One of the greatest strengths of big data is how it can be used to provide fresh insights to decision makers.
Big data can reveal customer and market trends that, when spotted quickly enough, can lead executives to move rapidly on new business ventures ahead of competitors.
The beauty of the increasingly digital landscape is that every single digital interaction that occurs – from scheduling a doctor’s visit via email to entering a chat session with a customer agent regarding a product issue to commenting about a brand experience on Facebook – becomes an electronic record that companies can make use of, notes Inc. magazine reporter J.J. McCorvey in a recent blog.
And businesses can now take advantage of this “treasure trove” of data thanks, in part, to dramatic reductions in the costs of storage, the ability to integrate data streams from multiple sources, and the rich analytics tools that are available to mine and analyze this information,” says Todd Nash of Chicago Business Intelligence Group.
“The trick in today’s big data world is to use that same creativity to develop rules-based toolsets that can rapidly do what our brains do naturally: store, retrieve, process and integrate all of the structured, semi-structured and unstructured information that is currently available, to form an analysis and make educated decisions which can further an enterprise’s goals,” he notes.
Big data and the use of in-memory analytics tools provide companies with infinite ways to identify and move on new business opportunities by analyzing customer sentiment that’s shared in social channels, in contact center discussions with agents, through customers’ online behaviors, etc.
As McKinsey Global Institute illustrates in a report on the topic, manufacturers are using data that’s captured from sensors embedded in products to create unique after-sale service offerings such as proactive product maintenance services.
While big data can be used for myriad purposes, a recent study by European Communications finds that the creation of new revenue streams, including selling data to third parties, represents the greatest opportunity that big data has to offer senior telco executives.
Indeed, 35% of the survey respondents cite the potential to drive new revenue streams ahead of opportunities to improve customer experience (28%) or to create competitive differentiation (14%).
Another way to look at this is to determine the cost of doing nothing – or failing to fully leverage the data that is available to quickly identify and act on new business opportunities. For instance, the McKinsey study finds that a retailer that uses big data to its full extent has the potential to increase its operating margins by 60%.
Deloitte estimates that 90% of Fortune 500 companies are likely to have some big data initiatives underway by the end of 2012. Clearly, it’s become a competitive requirement to use big data. Consider the consequences of failing to act.
