Countless economists and technology evangelists have discussed the importance of big data in surviving the pandemic. We have previously written about the usage of big data in contact tracing and treating COVID-19 patients. However, there are some other important benefits of big data during this unprecedented crisis. Big data has also created new opportunities for entrepreneurs in a time of incredible uncertainty.
One important benefit of big data is that it offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to create revolutionary business models that are proven to be far more cost-effective and resilient during a pandemic. One business idea some entrepreneurs are considering is the development of data-driven software applications. They might help people that want to social distance by creating new taxi apps. How much does it cost to make a taxi app? It will be cheaper for developers that use machine learning to guide them through the process.
Is data-driven software application development a viable business idea? How will these types of businesses prosper during the pandemic?
Data-driven applications create massive opportunities for ambitious entrepreneurs
Mobile and web apps are more reliant on big data than ever. A new generation of apps known as data-driven apps (or smart applications) have emerged in recent years. Experts estimate that the market for smart applications is worth over $48 billion.
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Frank Wyatt talked about this new technology in his post on Medium. His post predates the pandemic by a couple of years, so the opportunities are probably even more significant today.
Some of the data-driven applications that had received the most acceptance had been developed by major corporations. Apple and Google formed a rare partnership with each other to come up with contract tracing technology to help mitigate the COVID-19 crisis. They used sophisticated machine learning tools to identify hotspots and relationships between people that could help forecast the spread of the disease. These predictive analytics tools provide extremely useful information that can help contain the spread of the crisis.
Advances in data analytics and machine learning are not just important for contact tracing, though. They also play an important role in facilitating new professional and lifestyle changes that people have to contend with during the crisis. A growing number of people are working remotely, due to strict social distancing measures. They also need to to get used to new hobbies that don’t involve human contact to the same extent. A new generation of data-driven apps can provide solutions to these issues.
Here are some ideas that entrepreneurs could use to come up with data-driven apps for people trying to survive the pandemic:
- Many people are spending more time exploring the woods than ever. Some people don’t have the best sense of direction, because they are not used to going out in the wilderness. There are some compass apps that can help them, but they have their limitations. New apps that use machine learning technology might be able to provide more insightful feedback to these people. INRIX is a machine learning navigation app that was developed for this purpose, but others could be on the horizon.
- People are more selective about car-sharing than ever. This is why taxi apps are so important.
- Some people have difficulty maintaining their productivity while working remotely. New machine learning apps can help them identify weaknesses in their work from home model and boost their output.
- Project managers often have a harder time assessing the performance of different employees on their teams. This is especially true for those that didn’t manage people remotely before. New data analytics technology makes it easier for them to identify performance shortfalls that would be overlooked during a manual review.
- Most people are spending more time with video streaming and online gaming than ever. Content developers are discovering more sources of contention by their customers, since they are more familiar with their products after longer use. Data analytics can identify points of contention due to data on customer engagement. New data-driven applications can be released which will have better engagement rates.
Larger organizations are exploring new ways to use data-driven apps. However, new entrepreneurs can create entire business models developing applications that solve problems during COVID-19 with advanced machine learning and predictive analytics tools
COVID-19 creates new opportunities for entrepreneurs developing data-driven apps
Big data has made web and mobile applications more versatile than ever. This is going to be especially important during the pandemic. Smart entrepreneurs well come up with innovative solutions with machine learning, artificial intelligence and other data technology tools. They will be incorporated into new applications to address concerns during this crisis.