bureaucratic. That means they were slow, inaccurate, frustrating, and the services they offered were based on vague estimations rather than the needs of the real world. Fortunately, things are beginning to change, as more and more Government institutions rely on Big Data to understand the needs of the community and deliver personalized solutions. For example, local administrations can use Big Data to offer smart energy solutions, recycle more effectively, and streamline traffic.
Entertainment
We may not realize this, but the entertainment services we use every day, such as music and video streaming apps, are based on Big Data, and it’s that special behind-the-scenes work that makes them so accurate. Platforms such as Netflix and YouTube use data insights to understand what type of content we like most in order to suggest relevant content. Spotify also uses data to create personalized playlists. At a higher level, Big Data helps entertainment platforms and production houses predict the genre of shows that viewers from different age groups want so that they can create relevant content.
Transport
Cities are getting bigger, busier, and more congested. Although eliminating road traffic completely is almost impossible and it relies on too many factors, Big Data still plays an important role in keeping it under control. For example, public agencies use data insights to map out inhabitant routes, create alternative routes in case something goes wrong, and develop intelligent transport systems to keep the roads as clear as possible.
These are just seven of the industries that have reported astronomic growth in past years thanks to Big Data, but they’re not the only ones. BD has influenced many other sectors as well, like agriculture, science, education, and manufacturing, and it has yet to reveal its full potential.