According to some definitions, Big Data is “a large volume of structured and unstructured data that is generated every day by companies”. To come up with valuable insights and make the right decisions, companies need to cross-reference that information. In this way, financial and marketing strategies can be defined.
By Javeria Yaseen
HBO’s West World series manages to explain this concept interestingly. In the third season, a very advanced artificial intelligence manages to gather data from all human beings to predict future events and even to know how each person will die. Of course, in reality, this is not so radical. But you get the point, right?
Companies can benefit a lot from it, after all, data helps to predict behaviors, trends and analyze consumers. It is as they say: Information is power.
How to implement Big Data in your company?
Well, now we come to the most important part: how to implement it in your company in a way that brings benefits? First of all, let’s understand the following: the technology that allows you to collect, organize and process your data is called Data Analytics. With it, you will transform seemingly loose information into something useful that will help you make decisions.
There are 3 types of data that a business can use:
- Social data: data derived from people, which help to identify behaviors, habits, interests and other personal information. They can arise from Google searches, comments and messages on social networks;
- Enterprise data: are data generated by organizations, which are used a lot to measure the productivity of the teams or the results obtained;
- Data of things: data originating from devices connected to the internet is based on concept of the “Internet of Things”.
Therefore, we can conclude that its application depends a lot on the reality of your business. Perhaps, it doesn’t make sense for you to collect sensor data if your company doesn’t work with it. So, it’s worth thinking about your business model and implementing it accordingly.
See now how you can apply Big Data to the following sectors of your company.
Big Data in the Financial Sector
Analyzing the numbers is always important, as this will ensure the financial health of a business. In the sales sector, you need to understand what the production costs are, and in the marketing sector, you need to analyze the budget and ROI of the actions taken to identify which efforts are most profitable. Cupid Chan, Managing Partner of 4C Decision sees numerous benefits of implementing big data technologies in the financial services sector. The higher the opportunities being exploited, the better the outcomes can be shown by banks and financial institutions, says Cupid.
Big Data in the Marketing Industry
To create digital or outbound marketing actions that are effective, you need to understand everything about your persona. It is through data analysis that you will check if you are reaching your ideal customer profile. With data analytics, you can see the differences in consumer behavior according to each region and culture, for example. Brian Kardon, CMO of InVision said that one day the marketing offices will resemble trading desks with screens of real-time data streaming in and marketers yelling “buy, buy.” McDonald’s is a classic example, as all franchises combine their data to understand public behavior and standardize snacks in each region.
Big Data in the Quality Sector
With data analytics, it is possible to measure several quality control variables, such as first-pass yields, defects per unit, employee training and the environmental conditions of production. Production data can also be integrated with others, thus facilitating the elimination of slowness and bottlenecks. An interesting example is agricultural companies. After all, they can predict climatic factors, vegetation status and planting conditions. All of this contributes to increasing farmers’ productivity.
Bottom Line
We can therefore conclude that Big Data is here to stay and, if you don’t implement it in your company soon, you will lose your place to more prepared competitors. So, streamline and put this into practice as soon as possible!