Many people are confused by the term big data, including businesspersons. No one can fault them; big data is a pretty confusing concept. The only consensus about big data is that the term ‘big data’ itself doesn’t have a specific definition. The simplest definition of big data is any set of raw data that’s too big for an Excel spreadsheet. Now that’s something most people can understand. That aside, the most important thing is to make sense of all the big data around us.
What Can Big Data Do for Your Business?
Big data is great. It’s a good thing to have access to in business. But what can it really do for your business? Well, a lot. But big data, in itself, isn’t much use to an average business person. As an entrepreneur, what you really need is insight. Fortunately, there are tools like an enterprise data catalog that you can use to make sense of this mountain of data at your disposal.
Big data analytics can be used to store, process, analyse, and draw conclusions from large sets of structured and unstructured data. Stream processing is a big data solution that can help you analyse and make sense of continuous data or data in motion, concurrently. It combines historical and continuous data to add context to it. Here are some of the ways you can make sense of the big data around you to improve your business:
Tweak Your Business Model
Data can lead you to exciting new ways of generating revenue thereby becoming a part of your business model. There are many ways a business can monetize data. For instance, you can sell data to your customers and third parties to create a new income stream. To earn from it, all you have to do is make sure that the data you generate provides value-added services for your consumers.
For instance, Facebook is provided for free to users, but the company still generates income. Facebook capitalizes on the vast amount of data on its users and avails some of it from free and some you have to pay for. Traditionally, Facebook has always generated income from advertising. You can tweak your business model and generate some income with big data.
Recruit and Manage Talent
Big data helps you engage existing staff, identify the best recruitment channels, and select the best candidates. You analyse personal development reviews, productivity data, absenteeism figures, etc. to gain recruitment and employee management insights. Most of this data is freely available for use.
Improve Operations
It can be used to improve business operations in every industry. Virtually, any business process that generates data can be optimized to increase efficiency. Some of the data processes include customer ordering systems, sensors on delivery vehicles, and machinery on a production line.
Check Out the Competition
Back in the day, you had to look around your competitors’ shops/websites or listen to industry gossip to know how they are faring. Today, you don’t even have to leave your desk to know what your rivals are up to. Big data has made financial and other important information readily available.
Identify Trends
It is getting guesswork out of the way when it comes to trend analysis and prediction. It’s extremely easy to work out what you are looking for. Every day, trending topics are flashing across Google, Twitter, and Facebook. You will be fine as long as you know what you are looking for.
Every business, irrespective of the industry, generates what may qualify as big data on a daily basis. The amount of data generated by both enterprises and SMBs (Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) is increasing at an astonishing rate. The problem is that most people don’t know what to do with data, but now you do. Make the most out of it.