Big Data and its Business Impacts
Big Data is already everywhere. Learn about big data and its business impacts.
Big data is extremely powerful.
And, as the world's digitalization accelerates, more businesses are becoming data-driven. There would be no Facebook, Amazon, or Google without big data.
You're thinking - Good for them. But what about the smaller businesses? Right?
How is big data relevant to MY business?
Good news! There are numerous ways to get involved with big data and its business implications. Many small and medium-sized businesses are already using big data technologies. And in doing so, they are staying relevant while increasing their profits.
So, what exactly does big data provide? How will it impact your business?
Whether you want to increase sales, improve marketing, or prevent fraud, big data can help. That is why in this article, we delve deeper into how big data impacts your business.
If you want to learn more, stick with us.
Big Data in Business
The term "Big Data" refers to infinitely large volumes of unprocessed and processed data gathered from various sources and utilized by businesses for some profitable purpose. Since a more precise definition cannot be given, let's concentrate on another frequently asked question: "How is Big Data used in business?"
Big Data's beneficial effects on business depend on various factors, most notably the type of business. Generally, it's used to market goods, create better business plans, connect with clients, discover new target markets, streamline processes, cut costs, and gain other competitive advantages.
Regardless of the specific industry in which it is used, the ultimate business impact of big data is an increase in profits through data collection, processing, and utilization of analyzed information.
"The global big data market is expected to grow to 103 billion US dollars by 2027, more than double its expected size in 2018." - According to Statista.
It's crucial to realize that Big Data alone might not be enough to reap significant, long-lasting benefits and that it performs much better when combined with AI, ML, cloud services, and other potent Data Science solutions.
How Does Big Data Impact Businesses?
Data has become a vital component of comprehending customers and their motivations. Every action and interaction that takes place online is gathered and processed to produce as much insight as possible. With the help of this information, customers' online profiles can be developed and reveal a lot about a customer's personality, behavior, and life events. These insights are used by businesses to improve their products, select the best business strategy, and increase marketing initiatives.
"Businesses that use big data reported 8 percent increased profits and a 10 percent reduced overall cost."
According to the BARC research report.
Big Data can generate fresh concepts for business development. With real-time analysis, Big Data's impact on businesses can be even more profitable than ever. Here are some advantages of implementing big data analysis in your business.
Targeted Marketing
Big Data analysis produces extremely precise targeted marketing campaigns, enabling businesses to tailor their efforts to the needs of their targeted customers. A helpful analysis can aid in predicting what goods or services customers might require in the future. With such information, it is much simpler to make advertisements for specific products that are more tailored. Additionally, it encourages businesses to be more alert to the needs of their clients.
Proactive Customer Care
Thanks to big data analysis, you can anticipate your customer's needs before they start the purchasing process. Companies can fully comprehend the needs of their customers through real-time analysis of data gathered from various channels, such as social media, in-store visits, or browsing history.
Companies can modify their entire business strategy, from marketing campaigns to customer service, with a thorough customer data analysis. If a problem develops in the future, it also enables contacting customers.
Efficiency Improvements
Big Data enables businesses to fully comprehend their products, allowing for the optimization and modification of decision-making procedures to ensure the highest possible operational efficacy.
Operational and historical data gathered from various sources, including machine logs, social media, the web, or apps, can be transformed into evident and usable insights that can also be used as an opportunity for improvement.
Business Security
Security breaches may significantly decline due to the implementation of Big Data in operations. Big Data tools make it simple to identify all malware and ransomware attacks. They reduce the time needed to locate and address threats, enable IT to anticipate future attacks, and limit or even prevent damage.
Revenue Growth
New product development can benefit from big data. Companies can start partnerships with third parties to share aggregated data or use the gathered insights to assist their clients in addressing their Big Data challenges. These opportunities present new sources of income for telecommunications, banking, or insurance firms.
To target their customers with customized offers, some retailers, for instance, may be interested in location-based data from telecommunication companies. And this is a win-win situation for both parties.
Up-selling and Cross-selling
Personalization offers a fantastic way to upsell goods. Big Data analysis compiles all customer data in one location, allowing for individualized recommendations to even new clients. This way, they are more likely to find what they want and buy more goods.
How Big Data is Used in Businesses Across Industries?
A few top industries utilizing big data solutions are telecommunication, financial services, retail, and e-commerce. To streamline their operations and control data traffic, business owners are investing more and more in big data solutions. Vendors are adopting big data solutions for improved supply chain management.
Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)
Big data and analytics are widely used in the BFSI sector to improve efficiency, focus on the customer, and ultimately increase profitability. Big data analytics is used by financial institutions to get rid of redundant, overlapping systems and provide tools for faster data access.
Big data is used by retail traders and banks for a variety of tasks, such as sentiment analysis and high-frequency trading. It is also used in this industry to monitor activity in the financial markets and analyze risks.
Retail
The retail sector collects data using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), POS (Point of Scale) scanners, customer loyalty programs, and other technologies. Big data usage helps to decrease fraud and makes it possible to analyze inventory in real-time.
