Just because you’re not a big company doesn’t mean you don’t have big data. Your data may not be as big, but your data is big to you. Your business is accumulating data every day, from many sources, in many formats and at a fast pace. That’s Big Data.
What is Big Data?
Let’s start with a simple explanation of what Big Data is. Simply, Big Data is all the data collected internally and externally about your business that is available for analysis. Big Data is not a special club that only billion dollar companies can join, it is open to anyone. Having doubts? Here are a few specific examples that collect data either internally or externally:
Marketing Data – Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
Sales Data – Point of Sales Systems, CRMs, Invoices
Financial Data – QuickBooks, Bank records, Credit Card Statements
Which of these look familiar?
Great, I’ve got Big Data
Now what? That’s where the fun begins. Now we can use analytics to unveil the story behind your data. Using Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics, your data can show customer behaviors, how well your website does at generating revenue, how good you are at hiring, customer retention rates, accurate projections, predict future product success, and on and on. Analytics is both an art and a science, as long as you understand the science, you can be creative as you want in coming up with ways to use Big Data.
Big Data Driven
One of the keys to utilizing Big Data is to have a full understanding on what it means to you and your business and what it can do for you and your business. Often times, when you get into the data, you’ll uncover things you didn’t know and be motivated to fix the issue, or be inspired to find ways to take advantage of the discovery. Data driven decision making isn’t just for billion dollar businesses.