How small businesses can gain actionable insights from big data
Are these a sci-fi film’s dystopian vision of a future where Big Data has paralyzed life on Earth or simply the stuff of nightmares for small-business owners around the world?
The out-of-control growth of global data (40% year-over-year) — aka Big Data — has created an information blizzard through which it is hard for businesses to see the actionable insight. Data that is not relevant and actionable is just that — data. Small businesses must be able to make sense out of their existing data to answer the questions about customers and prospects that need to be answered.
Nevertheless, according to a recent Nielsen poll, many small businesses are still hesitant to access and leverage big data. The responses from a poll of 2,000 US small businesses found that 41% think that conducting market research is too expensive, while 42% think that they don’t have time to conduct research. But the most shocking thing in the poll is that 35% reported that they have never even considered it.
Whatever the reasons for resistance — intimidation, lack of expertise, limited time and financial resources — small businesses must get on board. Winners and losers are being determined by what insights businesses are able to gain from their data. Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) chief data officer Paul Ballew cites a Forrester Research report saying that a scant 12% of companies use data-driven intelligence, resulting in substantial lost business opportunities.
According to a white paper, Generating Value from Big Data Analytics, from global IT membership organization ISACA, big data insights shed light on “customer needs and buying patterns, the reputation the company holds in the marketplace, and the emergence of new risks.” The risk of ignoring these insights is great, according to the organization, resulting in “the company being left behind as its competitors embrace the technique to leap ahead.”
Accessing big data is of course the easy part. The key is finding the right tools to help small businesses extract the insight from the information blizzard — tools that help them target the right customers, create growth, and grow revenue.
Ballew advocates D&B’s market-sensing predictive analytics suite, which unlocks the business insight from a small business’s data set to gain a competitive advantage, create a comprehensive view of customers, and allow for a more disciplined approach around testing and learning.
The big data storm is only getting stronger, but businesses that use tools to navigate through the tempest will prosper while those who remain snow-blind will find themselves frozen out of business opportunities.
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Category:Biz Trends, Buzzworthy, Customer Intelligence
Author : British editorial veteran Stuart Hampton has been covering oil and gas companies for Hoover's since the Neogene-Quaternary period. Well, actually, since the early 1990s. For the best overview of the oil industry and its history he recommends Daniel Yergin's "The Prize."