By Danish Wadhwa

As a concept, Big Data asserts that more data is being collected at a faster rate than before, but this concept is more than just the volume of data. Big Data provides a complete picture of the data’s value and of the actionable process feedback or of equipment to monitor.

When it comes to traditional data storage and analytics tools, they are not designed to process the huge amount of data and cannot manage the speed with which it is being collected.

The use of Big Data has accelerated across industries, thanks to the growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) landscape, and the development of open-source data-handling tools, which gives rise to new technologies that address new challenges. However, many organizations are unable to realize its benefits as they get overwhelmed rather than empowered with huge amounts of data and so refrain from becoming data-driven organizations.

If you are a bit hazy on what Big Data can do for your business, then this article is for you as it introduces you to practical benefits of Big Data.

Targeting Potential Customers

One of the most publicized areas of Big Data is its role in understanding the behavior and preferences of customers. Most businesses are expanding their traditional data sets with social media data, text analytics as well as browser logs, and sensor data to get a complete picture of their customer's insights.

Data analytics now forms the core of modern industry. Telecom companies can predict customer churn accurately using Big Data; Wal-Mart can estimate precisely what products will sell. Additionally, car insurance companies use Big Data predictive analysis to understand how efficiently their customers drive.

Presently, ski resorts use data and develop insights to target the right patrons. The insertion of RFID tags into lift tickets cuts back on fraud along with wait times at the lifts. Moreover, ski resorts can understand traffic patterns. They can even keep a check on the movements of an individual skier in case of emergency.

Big Data analytics also play an important role in optimizing government election campaigns. Big Data expertsbelieve that Obama's win after the 2012 presidential election campaign was due to the ability of his team to make potential use of Big Data analytics.

Development of products

Businesses can understand how consumers perceive their products that help to improvise products and plan a better marketing strategy. You can uncover the sentiments of your consumers or even segment those among different demographic groups with an analysis of unstructured social media texts.

Moreover, Big Data allows you to test thousands of computer-aided designs with different variations in seconds, and you can check how minor changes in lead times or materials influence costs, and performance. Businesses can increase the efficiency of the production process accordingly by understanding the key concepts of Big Data by taking training such as Big Data Hadoop online training.

Advanced risk analysis

Apart from how you run your company, social and economic factors also define your accomplishments and success. Businesses can scan and analyze social media feeds or newspaper reports with predictive analysis fueled by Big Data that keep them updated with the recent developments in the industry.

One of the important benefits that come with Big Data is the ability to run detailed health-tests on your suppliers and customers, allowing those in charge to take necessary action against those who are at risk of defaulting.

Tailored Healthcare

Big Data analytics has high computing power that enables us to decode entire DNA strings in minutes. This allows biotechnologists to find new cures along with better understanding and prediction of disease patterns.

You can imagine the potential of data if collected from all wearable devices and implementing the analytics results to millions of people. The future clinical trials won’t be limited by small sample sizes and could include everyone potentially.

Big Data techniques are also being used to monitor premature and sick babies in hospitals. The hospital develops algorithms that enables them to predict infections 24 hours before any physical symptoms appear.

High data security

Big Data tools enable companies to map their entire data landscape across your company, thus revealing the complete picture of internal threats that they face. What’s more, they can detect sensitive information that is not protected correctly and fix the weak spots in time. For example, with real-time Big Data analytics, a company can flag any situation where 16 digit numbers –credit card data - are stored incorrectly.

New sources of revenue

Market and consumer analysis by use of big data is beneficial to companies in many ways. This analysis can be offered as non-personalized trends to large industry players operating in the same domain as you and can become a potential source of revenue.

Shazam, the song identification application, is the one impressive example. Using data provided by Shazam, record labels can find where music sub-cultures are growing by checking the use of its service along with the location data that mobiles provide. Accordingly, record labels can remarket their existing artists and sign up new artists.

Customization of website

Big Data allows customization of websites, for instance, personalization of the content or changing the outlook of the website in real time to match each consumer entering your website, irrespective of their nationality, sex, or from where they ended up on your site.

The best examples are Amazon and Linkedin. These companies offer tailored recommendations by using item-based collaborative filtering (IBCF) in real time. Courtesy this, Amazon has been able to fuel its ‛ regularly bought together products’ and ‛customers who bought this item also bought’ features and LinkedIn has been able to feature the ‛people you may know’ or suggesting ‛companies you may want to follow' approach. These features has worked miracles for Amazon and has brought 20% more revenue for them.

Low maintenance costs

Traditionally, businesses believe that equipment wear out after many years of use, forcing them to replace every piece of that technology within that time period, sometimes when not required. Such unpractical and costly averages are eliminated by Big Data completely. The large amounts of data that they use, and their unmatched speed can detect failing grid devices and can estimate their endpoint. Thanks to this, businesses can operate with a cost-effective replacement strategy while experiencing less downtime because they can track faulty devices faster.

Development of cities

Many cities are leveraging Big Data tools to deal with the consequences of faster expansion of businesses as well as for the benefit of their citizens.
For example, the city of Oslo in Norway has reduced street lighting energy usage by 62% with a smart solution.
Oregon, Portland, uses technology to optimize the timing of its traffic signals. Within six years, it has eliminated more than 157,000 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions- the equivalent of taking 30,000 passenger vehicles off the roads yearly. These are just a few of examples making the most out of Big data.

Wider business insights

Earlier business users had had to ask their IT colleagues for help to analyze data as they lacked the technical skills for doing the same.
Mostly, by the time they received the requested information, it was not correct and no longer useful.

The technical teams can do the groundwork quickly with the Big Data tools and then raise repeatability into algorithms to search faster. Simply, organizations can develop systems and install dynamic and interactive visualization tools. With these tools, business users can check, view, and generate insights from data.

Author bio

This article is written by Danish Wadhwa. It is one of the leading certification training providers. Danish Wadhwa is a strategic thinker and an IT professional. With years of expertise in the digital marketing industry, he is more than a results-driven individual. He is well-versed in providing high-end technical support, optimizing sales and automating tools to stimulate productivity for businesses.

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