What is Big Data?
Lots of people are confused with the term Big data, some think its the size of the data set while some may think otherwise. Although it has something to do with the size of the data set, the real meaning of Big Data is not just about the size. The real term of Big data describes a large data set which may be structured or unstructured that continuously getting updated (In other words with a continuous data flow).
How Big Data can be used in business?
This data set is complex and may have multiple sources that feed the data in and also can have a different type of data in the set. Because of these characteristics, the traditional data processing tools can’t manage them. However, this large volume of data can be used to help businesses in many ways. It can help cut down costs in unnecessary business processes, help businesses to forecast trends, identify customer behaviour, identify risks and in so many other things. This is the reason why Big Data is important and has become one of the most discussed terms in the present context. With the advancement in technology and due to the competitiveness among almost every industry, accessibility to data is no longer a privilege for the big corporates. Today, even the smallest business can gain access to so much of information if they choose the correct methods to retrieve these data. But the availability of data doesn’t mean every business can be successful in their respective domain. It’s all about how businesses use this information to make smart decisions. This is what matters to the success of a business.
Why Big Data?
Big data can be analyzed to get insights that lead businesses to make better decisions and take strategic business moves. Big data can identify root causes of problems in businesses in real-time. Also, it can provide predictive trends for marketing and even give you insights on how your customers behave and interact with your products and services. This is why data is important more than ever for businesses, it says the devil is in the details; so to bring the devil out it is important to go deep into details.
Industries that popularly use Big Data
Banking, healthcare, financial services, and insurance are the usual industries that first adopt big data technologies since these industries usually dominate analytics landscapes by gathering immense volumes of data. Even though the other industries may still possess an abundance amount of data, these companies are unaware of the wealth of data they have in hand or may think it is not worthwhile to digitise the manual data they have since the process seems too complex to businesses. Truth be told, the real problem is not the manual data that lies idle on ledgers and record books the real problem is not understanding the potential of these data.
Here are some successful case studies by the popular brand who got the benefit from big data
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola uses big data to produce orange juice with a consistent taste all year-round, now for some this may look a little strange but oranges have a peak-growing season of just three months so to get the consistant taste to the pulp was a chalenge for them. Coca cola created an algorithm that combines various data sets such as satellite images, expected crop yields, weather date, cost burdens, regional consumer likings, detailed data about the numerous of 600 diverse flavours that make up an orange, and many other variables such as sourness or sweetness rates to tell Coca-Cola how to correctly blend the orange juice to create a consistent taste.
Not only that, Coca-Cola has used big data to stay ahead in other areas as well. Like,
- Create efficiencies in their warehousing, restaurant and retail supply chain operations
- Mining loyalty program, competitive, POS and social media data to understand buyer behaviour
- Creating digital service centres for procurement and HR processes
- Leverage a new breed of storage media to retain, process and analyze vast amounts of information
Netflix
Netflix uses big data to improve their customer experience in many ways. Netflix is constantly analyzing users behaviour to identify trends to make sure their clients keep watching their programs. They do this by analysing,
- Program viewership
- Trends in the content their customers are consuming
- The colours of the promotional visuals of Netflix programming
- Devices their clients are watching their programming on
- Whether a viewer watches a portion of a movie, a season of a series or a complete series back to back in a weekend binge-watching session
Understanding the types of content to serve their customers based on geographical locations, time of day, demographics, and opinions expressed on social media. Big Data gives Netflix the ability to deliver the relevant content the customer would love to see when they want it.
There is no doubt Big Data analytics provides businesses with an opportunity for disruptive and radical change to grow. Enterprise content and data experts, such as Media Horizon, can help you to define your Big Data goals and objectives. If you are interested to explore possibilities in your business, contact Media Horizon. We help our customers to be more efficient, innovative and competitive.
