How small business can gain big data benefits

The phrase ‘big data’ has been bandied about for years, but it’s only relatively recently that enterprises operating in the digital space— of all sectors and sizes, from ICT providers to healthcare vendors— have begun to truly realize the importance of capturing the data generated by their business.

No longer the preserve of tech giants with sky-high budgets, now even small enterprises have the potential to access game-changing insights from their data with relative ease and with little expense.

As more channels emerge to collect data— whether it’s website analytics, basket abandonment, email open rates, or otherwise— businesses that are willing to get stuck into data curation, aggregation and analysis are those which will gain a competitive edge.

Here are some of the ways big data is going to impact enterprises of all sizes and nature;

# 1 | Data is a company’s most valuable asset

Adopting digital technologies allows for every business to collect data at an unprecedented scale and speed.

Websites, social media, electronic payments terminals, and electronic communications are all source of data that could provide insights, into customer behavior, tendencies, and preferences.

With this newfound knowledge, companies can further improve their services and give reward loyal customers with something extra.

Some companies are already using these insights to offer tailor-made personalized services to their customers at record speed.

# 2 | Makes sense of the market signals

Thanks to new technology, enterprises everywhere could trawl the internet and publicly available data to get the sense of the market to determine the latest trends and needs.

Numerous software and services are currently in the market to track social media chatter and search engine buzzwords that indicate what are the hottest items or services in the market for them to develop and tap into.

In some cases, this data could also be used to detect a void or need in the market, which would then allow for companies to swoop in and offer that service to that particular marketplace or scale up and expand into a different market.

# 3 | Decisions based on empirical data

With the increased pace of data analytics, coupled with AI technology which allows for the automation of repetitive processes, data can be translated into insights right away.

Beyond that, AI’s predictive capability will enable companies to make more informed business decisions, minimizing guessing; may it be in regards to new investments, or discontinuing a service or project.

With all the risks and benefits made more obvious on a dashboard, intuition and luck can be taken out of the decision making process altogether.

So, in conclusion, big data is not only for big companies with a limitless of resources. In the digital age, smaller businesses could also tap into the opportunity big data to enjoy the immense business benefit it unlocks.

A version of the article originally appeared on TechWire Asia.