Big Data is often framed in terms of the ‘five Vs’ – volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value. It refers to the exponential growth of traditional and digital data stored inside and outside your organisation.
It’s not a single technology or initiative. Instead, it’s a trend across many areas of technology and business. It encompasses the techniques used to address data that is too large, complex or rapidly changing for conventional methods to manage effectively.
Examples include web user behaviour, social network interactions, product transaction information, financial records, geospatial data, 3D data, audio data, and video data.
Big Data is comprised of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. Unstructured data is not easily organized or interpreted by traditional methods, but with the advent of Big Data techniques, all of this data can now be mined and analysed.
Retailers can track web activity, thereby identifying behavioural trends to improve their marketing campaigns. Utility companies can capture household power usage to predict outages and encourage more efficient consumption. Governments can track the spread of disease via social media signals. Companies can collect real-time data on their sales, resources, and customers, and then use that data instantaneously to improve their customer experience.
Combining Big Data with high-powered analytics enables enterprises to determine the root cause of failures in near-real time, optimise routes for transport and delivery vehicles, generate marketing coupons at the point of sale based on the customer’s purchase history, or deliver tailored marketing to mobile phones while users are in the right location to take advantage of the offer.
Detailed data analysis leads to more confident decision making, which results in improved operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and lower risk. By leveraging Big Data, enterprises can act more nimbly, adapt to change faster than their competitors, increase revenue, boost customer loyalty, and achieve many other business objectives.
For more information on how Big Data can help your company, please call us on 1300 880 636.
