Published on October 9th, 2014 | by Guest

Big Data Strategy: Key to Successful Business

Information technologies allow businesses to accumulate data sets and use them to run the business (sales, employees, financial turnover, etc.). In recent years there has been a trend of rapid increase of information, which is collected and used by the companies.

Moreover, not only financial transactions and contacts with customers, but also data on logistics operations, information of communication nature and other info is currently considered to be a source of information. Studies show that the use of the big data increases the efficiency of the company and, accordingly, its profits, compared to companies that do not use Big Data.

Companies started to realize how important is data analysis for business success in the modern technology-driven markets. But finding and retaining talented specialist in data analysis can be difficult for small businesses. Fortunately, companies have more possibilities when it comes to extracting information from large volumes of data they need.

What is Big Data?

Before companies can succeed in finding and using big data to manage business solutions, they need to get a complete picture of what the term means. Big Data is more than just a widely discussed about term. This phrase assumes approach to the study of the behavior of customers, employees and infrastructure.

This information can be used to make important decisions in marketing, personnel management, or change the existing technology to meet the growing needs of the market. As big data technology develops businesses switched to an unimaginable amount of data collection. Some experts believe that we still have to deal with only one percent of the data, mainly due to limited resources.

Analysis of Big Data goes beyond small databases and analytical tools that we used to use. Big data requires more resources and even more knowledge and skills. But where businesses find these resources?

Using Big Data solutions

Most companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, do not have a full-time specialist to work with Big Data. Fortunately, there are several services that offer their help in providing solutions in the field of big data for companies of all sizes. Amazon Web Services and Splunk have fundamentally changed the industry by making analytics accessible to companies of all sizes.

There is also another option, which is relatively new. Businesses can temporarily use the services of specialists in data processing. Under this business model, companies hire data analysts, paying for their services when needed. Companies do not need to enroll such specialists. This option is particularly attractive for small and medium-sized businesses who can share the same team of specialists in data processing with other companies across the country.

What are the advantages of the businesses using Big Data?

The first and one of the main advantages offered by the use of Big Data is a significant increase in the work efficiency thanks controlled experiments. This is a new method of decision-making, which allows to test various hypotheses on the basis of the analysis of big data (such as, for example, changes in the market, customer behavior, changes in the stock markets, etc.).

Analysis of Big Data can also optimize the working process with customer. The study of customer behavior, allows the company in real time to identify when a customer is most likely close to making a purchasing decision. This in turn will allow the company to push the client to the action, such as bonuses or discounts.

Working with Big Data also allows to identify the maximum number of risks for the company on the basis of automated analysis.

But this trend has also its difficulties.

Working with Big Data requires a special approach. Unfortunately, not all professionals have sufficient analytical skills.

But the main difficulties of working with Big Data are privacy issues. On the one hand the data collection is primarily concerned with the personal data of customers, which can justifiably be concerning for customers. On the other hand, processing the received information includes their diverse processing. And it requires more open access, which can cause information leaks. This is why security is one of the major challenges for businesses when it comes to Big Data analysis.

Today businesses can no longer afford to ignore the technology associated with Big Data. Data analysis is becoming an important tool for growth and development in the modern competitive market. If you continue to ignore the power of big data analysis, you will probably find yourself struggling for existence in the market.
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Tags: big data, business, key, successful