Five Benefits Of Big Data Analytics And How Companies Can Get Started

Consumers are inundated every day with ads for products and services. The number of options is exhausting. What makes consumers stop and pay attention?

As brands work to answer this question, they become more creative as a result. In fact, many are diving into the benefits of big data analytics. For instance, in 2016 Starbucks started using AI to send personalized offerings to its customers via email. Beyond customizing drinks to match personal tastes, the company uses its loyalty card and app to collect and analyze customer data, including where and when purchases are made.

Big data isn’t a new term. It’s a concept that has been around for many years — but the first big data analysts used spreadsheets that were typed by hand and then manually analyzed. You can imagine how long that process used to take.

Innovations in technology have changed the rules when it comes to big data. Advanced software systems greatly reduce analytics time, giving companies the ability to make speedy decisions that help increase revenue, reduce costs and stimulate growth. This offers a competitive advantage to the brands that are able to work faster and target their consumers more effectively.

If you’re a brand considering investing in big data analytics, here are some of the ways you may benefit:

1. Customer Acquisition And Retention

To stand out, organizations must have a unique approach to market their products. By using big data, companies can pinpoint exactly what customers are looking for. They establish a solid customer base right out of the gate.

New big data processes observe the patterns of consumers. They then use those patterns to trigger brand loyalty by collecting more data to identify more trends and ways to make customers happy. Amazon has mastered this technique by providing one of the most personalized shopping experiences on the internet today. Suggestions are based not only on past purchases, but also on items that other customers have bought, browsing behavior and many other factors.

2. Focused And Targeted Campaigns

Businesses can use big data to deliver tailored products to their targeted market. Forget spending money on advertising campaigns that don’t work. Big data helps companies make a sophisticated analysis of customer trends. This analysis usually includes monitoring online purchases and observing point-of-sale transactions.

These insights then allow companies to create successful, focused and targeted campaigns, thus allowing companies to match and exceed customer expectations and build greater brand loyalty.

3. Identification Of Potential Risks

These days businesses are thriving in high-risk environments, but these environments require risk management processes — and big data has been instrumental in developing new risk management solutions. Big data can improve the effectiveness of risk management models and create smarter strategies.

4. Innovative Products

Big data continues to help companies update existing products while innovating new ones. By collecting large amounts of data, companies are able to distinguish what fits their customer base.

If a company wants to remain competitive in today’s market, it can no longer rely on instinct. With so much data to work off of, organizations can now implement processes to track their customer feedback, product success and what their competitors are doing.

5. Complex Supplier Networks

By using big data, companies offer supplier networks, otherwise known as B2B communities, with greater precision and insights. Suppliers are able to escape constraints they typically face by applying big data analytics. Through the application of big data, suppliers use higher levels of contextual intelligence, which is necessary for their success.

Supply chain executives are now looking at data analytics as a disruptive technology by changing the foundation of supplier networks to include high-level collaboration. This collaboration lets networks apply new knowledge to existing problems or other scenarios.

How To Begin Putting Big Data To Work

If you are a business that has data, but you do not know where to begin or how to use it, don’t worry. You are not alone.

First, you must determine what business problem you will be trying to solve with the data that you have. For instance, are you trying to determine the level of shopping cart abandonment and why?

Second, just because you have the data doesn’t automatically mean that you can put it to use to solve your problem. Most organizations have been collecting data for a decade or more. Yet, it is unstructured and messy — what is known as “dirty data.” You will need to clean it up by putting it into a structured format before you can put it to use.

Third, if you decide to work with a firm, you will need one that can do more than just visualize the data. It will need to be a firm that can model the data to drive insights that will help you solve your business problem. Modeling data is not easy or inexpensive, so it’s important to have a budget and plan in place before taking this step.

An Important Investment

The biggest businesses are continuing to grow, thanks to big data analytics. Developing technology is becoming available to more organizations than ever before. Once brands have data at their disposal, they can implement the appropriate analysis systems to solve many of their problems.

Originally published on Forbes.com November 6, 2019

About The Author: AI and Blockchain Solutions Pioneer

A six-time CEO, Terence Mills is the CEO of AI.io, and industry leading data science and engineering company that envisions, conceptualizes, and delivers AI solutions in healthcare, travel, and entertainment. Terence is also a recognized and prestigious member of the Forbes Technology Council and a monthly Forbes.com contributor on the topic of AI. Terence has been recognized as one of the top 50 AI influencers on Twitter in 2018 and 2019. As a sought-after AI thought leader, Terence participates as a keynote speaker to educate and assist business leaders and entrepreneurs about how to harness the power of AI and blockchain to solve business problems.

At Ai.io, Terence is helping to propel advances in productivity by creating of the future of work and changing how people live their lives in ways they could only have imagined. In January of 2019, AI.io announced the launch of Halo Travel, powered by Priceline Partner Network. Halo Travel is the first intelligent, voice-activated, and personalized chat bot for travel that combines virtual payments with the capability to book flight and hotel reservations all via voice. Later this year, AI.io will be delivering innovative AI solutions in healthcare that will seek to improve thequality of care by solving some of the boldest problems in the $3.65 trillion U.S. healthcare coding and payments industry.

“I’m passionate about building big businesses, boosting efficiency across the board and strengthening decision-making. Each morning I get excited by the thought of how to help business leaders transform their companies by bridging the gap of AI, blockchain, and big data to determine where they converge. As an AI influencer, thought leader, member of the Forbes Technology Council, and keynote speaker, I am evangelizing the need for a new class of AI that is explainable, accountable, not biased, nor destructive. My goal is to help executives and industry leaders to create truly efficient businesses by putting information into the hands of employees so that they can take action and strengthen decision-making often leading to revenue growth.”