How Is Big Data Creating A Plethora Of Opportunities For Businesses?

Since the evolution of human civilisation, mankind has utilised data in varied structures and forms. This includes cave drawings, carvings on monuments, hieroglyphic engravings, and written scriptures. This data has played a vital role in the development of human beings and has helped us to come out of caves and construct iconic cities boasting high-tech technology and high-rise buildings. It is possibly the fundamental reason, and result of a constantly accelerating human civilisation over a course of thousands of years. But, this data would have proved to be completely insignificant if it wouldn’t have been analysed and utilised for practical implementation during our evolution process, thus bringing the hopes of a human survival to a complete halt. Big data now, continues this legacy for corporate organizations as we move towards the zenith of the digital age.

In the past 20 years, the world has witnessed the advent of internet, increased mobility, decreased storage requirements, and massive adoption of technological solutions such as cloud-based services. These technological advancements have subsequently given rise to tremendous amount of digital data that can be tapped in order to develop a higher business understanding with an analytical approach. The reason behind the rise of Big Data can be attributed to the fact that with a viable data collection that can be traced, tracked and analyzed, business organisations can make a great headway to understand the labyrinthine present-day business world. While traditional market research is what businesses have always turned to for a close-enough analysis of the core areas of business functions, it has hardly ever been able to render empirically accurate results. Big Data on the other hand, reveals patterns, trends, and estimates after sifting through terra-bytes of data relating to customer behaviour and interactions with the kind of precision that was never possible before.

Though, Big Data and Data analytics do not entirely guarantee success, nevertheless it substantially increases the probability of taking an informed decision. It enables business corporations to analyse trends and sense an opportunity within the market that previously remained unnoticed by them.

Higher Growth

It was revealed in Dell’s second annual Global Technology Adoption Index that companies who had adopted Big Data were registering 50% higher revenue growth rates as compared to their peers. The reason for this growth is that the size and volume of data being generated and the valuable information it offers can greatly help businesses identify lacunae, areas of growth and aspects that offer scope for improvement. Big Data helps companies understand customer sentiment and leveraging its benefits can have a huge impact on their fortune. Data analysis also helps eliminate redundant processes and business practices. Additionally, it lets a company understand the market opinion and competitors’ strategies, giving it a tactical advantage.

Product Development

Big Data and data analytics give a business the opportunity to create highly consumer-centric products and services. Knowing the consumer demands well in advance give an organisation the upper hand in the market. Using sentiment analysis, it is easier to predict the consumer perception about a specific product or service. Also, data analytics can be used to predict trends, market patterns, and future demands, thus enabling a company to design offerings that will really click with its target markets.

Better Consumer Approach

High grade information provided by Big Data such as consumer preferences, general proclivity, insights, and tendencies, will evolve the overall consumer experience that a brand is able to offer. Moreover, it can also be used to enhance marketing tactics for a particular product.  It has been observed that personalised marketing results in higher engagement. Big Data, therefore, also enables organisations to successfully target individuals through more personalised ads which appeal to their taste and preferences.

Easier Risk Analysis

There are a variety of factors including workplace environment and interdepartmental relationships that affect the overall business performance of an organisation. Additionally, due to ever-changing social and economic factors associated with employees, the company is always shadowed by an eventual human capital risk that can cause skill shortage within the organisation. Critical skill shortage can result in subsequent ripple effects on the future of the organisation. Using Big Data analytics, a company can effectively analyse various risk factors at play and successfully prevent them. Big Data also helps to fulfil internal training requirements and establish better recruitment practices.

Given its actual potential, Big Data is significantly gaining prominence and drawing attention of both, tech professionals for research and application purposes as well as of the corporate professional for business advantages. Today, businesses are extracting meaningful interpretations from this previously untapped resource such as the trails of customer behaviour and purchase patterns, which is directly resulting in higher engagement, consumer retention, increased loyalty, and feasibility in operations. Moreover, specialisation in the field of statistics and SPSS has created massive scope in data science, leading to the creation of a business world which now, places immense trust on big data analysis. It has now become almost an essential requirement to run a business in the long-run, emerging as a tool few entrepreneurs are willing to let go.

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