Big Data, Data Analytics, Data Science, Data Engineers, The Internet of Things. We tend to hear so much about the ever-growing aspect of data in today’s business climate but why? When we were kids we often questioned “why do I have to study history it has already happened”. We were often give the explanation that history tends to repeat itself. If you think of it that way, then data begins to become more important for businesses. As business owners, we are always looking to get ahead of the competition. The ability to see into the future would be the biggest advantage of all and data has the potential to help with that.
One of the most important things data can do is help you understand your customers. When used with tools such as Power BI, Tableau, etc., you can gain valuable insight into your customer’s needs. Helpful information like spending trends, customer demographics, customer churn rate, can all be found using data in the correct way. If you are able to better understand your customers, you will be able to adapt to their trends and needs. This will allow you to be proactive instead of reactive.
Many organizations have a mental approach to sell, sell, sell! While sales are important, raw data can also allow you to see what really makes you profitable. By using this data, you can ensure that your employees are focused on selling the products that can lead to higher market growth. The data will also help your organization recognize weaker products that could be improved or eliminated.
While the ability to actually predict the future is not 100% possible, companies have the power to predict future trends and market segments, by using tools such as Azure Machine Learning and Amazon SageMaker. Big Data technologies such as Hadoop, MapReduce have often been out of the reach of smaller companies, and expensive to deploy in larger companies. However, with the ever growing cloud platforms available to us, now everyone has access to this technology.
As you can see, the use of Data in organizations is growing every day. As we produce more and more data the ability of learning from that becomes even greater. Even if you think you are too small or don’t have enough data to make a good analysis on your data, think again. Even small changes in quality, production and profits can make a big difference.