Big Data is the New Shift-Is it Essential or MUST?
Big Data is the biggest buzz in the recent years, with more and more companies, both large and small, beginning to utilize it for their benefits. Big Data is used to describe the exponential growth and availability of huge data or data sets; both structured and unstructured that are too complex to manage through the standard tools or methods in existent. The data comes from many sources like social networks, blogs, sensor networks, customers’ chats and more, including both online and offline data. They are so immense that it becomes difficult to process them through the traditional databases and software.
As per a research, more than 2.5 exabytes (2.5 million gigabytes) of data is created daily, which is expected to continue growing significantly in the years to come. According to some experts 90% of the data that world has today was produced within the last two years. Many big companies like Google stores over 10 exabytes of data and Facebook collects 500 terrabytes of data everyday; with major players like Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, AWS and more in the forefront.
Big Data is known by ‘four Vs’: Volume, Variety, Velocity and Veracity. Big Data comes in large amounts (Volume), is a mixture of structured and unstructured data (Variety), is sourced from many different places (Veracity) and is streaming in at unprecedented speed (Velocity). It is not suitable for processing using the traditional SQL database systems because Big Data consists of a lot of unstructured data, which cannot be stored in a tabular row and column model. And most of the data that we have today is in unstructured format, which has made companies to use alternative tools like Hadoop, various NoSQL databases and other Business Intelligence platforms.
The Big Data industry is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. As per the study by technology organization Wikibon, the revenue from Big Data is expected to grow from its current $5 billion mark to more than $50 billion by 2017.
The question here is what businesses will do after acquiring such large amounts of data and how will it be helpful to them? To answer this, let us understand why Big Data should matter to your business and why it will be widely accepted by the companies in future.
Informed Decisions
By analyzing Big Data you will be able to gain insights to take better strategic and operational decisions. You can take a structured approach through data-driven insights for framing strategies for customer and product profitability, customer acquisition, satisfaction and retention strategies, market penetration and segmentation, efficient management of operations and much more. Taking informed decisions by analyzing the right data will ensure that your customers’ have a pleasant experience.
Enhanced Efficiency
Big Data can help your business to achieve maximum operational efficiency. Access to information from various sources will allow companies to improve their processes like logistics, supply chain, sales, procurement, deployment, support etc. They will be able to assess the efficiency of their employees in a better way to help them enhance performance, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the business.
Customer Centricity
Businesses will be able to fetch a huge amount of data related to customers from various interactive websites, social networking sites, online communities etc. The derived data will be more reliable as compared to the questionnaires or customer surveys. This data will help them to understand the priorities of customers, their complaints, their level of satisfaction, what exactly they want and much more. This makes companies serve their customers in a better way and customize their offerings.
New Opportunities
Tremendous amount of market data will be available, which can be used for analysis purpose to help business explore new and real opportunities. It will be possible to know the purchasing behavior of the customers and the unexplored business areas. This will allow businesses to launch new products and services and even bring innovations to their existing products that can cater to the diverse needs of customers.
Value Measurement
Big Data will make it possible to measure the business results and the value added by using various services. One of the examples include analyzing how much beneficial it has been for the business to use the Cloud services. This will provide the basis for future planning, helping businesses to reduce the overall cost and make better forecasting.
Better Operations
Big Data for supply chain captured through RFID and microsensors can provide real-time information on the movement of products and assets. Big Data can also provide real-time inventory and purchase data to instantly get an idea about the required stock and the future demand of the products. For example businesses can understand the reasons for the change in demand of a product and the purchase patterns of consumers by analyzing demographics, purchase history, location and more. This will be based on facts rather than speculations. Big Data will thus ensure better business operations.
The bigness of Big Data is growing much faster than what businesses can even imagine. A research says that we everyday generate more data in 10 minutes than what all of the humanity has ever created through to the year 2003! Businesses need to take advantage of this opportunity to realize enormous gains in terms of efficiency, productivity and profitability.
“Information is at the heart of every business decision and companies need to fully embrace the opportunities of Big Data or risk losing out in the market place,” states John Brahim, Head of Capgemini Insights & Data global practice.
Those businesses that don’t make themselves capable to ingest Big Data are at very high risk of disruption. The new shift towards Big Data is thus not only essential but is a must for businesses to survive in the cut-throat competitive market!
Semaphore Software has started providing Big Data and Analytics services, helping businesses to set-up Big Data back-end and improving their decision making through analytics solutions. We have the capacity to handle different Big Data technology platforms, provide assistance in designing your Big Data strategy and help you through our Big Data Consulting services.
Contact us through info@semaphore-software.com to get real-time business insights through our Big Data services!!
