DatabaseUntil recent years companies have always evaded the question of using data analytics for business execution, leave alone big data. Most of the time it was due to cost of analysis that the organisations kept in mind while keeping away from data analytics. With everything going digital, data is pouring in from all kinds of sources imaginable. Organisations are getting inundated with terabytes and petabytes of data in different formats from sources like operational and transactional systems, customer service points, and mobile and web media. The problem of such huge data is storage and with no proper utilisation of the data, collecting and storing is a waste of resource. Earlier it had been difficult to process such data without relevant technology.

Big Data Analytics – The Taming of Big Data

You have already seen a picture of what big data is in the first paragraph. As already the name suggests, big data is, of course, big; so big that traditional data processing techniques are inadequate to analyse it. This data explosion occurred way back as 2002, which is termed as the ‘beginning of the digital age’. Due to the volume, variety and velocity at which the data grows, it is extremely difficult for organisations to store or compute this data for timely and accurate decisions. Thus, to analyze such sheer volumes of data high-performance analytics is required. That’s where big data analytics come into the picture. Big data analytics is the process of examining big data and uncovering the relevant features that will help business to make better decisions.

But, jumping on the bandwagon of big data, an organisation needs to know the viability and the ability to be able to make it useful. If an organisation has the resources to work on big data, it should definitely make an effort to move towards big data analytics.

Big Data Analytics and its ‘big’ importance

The enormity of big data is not confined to only volume and velocity; it is also referred by the variety, variability and complexity of the data. So it requires more than just some tweaks and upgrades for fully realising the potential of big data. But, once an organisation gets the right tool running, the benefits are more than one can imagine of. It is difficult to conceive the amount of data users are creating for different organisations like social media interactions, product reviews, free job portal and alerts, customer service and transactional points.

Let us take examples of Amazon and facebook. Every week millions of transactions take place in Amazon and with these transactions there are thousands of reviews that are done by the customers. In the case of facebook, there are billions of interactions through different sources (mobile, web, mobile app). If you have noticed, Amazon has a great personalisation recommendation system, which gives suggestions based on customers’ purchase history. This is all due to the use of big data. Facebook on the hand uses the big data to show relevant ads on the wall of the users.

What is the ‘big’ deal?

The big deal about big data analytics is the way organisations use it to leverage their business performance, innovate and provide better customer service. Here we will look at some of the ways that big data analytics can help in the growth of an organisation.

  • Boosts Performance though better data analysis. Through big data analysis you can understand how your organisation is working and how efficiently it is working. Thus, based upon the findings of this analysis, an organisation can strive to make the workforce more effective.
  • Understand market sentiment and competitor strategies. Big data analysis helps organisations to get ahead of the business competition. By analysing the big data, a great deal of the market sentiments related to the organisation and its competitors can be understood. This will help to create strategies to make the right decisions.
  • Minimise risk through valuable insights. The most harmful thing for a company is to make wrong business decisions. But with the help of big data, organisations can minimise their risks through the valuable insights they can gather through thorough analysis.
  • Innovation of new products and services. Analysing the big data, organisations can understand better what customers want and with the help of this, they can provide better after-sales service. Even they can be innovative about their new products so that it can pertain to the customer’s viewpoint.
  • Online reputation of brands can be monitored more precisely. For those organisations who are active in social media, big data analytics is of great help to actively monitor and improve their social media presence. It will also give them a good idea about the brand’s views on the web.

Big data analytics is becoming an integral part of organisations who want to grow in this age of innovation and is being done by most of the big companies. There is huge scope of big data analytics professionals as this is going to be an essential part of companies in the future.

The post was by Hasib, a foodie and an avid reader with the same voracious appetite. He is interested in the current trends in job market and time to time writes about employment and career related topics.  Reach him @ twitter, Google+, LinkedIn