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Eternal words that make you feel cherished!

I got a card from CaratLane with these lines...they were lovely enough to share.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Will Big Data solve your business problems?

I saw a webinar on Big Data and it was certainly educational and informative. The words 'Big Data' is meant to emphasize the sheer volume, variety and velocity of the data now available to businesses. But one particular slide stood out, while the presentation was being made. Here it is..


1. The table shows what each industry's big problem areas are, and how Big Data will, hopefully, help address them. So media and communications firms (37%) want to use it to enhance customer experience, 41% of the insurance sector wants to do the same and 40% of the retail industry has the same plan.

2. A fairly huge 42% of the education sector wants to use all that data to improve process efficiency. Healthcare (40%) and transportation (38%) are the next two sectors which wants to do the same thing.

3. Surprisingly, when it comes to using data for introducing new services or business models, the transportation (31%) and education sectors (25%) beat even the services sector (24%) and retail sector (8%) hands down.

4. All that data should help with better and more targeted marketing, and that's just the expectation of the media (21%), retail (31%), and banking sectors (21%).

5. How about cost reduction? The top three sectors are education (17%), government (15%) and banking (13%). Well, the latter two sectors can start by trimming salaries and keeping them at a more realistic level!

6. Predictably, the banking sector (11%) wants to look into improving risk management and so does healthcare (10%). But again surprisingly, the insurance and transportation sectors seemingly don't want to do anything about it. Even manufacturing is at a low 5%.

7. On regulatory compliance, the banking (18%), healthcare (10%), and government (8%) sectors want to get proactive.

8. Monetising information is something that is a top priority for the government (8%), services (8%), and the media (5%) sectors. Banking is at 3% and for retail, it isn't an issue. (Really? Then what's all that tracking with cameras and apps all about??).

9. Enhanced security capabilities is an issue for the government sector (12%) and both banking and media sectors tie at 5% each. It doesn't seem to worry the retail and manufacturing sectors at all.

Let's hope all this Big Data usage makes businesses more efficient and profitable, and it isn't a one-time fad that everyone is latching on to, in a half-hearted way. I don't feel just having all this data on your hands will help solve a problem. You need to be able to make sense of it too, and then use it to put together a coherent, workable strategy. The webinar states this too.

To see the webinar, click: http://www.gartner.com/technology/topics/big-data.jsp and here's another one that you should see too: 'Making Big Data Actionable: How Data Visualization and Other Tools Change the Game': http://stream1.krm.com/Mediasite5/Play/31ea89ff1cff47bc9271f4e6d2b33f801d Reading this whitepaper might also help: 'Product Development in the Age of Big Data: What you Need to Know' or watch the webcast here: http://innovationexcellence.hs-sites.com/big-data-new-product-development