By providing actionable business information, data technology is rapidly transforming nearly every industry. Because of its effectiveness, even business leaders who are generally slow to adopt new technology are interested in how big-data technology can be used.
Businesses of all sizes, including startups, are interested in big-data analytics, and for good reason. According to the studies conducted by the Georgia Small Business Development Center, companies that use big-data analytics tools generate 15% more sales than those that do not.
The term “big data” refers to large amounts of data generated by a business as part of its normal operating procedures. Structured data is highly organised and easily searchable, whereas unstructured data is raw, unorganised, and more difficult to collect, process, and interpret.
Benefits of small businesses from big data?
Data analytics can assist small business owners in meeting their objectives. Many business owners believe they don’t have time to track analytics, but learning how to use data to gain a competitive advantage only takes a few minutes of study. You most likely already have more than enough data to launch a big-data initiative without even realising it. For example, you can obtain data for data analysis from the following sources:
- Email marketing stats
- Receipts of sales
- Website analytics for social media
- Data streaming from connected devices
- Data that is widely available
- Lakes of data
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to incorporate data analytics into your marketing efforts. Indeed, many analytics tools, such as those associated with social media business accounts, are free.
You can also review data analytics whenever and wherever it is convenient for you. Top social media platforms and other data analytics tools now allow you to access reports directly from your smartphone via convenient mobile apps.
What are the best questions to ask to get the most out of your data?
You must ask the right questions to get the most out of your data analytics. It’s useful to keep track of data like sales, customer retention, and gross revenue. These, however, are vanity metrics. In other words, they do little more than boost your ego outside of goal setting.
You must ask insightful questions in addition to tracking these metrics. Which vendors, for example, provide the most value, and which product lines require the most improvement? Then, go over the specifics that show the consequences of your current operational practices.
If you haven’t done any data analysis yet, you might be concerned that you don’t have enough information to analyze. However, it is more likely that you have more information than you can handle. Big-data systems are becoming increasingly important as the amount of information generated by businesses and individuals grows.
Most business owners today can’t hope to gain any meaningful insight by manually reviewing data. You may, however, need to begin your information analysis by manually integrating data sets into your system.
How do you go about analysing the data?
There’s a reason it’s referred to as big data; data analysis entails analysing massive amounts of data. As a result, it’s critical to use the proper tools and methods for data analysis.
Data analyses may provide some limited insight to nontechnical staff. To get the most out of your data sets, you’ll need the help of a specialist. If hiring a full-time analyst is out of the question, think about hiring a consultant who can point you in the right direction.
Furthermore, you require more than statistical summaries of your data analysis; you must also comprehend the underlying causes of the patterns in your data. A practical analysis will reveal this. However, understanding why the patterns occur is even more important.
You must also understand what might happen in the future and how to act on that knowledge. Predictive and prescriptive analytics, for example, can assist you in uncovering insights that may reveal the future of your business environment.
Real-time analytics is one method for uncovering much of this information. This type of data analysis provides critical insights to decision makers in real time and on demand via an executive dashboard.
An executive dashboard eliminates the need to consult an IT specialist for a report, and many of these dashboards provide on-demand access to information for small businesses. When you and your team have access to vital information via smartphone, laptop, or any other connected device, you can get current, actionable data that allows you to outperform the competition. Furthermore, an executive dashboard can be used to consolidate disparate data sources into a single dynamic display.
Some of the recommended big-data solutions that small business owners can opt for are:
How to Present Analyzed Data?
Once the data has been analyzed, it must be presented in a way that nontechnical personnel can understand and use to make informed decisions. As a result, you should look into data visualization tools that will work with your current technologies.
To create presentations, you can use trusted productivity tools such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint, but these programmes are extremely limited. You can also use an interactive executive dashboard to present visually compelling presentations and quickly engage stakeholders of all technical skill levels with information.
There are numerous free and open-source big-data tools available to help you kickstart your company’s business intelligence initiative. You can level the playing field in a highly competitive marketplace by selecting the right business intelligence tools and making well-informed, on-the-spot decisions that can lead your organization to success.
