How Organizations gain from a Technology driven Big Data strategy?

How can Small and Medium Businesses benefit from data analytics?

Small businesses lack the resources to go all in on their big data investments. Therefore, SMBs require a smarter strategy for joining in the big data trend. Here are a few tips –

• Instead of worrying about using big or small data sets, SMBs should start by investing in small scale analytics and lay focus on employing data technology analytics for enterprise decision making by optimal business datasets.
• Also, rather than collecting all sorts of business data in anticipation of future usage, SMBs should utilise data sets which help them solve immediate problems.
• Since most of the SMB executives rely on personal experience and beliefs instead of business data-driven results –an organisational change becomes a prerequisite for introducing big data culture in smaller organizations.
• Using cloud computing is also elemental for implementing big data solutions effectively in SMBs. Cloud has a two-fold benefit — one; it helps connect all services via a unified platform. Two, SMBs can derive significant cost benefits by employing cloud-based big data processing solutions.
• SMBs operate at a much smaller scale, therefore investing too much in operation analytics, R&D analytics, etc. makes little sense for them. Instead, they can benefit more by focusing on customer analytics. With better product marketing, personalised services and targeted offers, SMBs can gain significant cost to income advantage.
• Lastly, SMBs should not hesitate from leveraging data outside their organisation for more insights into customer behaviour, operations and financial management.

SMBs can benefit a lot more from big data implementation if they clearly define their goals and do not get sidetracked by the market hype. However, the successes of businesses — large or small — in implementing big data solutions depends requires two things. First, the availability of data, and second, the implementation of right processing technologies.

Organisational gains from a technology driven big data strategy

Big data analytics plays a significant role in organisational efficiency. The benefits that come with big data strategies have allowed companies to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals — generally by virtue of increased awareness which an organisation and its workforce gains by using analytics as the basis for decision making. Here is how an organisation can benefit by deploying a big data strategy –

Reducing organizational costs

Big data solutions help in setting up efficient manufacturing processes, with demand-driven production and optimum utilisation of raw materials. Automation and use of AI to reduce manual work is another way of achieving cost efficiency in production and operations. Further insights into sales and financial departments help managers in developing strategies that promote agile work environments, reducing overall organisational costs.

Increasing workforce efficiency and productivity

Data-driven decision making is helpful in boosting confidence among the employees. People become more pro-active and productive when taking decisions based on quantifiable data instead of when asked to make decisions by themselves. This, in turn, increases the efficiency of the organisation as a whole.

Setting up competitive pricing

As evidenced earlier in this post, creating differentiated pricing strategies are known to help develop competitive pricing and bring in the associated revenue benefits. Also, organizations can tackle competing for similar products and services by using big data to gain a price advantage.

Having demographics based sales strategies

Demographics divide most markets, but there are even deeper divides that exist in customer classification. Big data analytics can help categorise customers into distinct tiers based on their likelihood of making a purchase. This gives sales reps more solid leads to follow and helps them convert more. Furthermore, when sales and marketing are based on big data insights, it is likely that the sales reps are intimated with a potential customer’s tendencies and order histories — driving up the rep’s advantage.

Driving brand loyalty

Customers are likely to respond more to relationship-driven marketing. Using data analytics, organizations can leverage their prior knowledge of a client’s needs and expectations and offer services accordingly. Thus, significantly increasing the chances of repeat orders and establishing long-term relationships.

Hiring smarter people for smarter jobs

Using big data technologies has become a useful tool for HR managers to identify candidates by accessing profiled data from social media, business databases and job search engines. This allows companies to hire quickly and more reliably than traditional hiring techniques which always have an element of uncertainty. Also, when organizations are using analytics across all platforms, it becomes imperative for them to hire candidates who are in sync with their policy.

Recalibrating business strategies

Big data strategies not only provide better decision-making powers to organizations but also give them the tools to validate the results of these decisions. Organisations can recalibrate their strategies or scale according to newer demands using these tried and tested business strategies.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that Big Data technology will continue to evolve and encompass more fields in the coming years. As the rate of data generation increases, even smaller enterprises will find it hard to maintain data sets using older systems. Analytics more than anything will become the guiding principle behind the business activity. Moreover, companies will need to be more automated and data-driven to compete and survive. The evolution of artificial intelligence with technologies like machine learning and smart personal assistants is also heavily reliant on big data. The role they will play in the future of business management, manufacturing processes, sales and marketing, and overall organisational remains to be seen.

If you enjoyed reading the above article, you might love reading the whole story on “How Big Data Analytics will play an important role in Businesses?”