Big Data can come in small packages

 How can a company leverage data across multiple sources to gain valuable insight to deliver all the more value to customers and create a sustainable competitive advantage?

 Whether you are Amazon using big data to create more relevance for your Product Recommendation Engine to drive more sales, or a small start-up looking to create that next killer product, having a big data mindset is critical.

 I worked for a start-up search engine company Direct Hit during the emergence of the search engine wars between Google, Yahoo and Lycos. While the larger competitors were focused on building the size of their database, at Direct Hit, we focused on how we could create an algorithm that would generate more insight into what users were actually searching for – dramatically increasing relevance. We achieved this by adding unique sources of data no one at the time had thought of. Not only did we create better results for end users, we ended-up selling the company for $500M. As Direct Hit pursued improved relevance, we were driven by the principle of combining a multitude of data points to create valuable and actionable insight?

 Big Data gives start-ups Big advantages.

We also had a brilliant data scientist who would look at the data much differently than the business side and come up with new possibilities. This, perhaps, was the most valuable input because it took off inherent blinders we might have had being too close to the business. This is this why I like (ART+DATA)’s concept so much. They have brilliant minds looking at data in a much different way.

We are now looking a data the same way in my current start-up, SnapApp. We now capture 27 points of data across multiple channels (Website, mobile and social) to create valuable actionable insights. It is critical for start-ups to have a big data mindset – not only for their own business as it grows, but also for the products they deliver and how to fit them into this new emerging world. There is a great quote by IBM, “Big data is more than simply a matter of size; it is an opportunity to find insights in new and emerging types of data and content, to make your business more agile, and to answer questions that were previously considered beyond your reach.”

 

Edward Boudrot

Thought Leader

(ART+DATA) Institute

www.artplusdata.com