Ecommerce
Big data's significance for e-commerce businesses is obvious: the more you understand your customers, the more money you will make from your online store. Data on real-time customer behavior, past purchases, and products liked to allow tracking of in-demand products and trend forecasting, allowing businesses to be the first in the market with top-selling products.
A few more things that technology can do for businesses include pricing analysis, inventory management, and customer churn prediction. Offering extraordinary customer experiences that drive customers to pay more is the key to success; this is where technology becomes your business partner.
Manufacturing
This industry generates a significant amount of untapped data. The sector faces several difficulties, including labor shortages, complex supply chains, and equipment failure. Businesses can find new ways to reduce costs and enhance product quality using big data.
Logistics, Media, and Entertainment
Big data in the logistics industry assists online retailers in managing inventory in accordance with issues unique to one or more locations. Companies in this industry use big data to analyze personal and behavioral information about customers to develop detailed customer profiles.
Oil and Gas
Big data aid decision-making in the oil and gas industry. An in-depth geometry analysis can help businesses decide where to put wells. Agencies also use big data to ensure that their safety precautions are adequate.
Big data is starting to be used more and more by businesses. They use analytics and other technologies for effective data management, keeping in mind the advantages of big data for businesses.
However, the adoption of big data in several sectors, including healthcare, oil & gas, and others, has been sluggish. The technology is expensive, and many businesses still do not use most operational data.
Real-world Examples of How Businesses Use Big Data
Following are some brands which use big data in their businesses.
Amazon
Amazon is a well-known online retailer. To track how customers spend their money on a particular product, they keep track of every piece of information about each customer.
All of this data is being gathered for use in social media advertising algorithms, which can then be used to improve customer experience and services, develop stronger customer relationships, and recommend products.
You may have noticed, for instance, that when you add something to your wishlist or shopping cart, it suggests additional items you might like or displays items you may have purchased along with that item.
In this way, Amazon uses big data to leverage recommendations to facilitate quick customer purchases and improve the shopping experience.
Google analyses big data to determine what we need from it based on various factors, including search history, locations, trends, and a host of other factors.
Then it goes through an algorithm that performs complex estimations. Afterward, Google displays the ordered or positioned indexed lists in terms of importance and authority designed to meet the users' requirements.
Google conveniently displays the top-ranked search results tailored to the user's requirements in terms of authority and relevance.
You've probably noticed how Facebook reminds us of birthdays and friendship anniversaries, but have you ever considered how?
Big data does this work, and Facebook uses big data to improve its users' experiences.
⦁ Facebook uses big data to create a short video containing our old photos as a memory.
⦁ Facebook relies heavily on data to create flashbacks.
⦁ One of the big data technologies that Facebook has adopted is image recognition. It is a technology that instructs gadgets to focus on specific details in a picture or video by guiding it through a series of other photos.
Thus, Facebook analyses every piece of information and provides better services each time you log in.
Starbucks
Starbucks is a well-known brand around the world for having the best coffee. Therefore, no one person could manage this volume of data. Therefore, big data now plays a part.
Every piece of information a customer provides when using a mobile app or placing an order is gathered by big data. They display the suggested items as per the data collected.
The company also uses big data to modify its menu in accordance with customer preferences.
They also make location decisions for new stores, decide on upcoming menu changes, and develop more effective marketing campaigns and promotions.
Instagram guarantees that it fully exploits the big data it generates by extracting and analyzing the customer insights it obtains.
⦁ The next time we scroll through our Instagram feed, we see the same things. This is done by big data, which collects our information and makes recommendations based on it.
⦁ Instagram primarily employs big data for crisis management. E.g., The Ebola crisis.
⦁ Big data assists in tracking likes, followers, and new users, which aids in the company's growth.
Challenges of Big Data
While the benefits of big data are undeniably appealing, it is also important to note that they frequently come with challenges.
⦁ Big data is challenging to process. As previously stated, it is large and fast, necessitating using specific tools to be truly useful for business. However, the proper tools are neither simple to learn nor inexpensive. A company must be prepared to properly pay financial, human, and time costs to integrate big data into operational processes.
⦁ Big data is highly variable. It can take the form of photos or text, and it can be structured or unstructured. Big data variability boosts potential value by expanding pattern-extracting opportunities, but it also complicates processing, annotation, and training.
⦁ It's also important to remember that there are risks associated with big data uncertainty; as it becomes more challenging to pre-process the incoming data stream, the confidence level in its validity plummets. Big data that cannot be trusted is both useless for training and harmful to automated ML algorithms designed for data processing and model training.
Conclusion
There is always a way to benefit from Big Data solutions, no matter how big or small your business is.
We've discussed the value of data, the function of big data in business growth, and how it can increase the effectiveness of business processes, in addition to how big data helps businesses make better decisions. With so much potential in using Big Data and analytics, the question may be: Can any organization afford not to embrace it?
