Big data’s been talked about and written about so much now that most businesspeople, even those from smaller organisations, have at the very least heard of the term. Many even have a vague understanding of what it is, says Mervyn Mooi, director at Knowledge Integration Dynamics (KID).
Those who do have a notion of the concept of big data like what they hear in terms of potential benefit to the organisation. There are tangible opportunities such as customer growth, customer retention, churn reduction, marketing spend reduction and, in the small to medium space, the opportunity to get a foot in the door of widespread consumer-focused marketing, operational benefits to be gained that cut costs and improve service, and yet more benefits.
People can be glib about these benefits and many articles appear to copy and paste the same words and phrases about what benefits can be expected. A more granular example of the above statements is that companies can gain access to and exploit data in the public digital domain to know who responds to their brand, who interacts with their company, where, through which channels, what they think of the company in the form of sentiment analysis, and gain the opportunity to deal with customer complaints.
For marketers this is a goldmine of information. They can run campaign tests on select portions of their customers, testing the likely efficacy of a given approach, adjust the campaign then roll it out to the bulk of customers. That cuts costs by reducing waste. It also gives marketers immediate or near immediate access to data on how customers are responding.
Business leaders no longer have to wait days, weeks or even months for the sales figures to return from partners, dealers, retailers and outlets, be collated, analysed and reports issued. They can see right away what the upshot is. Marketers can also use this data to test whether or not their big-budget TV campaign is working, the same for any channel including radio, print, the Web and social media.
That highlights the fact that the biggest impacts will always potentially be felt in areas of the business demanding the highest share of expenditure. And that highlights the need to focus the collection, collation, transformation and analyses of big data. The goal should always be business-results focused.
It’s clear that the potential benefits range across plethora business issues and that’s what’s drawing people in the medium-sized business arena like moths to the big data flame.
However, there are a few issues they’ll have to cope with if they’re to get it right.
Can you manage the onslaught?
Firstly, is the company ready to manage the onslaught of big data? Every business person who hears of the benefits of big data can usually understand them and find them desirable. But the ETTO principle, efficiency-thoroughness-trade-off, means they’ll have to make some tough choices. Are they going to be less or more efficient, which will impact the thoroughness of their programme to employ big data?
One of the first issues companies of medium size will encounter is finding the requisite skills to establish the foundation, implement the solution, and thereafter manage and continuously improve their big data environment. The people who know how to do that are these days regularly called data scientists in the media. And there are already too few of them.
One solution is to prepare your business and IT personnel by having them trained and instead of individual data scientists your organisation creates a federated data scientist capability. That proposal also eases the risk of the data scientist departing for greener pastures and leaving your organisation in a data hole.
Do you have the resources?
The second obstacle they’re likely to face is the demand for infrastructure, tooling and IT resources. They’ll have to acquire new infrastructure and tools or expand existing systems with the associated support and increased maintenance demands that implies. There needs to be a clear case for travelling this route based on an analysis of the cost to achieve it and the potential business gains. It also relates back to the ETTO principle and that association needs to be closely examined to ensure the potential gains will actually be realised.
Do you have the necessary foundation?
The third issue will revolve around standards and policies necessary to govern the big data programme to ensure the company meets regulatory requirements for gathering, hoarding, processing, consuming and ultimately retiring big data.
These three issues are not reasons to steer clear of big data but they should be heeded as opportunities to be successful. And in the small to mid-sized market big data will be valuable as it applies to and addresses the problems of consumers. And, once again, that points companies in the direction of acquiring and consuming only relevant portions of big data, which minimises overheads, and chiefly using freeware or cost-effective cloud-hosted tools.
