Every company has a collection of data and that data is only valuable if it is in the format to make reliable, accurate and even predictable decisions. Business analytics is widely used today for business success. To put it simply, business analytics is collecting data and manipulating it to derive actionable insights leads to better business decisions. When big data is combined with business analytics, it produces a powerful tool used by organizations to drive results. This article describes how companies can benefit from both business analytics and big data.
Big data, big possibilities and the big promise it holds
In addition to immense strides in technology and the internet, there has been a big explosion in data. As a business makes its way to profitability, huge volumes of data are gathered on a daily basis including information such as customer buying patterns, search results, demographic details and much more. This massive amount of data obtained from historical sources is known as big data, which is often deemed more valuable than the real assets that a company holds!
Businesses might find a digital disruption like big data pretty expensive to manage. They may find it beyond their reach to invest in big data solutions. But over a period of time, companies see the payoff from their big data investments. This is because big data solutions enable companies to make decisions promptly as compared to the past.
The benefits big data and business analytics to businesses can be summarized as follows:
Accelerated decision making
Organizations need to make better decisions more quickly and efficiently than ever before. Speeding up decision-making time is key to the success of any organization. Leveraging big data and business analytics can clear all the hurdles and accelerate decision-making time.
Saving of time and money
Big data analytics if integrated into marketing strategies, supply chain management or even logistics can help organizations optimize business operations by reducing operating costs. Adequate access to actionable insights that define and predict customer’s buying intentions, result in businesses not having to not invest time, money or efforts into any move that will not yield returns. This represents meaningful savings.
Improve customer experience
Big data analytics help a business gain valuable insights into consumer behavior from large data sets. This can be leveraged to drive sales and improve customer experience.
Achieve competitive advantage
A major competitive advantage of big data analytics is generating needed predictive models that make it easy for a business to gain accurate insights into what a customer needs from a business. This also helps a business to customize offers, products and services at a much faster rate than its competitors.
Data mining to gain insights
Data mining involves usage of patterns from the data to discern particular trends and analyze them for insights. This enables a business to uncover hidden patterns through which meaningful results can be derived. Once this data is gathered, it is stored in a data warehouse and is shared with databases of multiple dimensions. As an example, when it comes to social media patterns, the same mined data is leveraged to gain deep insights into online customer behaviors which in turn can influence business results.
Accurate data forecasting drives better business decisions
Data forecasting involves performing a deep analysis of past data and making predictions of future developments in business such as sales, expenditures, and profits. This forecasted data is made accessible in estimations that can assist a business in making better-informed business decisions including allocation of budget or planned expenditures.
Predictive analytics helps to grow your business
Predictive analytics is considered an extension of data forecasting. It involves leveraging predictive models that enable a business to make an informed decision based on the potential risks. Predictive analytics is extensively used in online- based businesses, where recommendations and advertisements are personalized based on search history and purchase patterns.
Data visualization facilitates better understanding of data
Data visualization, as a part of business analytics, is considered to be the graphic representation of data that makes useful predictions for businesses by leveraging visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps to help people understand the significance of that data.
In summary:
Extracting huge amounts of meaningful and actionable information isn’t a big challenge for data-driven organizations.  The key to justifying investments in big data analytics is getting it done the right way. Do you have a plan laid out to make sure you get there? To ensure that you do in a timely manner, your business needs a partner who can guide you through every step of the big data analytics journey. With over 20+ years of experience, Prime can provide the necessary experience for any business to realize their big data analytics implementation strategy.
To learn more about how Prime can help you get started with big data analytics, contact us.
