We see it everywhere in the business world today – BIG DATA – so why is it such a big deal? It’s a big deal because it is changing the way businesses work at their very core. The information and data we are constantly bombarded with from our ‘always on’ world is shaping sales, marketing, fundraising, investing, and entertainment with the potential to impact every business transaction!
But there is one big problem with BIG DATA, its big! In fact, for most of us it is way too big and too much and too often. We try to soak in a few nuggets from this overwhelming fountain and occasionally we stumble across something that can be useful in our business or personal lives. We really don’t understand how we can possibly assimilate all that data into useful and actionable information. With BIG DATA becoming more and more an integral part of how you do business, it is even more important to make sure the data you are analyzing is the right data, relevant to you and your business.
The basic business model for acquiring and retaining clients or donors has always included a component of gathering feedback and evaluating what you learn so you can apply it to your business. It could be a very time-consuming and lengthy process. The information was often woefully outdated by the time it was processed. Changes to products and how they were marketed, were not able to be made quickly enough to reflect consumers’ new interests and product feedback. Fast forward to today and with all the information we have at our fingertips. Every business can take that feedback, make the changes and, just like that the modified product based on market response is available. The consumer gets what they want and businesses growth booms, right? Not exactly...there is a key component that’s missing – all that disparate data must be integrated to provide usable information. As the old lexicon says, you can’t compare apples and oranges! Data analysis and modeling is big business. The ability to understand consumer behavior and better target your audience has proven to reduce marketing costs and increase sales. The data must be accurate and trustworthy for it to be actionable, providing your business with analysis that has value. The thought of managing all this data is overwhelming. Fortunately, there are a multitude of data aggregators and a plethora of products and services solutions to help you analyze the data, not to mention industry experts to tell you what data you should be considering. Over five million developers worldwide are working on big data and advanced analytics today. Yes, BIG DATA is a big business, currently the big data market is worth about $60bn with a growth factor of 25% over the next few years. It’s time for your business to get busy with big data. Amazon is an ideal example as for how big data can be used to scale the sales. By using the data to personalize your interaction, and adding that ‘other people who viewed this also bought’ section sales went up by 30% using the shopping experience of others. BIG DATA is not just for big companies, in fact with the introduction of cost effective cloud-based tools BIG DATA can level the playing field. The Big Deal About Big Data is this, no matter the size of your organization the data information exists that you need to make decisions about the future of your business. And as more and more solutions become available at reasonable price points you might want to get started now!
About the Author Leslie Riehm is the Vice President Corporate Communications at Digital Donations, Inc.
from
https://www.digitaldonations.org/single-post/2017/10/05/Whats-the-BIG-deal-about-BIG-data
