The jury is out on whether Big Data is still a big buzzword or not, but it certainly isn’t delivering nearly enough value to companies on its own. According to Gartner, 64% of organizations that invest in big data projects struggle to unlock real value from their big data.
A big part of the problem is that most companies are struggling to act on real-time data or data that is in-motion, largely because they lack the tools needed to do so. Data that is captured in the moment—data generated by mobile devices, sensors, and real-time customer behaviors—is available to be gathered, analyzed, and acted on to deliver optimal business results.
The use of big data with analytics can help inform decision-makers about changes in customer behaviors or market swings over time. But by the time the data is gathered and analyzed, the data is often days if not weeks old and any shifts that have occurred have likely changed again, rendering any insights as pretty much useless.
That’s just one of the shortcomings with big data. While the use of large data sets with analytics can help business leaders to identify the behaviors of particular customer segments or to make sense of more complex business trends, Big data does not enable organizations’ leaders to act on business or operational opportunities or threats as they occur.
For example, network analysts for a retail bank who monitor and analyze suspected fraud need the ability to see unusual network activity or suspicious transactions as they are occurring. If an analyst doesn’t identify peculiar activity until a few days after it has occurred, the fraud has likely already been perpetrated.
By contrast, Fast Data can enable analysts to quickly identify suspicious activity as it is happening on a bank’s network, empowering the analysts and other decision makers to preemptively take action and mitigate risk.
Fast Data can also help identify business opportunities when the moment is right. For instance, Fast Data can notify a retailer when a high-value customer has walked into a store. Geo-location data along with historical data about the customer’s transaction history and product pages she has recently viewed on the retailer’s website can be used to help create a relevant offer that can be sent to the customer’s mobile device while she’s shopping.
As companies strive to become more customer-centric, business leaders are recognizing the importance of engaging with customers at critical points in the customers ‘journey, whether that is to resolve a customer issue or to provide a customer with a highly relevant and personalized offer at just the right time. Fast Data is turning that promise into reality.
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