Big Data is more than just a buzzword used to build hype, it is a complex and vitally important tool for businesses to use to build revenue, improve customer relations or to predict the success of sales.
It is however still something that is a little misunderstood, so CBR has compiled a handly list that’ll walk you through what you need to know about Big Data.
1. Structured data
Typically the term structured data is applied to databases, or data that has a high degree of organisation to it.
It’s inclusion in a relational database is seamless and readily searchable and essentially quite easy to use with some simple algorithms in place.
It resides in a fixed field within a file or record, so just look at your spreadsheet, that would be structured data.
2. Unstructured data
Unstructured data is information that doesn’t have a pre-defined data model, or is not organised in a manner which has been pre-defined.
This information is typically text heavy, although it can come in many different formats.
It is growing in massive rates, much faster than structured data. In 2014 it was estimated that there is 80 exabytes of unstructured data, compared to 11 exabytes of structured.
Consider that in 2007, less than 10 exabytes existed of both and you’ll see just how rapidly it is growing. A 2011 IDC study forecasts that it will account for 90% of all data created in the next decade.
3. Predictive analytics
It’s all well and good having all that structured and unstructured data, but you need to find ways to use it. One of the increasingly common ways to utilise data in your business is through predictive analytics.
Companies like Salesforce and SAP are perfecting the tools they have to make predictive more and more accurate. So if you are looking at a sales forecast or you want to know if a deal is likely to succeed, don’t just rely on your gut feeling, use predictive analytics.
4. Tools
Predictive analytics tools aren’t the only thing that you can use to get value from your data. Business Intelligence and analytics platforms can help you to get to get grips with what your data means.
Companies like Tableau, SAS and IBM all have their own solutions to make your data more valuable.
Companies like Pentaho offer a single platform which can visualise the data, help you extract, prepare and blend it.
5. Data quality
This is vital. Not every piece of data might be useful to your company and while it may not be too harmful for you to collect all the data that comes your way, you certainly need to pick out what will benefit you.
Not all data has a high quality to it, some records may be incomplete, may not comply to compliance standards, some of the data may be duplicates which could give you the wrong outcome and some might no longer be valid.
6. Training
Training to use data isn’t really how the market is going, in fact it is going the other way. Data is being democratised so that all lines of business can use it without having a degree in maths to do it.
This comes back to tools and having the right ones in place in order to make data accessible and ok for people across the business to use it. Perhaps giving the right data to the right people can make their department work much more efficiently or to make more money.
7. Have a strategy
This is something that is vitally important as you can’t really hope to make a success of Big Data if you don’t have a plan in place.
It’s something that incorporates a number of these points. So perhaps you need to identify a business problem you need to solve, identify the data, the right skills and tools that you need.
Firms such as Forrester and Gartner suggest a number of ways to implement a strategy and to make sure you approach data in the right way.
8. Security
The security of your data is of utmost importance to you and to businesses, at least it should be. Both your personal data and company data is extremely valuable and having a data breach could severely damage your business.
Look at Target, or Sony, these companies had massive data breaches costing them millions.
So security is vital. If you want to have your customers trust you enough to share all their data with you then you better make sure a breach isn’t going to hit you.
9. Compliance
Compliance is a tricky issue that can make life difficult for industries such as finance and healthcare which are beholden to tight regulatory standards.
The sheer volume of data causes one problem, but also its lack of consistent structure. To make life easy for your business, you need to identify and isolate the sensitive parts.
This is easier said than done, but a number of vendors are offering solutions to help.
10. Make money
In the end, you want to make money from your data. Collecting it all is all well and good, but it’s useless if you don’t take advantage of it.
Using a number of data analytics techniques then you can get to grips with your data, create better customer and business insights and in the end, hopefully make money.
You can drive down into your data and see that you could be saving hundreds of pounds in one department and thousands somewhere else.
Look at your data, get the right tools and get to work.
