Big data is everywhere, from everything and it is very literally transforming the world around us. A very common fallacy is that only large organisations can benefit from this data revolution, absolutely anyone can collect and learn from data and it’s that specific point that will enable you to scale your enterprise.
What is “Big Data”?
There’s a pretty wide set of definitions of what big data actually means. Simply put, big data is large, diverse and complex data sets that can come from a variety of sources. Typically that would be a mix of structured and unstructured information from anywhere, like databases, files and APIs.
How can we use it?
As with most things technological, the limit is your imagination. You can get very creative with your data sets once you have an objective. Some examples are below.
Identifying Trends
The explosion of online activity over the past decade has led to a vast amount of data being collected and available to organisations. A great example of this is Google Trends, which allows you to see what people are searching for right now and over time, and, whilst they do not provide a public API, there are providers that do have APIs you can interact with. Coupled with your own data collected from customer engagements (i.e. e-commerce transactions and analytics), you can make better informed and automated decisions on your own offerings.
Understanding Your Customers
Learning what makes your customers tick is essential in making informed decisions on how to best get your message to them. What does and doesn’t work for them? What’s the demographic make up? Geographics?
With this and more information, you can create “personas”, or generic identities, of your audience and by understanding these personas, you can finely target your products and messages to reach them far better than with a catch-all approach.
Recruitment
It’s a fact of the modern world that there are often far too many people (mostly) suitable for any given role, so, how do you go through potentially hundreds of CVs and pick the best? Well, those “hundreds of CVs” can provide you with a wealth of information to make objective, informed, data-driven decisions through automation which will be faster and more cost effective than a more traditional approach, increasing the ROI of that particular activity and reducing the risk of a potentially poor hire.
Let’s get started!
The best approach is for us to have a conversation about your business functions and what we can do to automate your processes to make the most of the data available to you. For a free initial consultation, please get in touch.