What Uber and Lady Gaga Can Teach You About Analytics

What do meat suits and analytics have in common?

A lot actually.

What do meat suits and analytics have in common?

A lot actually.

It turns out, Lady Gaga and her (now former) manager, Troy Carter, realized the importance of social media early on. In 2008, she was one of the first artists to begin utilizing Twitter to interact with fans. It made sense, because of her brand platform, but they soon realized that, while they didn’t own their Twitter followers or Facebook likers (Gaga has 51 million likes, more than any other person), they could drive them to their own space, LittleMonsters.com, and use the resulting data in fascinating new ways.

Gaga can customize set lists for concerts based on the listening habits of her fans in a particular locale on Spotify—be sure to play this song, leave that one out. She’s taken fan-created artwork, uploaded to her website, and printed it on t-shirts, driving merchandising sales up more than 30 percent.

And the music industry is catching on. A service called Next Big Sound, which counts all the major record labels as customers, can predict (with great accuracy) which acts will be huge hits before they’re ever signed to a label by mining social media.

But it’s not just the music industry that can use big data to its advantage. Any company—or indeed anyone—can, and should use data to make better decisions. And companies who don’t do that will be left behind. 

Data is changing your cabs, cigarettes, and corn.

When it comes to the impact of data, there are other great examples of how some companies are challenging traditional industries by learning more about their customers with data and technology.

Uber, the much talked-about car sharing service, has made waves both with it’s app-based bookings to request a car, and it’s acquisition by Google for a huge price. The entire business model of Uber is based on analytics and the use of data such as the GPS sensor data from their customer’s smart phones which allows them to locate customers and track them during their journey. But companies like Uber have to be careful about how they use the data. What has recently backfired in the press has been the revelation that corporate employees have seemingly uncontrolled access to a tool apparently referred to internaly as ‘God View’. This potentially allows Uber employees to track any customer without their awareness or consent.

These big-brother like scenarios send shivers down the spine of most people who value their privacy and the lesson here is to ensure data security and data governance processes are in place at any company that leverages the analysis of personal customer data. 

Besides the security hiccups, Uber is just one example of a new wave of services that are part of what’s being called the disruption economy. Other companies include AirBnB (a web service that allows people to rent out rooms in their homes as hotels) and Coursera (a free education company) are using data and technology to outpace their traditional counterparts in the service economy.

The rise of ECigarettes, the smokeless electronic nicotine inhalers, isn’t due solely to the technology that makes the actual physical product possible; they’re also utilizing technology in other ways. Smokio is an eCigarette that comes with an app that monitors your nicotine intake. QuitBit is a “smart” lighter that connects to your phone via Bluetooth to keep track of your smoking habit, and IntelliQuit is the world’s first smoking cesation biosensor—a lighter-sized carbon monoxide detector that purports to help you quit smoking the way you started: one puff at a time.

Even the good, old-fashioned family farm isn’t so old fashioned any more. Tractor and farm equipment manufacturer John Deere now uses data and analytics and many farmers rely on data to optimize fertilization and productivity. The company employs automated crop reporting that provides in-depth information about crops for farmers to assist in filing crop insurance claims. The data can also help farmers make difficult decisions about planting, harvesting, and more. Deere also provides a web-based solution for farmers to manage their fleets, decrease downtime, and save on fuel all based on sensors built into the tractors.

Companies that are embracing technology and finding ways to put data to use for their customers are not just ahead of the curve, but setting the standard for the way their industries will work in the future.