In the last week, have you made
journeys with a switched on mobile phone, posted, liked or uploaded a photo on
Facebook? Have you searched the internet? Watched videos on Youtube?
Then you are data, a small
part of big data in fact.
Does your company have a
website? Does it do any marketing or sales?
Then it’s generating big data,
the hundreds or thousands of data points that define any one journey through a
website quickly accumulate.
What data exists about your company
outside of your firewall, and how this could correlate to your internal
business operations? For example product reviews, discussions, web articles… do
they discuss concepts that are also contained within your production & CRM
systems?
And what can we do with this
goldmine of information? Well it’s different for every company, and on first
thoughts you may think big data means big budgets and big projects and
therefore restricted to big companies, but this really isn’t the case.
To quote the Cambridge
Institute of Manufacturing, “If you are an established SME and not thinking
about these issues, it's time to jump on the Big Data train, for if you don’t
the danger is you’ll be left sitting in the sidings while newer start-ups and
bigger players pull out of the station and power ahead.”
Businesses are understanding how
they are perceived by their customers, sensing demand in time to fulfil it, tracking
performance of their products through sensors and detecting fraud through
transaction correlation, whether it’s a vehicle rental company being aware of
and addressing a Facebook storm among its customers, an online retailer
tracking spikes in sales for unexpected products due to current global events
and proactive pushing similar products, or a tractor manufacturer notifying its
customers of potential mechanical problems before they happen
It’s a new age of
communication we’re living in. Individuals are starting to understand that
their thoughts, movements and behaviours are being stored as a collection of
ones and zeros. Machines need to get used to being monitored more carefully and
maintained before they break down. And of organisations need to understand both
the opportunity and responsibility this big data presents. Enjoy responsibly!
Written by Angus Menter, BI Practice Manager, DSCallards
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