Enterprise Benefits of Big Data

The enterprise benefits of Big Data can be very helpful for organisations in today’s digital world. The accessibility of data has provided this generation with new waves of advancing technology. It has shifted businesses and organisations towards data-driven decision making. Big Data Analytics is now a big part of gathering business intelligence and performing various functions

The emergence of the Internet-of-Things means that floods of data and information are coursing through the billions of interconnected devices across the world simultaneously. Although big data and IoT have evolved independently, they have become interrelated and dependent on each other over time. The Internet-of-Things has allowed enterprises to connect directly with consumers, offering their services on demand and negating the need for any physical points of contact.

Users can call an Uber, book a hotel, buy a range of goods, or even receive medical advice from a trained professional– all without needing to go to a brick-and-mortar shop or having to talk to a real person.

The amount of data will skyrocket

According to a study conducted by the IDC, it is expected that IoT devices will generate 79 zettabytes of data by 2025. This projection is based on estimates that there will be 41.6 billion IoT devices by 2025. These devices include sensors, cameras, industrial machines, computers, mobile phones, and even printers.

Overall, data generated by IoT devices will grow at a compound annual rate of 28.7% over 2018 to 2025. During this period, more industries will adopt IoT devices and the growth will continue to surge. Additionally, the introduction of 5G networks will rapidly speed up the data growth because of lower latency rates and increased bandwidth speeds which will result in more data being transferred across devices.

The massive capabilities that the Internet-of-Things offers means that Big Data has become ever more helpful for organisations to utilise. As briefly mentioned in previous articles, Big Data can offer valuable insights to businesses; let’s discuss this.

Big data helps increase return-on-investment in enterprises

Much like every new technology, Big Data needs to be sold to the management in order to be implemented and the return on investment must be shown to do this. A common misconception may be that a Big Data strategy requires a large investment with uncertain results. However, McKinsey stated that companies using big data can improve their operating margin by 60% and reduce expenditures significantly.

But also like every other strategy, it will steer the direction of the business or organisation in one way or another. Implementation will have costs and the returns can always be uncertain considering there are also other factors affecting business performance outside of big data.

We’ve also established in a previous article that cloud storage is significantly cheaper than warehouse storage, so that shouldn’t be an issue for an organisation looking to adopt a data-driven business approach. Technologies such as Hadoop allow for the more efficient processing of large data sets across low-cost hardware that can scale with the amount of data.

The main cost involved in achieving enterprise benefits of Big Data is the operation and overall management of Big Data within the organisation. Big Data analysts and scientists are relatively expensive as there is a rapidly increasing demand for data professionals and a low supply of them.

Naturally, a well-established Big Data plan will help make sure that Big Data will bring value to the business or organisation. The value it brings can be in the form of decreased lead times, decreased production costs, increased consumer engagement and brand awareness – all of which are long term values. Knowing how much the ROI will be depends on the objectives set, the size of the organisation, the hardware/software used, and the ability to make decisions based on information extracted from the data.

Using Big Data to Optimise the Customer Lifecycle

According to Statista, an estimated 2.65 billion people were using social media worldwide in 2018. By 2021, this number is expected to increase to 3.1 billion. It will only increase as internet access becomes more globally accessible. Almost all social media platforms offer some form of analytics to help users visualise their data. Twitter offers analytics on how well your tweets perform, where your audience is located and even what their interests are based on the accounts they follow.

This data is especially valuable for businesses because they can look at which posts their audience like and which ones they don’t. They can look at trends such as the most active hours their audiences are online. Social media marketers can then optimise their strategies to make sure their posts or campaigns receive the most engagement, which would then lead to higher conversions.

Theoretically, the more data that an organisation collects the more patterns and trends the business can identify. In today’s internet era, a business can easily collect all the customer data it needs. Most social media platforms and websites do it automatically. All that is necessary is a well-established Big Data analytics strategy to maximise the amount of useful information extracted from data.

With the proper Big Data tools at hand, a business will have the capabilities to derive important behavioural insights in order to increase value.

Using Big Data analytics to look at customer behaviour can help you optimise all four aspects of the customer lifecycle:

• Loyalty
• Retention
• Engagement
• Customer acquisition

Big data analytics to help drive innovation and product development

Another significant benefit of adopting Big Data Analytics is the ability to help businesses and organisations innovate and develop their products. Traditionally, every design process begins with establishing a consumer need or want or tailoring a product to what a company might believe would sell well. This is part of doing market research and it dramatically increases the chances of a product performing well because there has been an established need or want for it.

Since businesses have adopted the use of Big Data Analytics, the ability to recognise consumer behaviour, buying trends, and whatnot, have increased dramatically. It is no longer possible to guess what consumers want. In order to compete in today’s business environment, a company should be able to track their products, competitors and adapt to an ever changing market using data.

Some key goals that companies wish to achieve after adopting a Big Data Analytics strategy include:

• Increasing their understanding of each customer’s unique needs or wants. After identifying these, it should be actionable or transformed into an actionable plan.
• Improve responsiveness to customers at the point of interaction. How can you improve your service offering? Think of how simple and easy it is to order an Uber).
• Deliver the right product at the right time – A business might come up with a really great product, but it is equally as important to identify the best time to offer it to the market. Perhaps it’s a product that depends on another product. It wouldn’t make much sense to sell an innovative new phone that only works on 5G if 5G networks have only been adopted in a handful of countries.

Conclusion

Big data analytics is an important investment for all businesses interested in realising growth. Through implementing big data analytics, businesses can gain a competitive advantage, reduce the cost of operation and increase customer acquisition. There are various sources of customer data that businesses can leverage to their advantage. If you want to learn more about the benefits of Big Data and how it can be helpful your organisations on a more technical point of view, check out our other articles below or contact our team for more information.