Provided it is appropriately analyzed and effectively presented, the right data can help a business to achieve its goals. Today, many businesses are using big data analytics to gain a competitive advantage. So, what is big data analytics and how can it help your business to make better decisions? Let’s find out.
My fellow business owners and entrepreneurs we all know whether you’re running a small business or a large enterprise, making big decisions about your business is never easy. But, in today’s world where competition is fierce and reaching out to customer is easy, making quick yet accurate decisions is more important than ever before. This is easier said than done.
Taking the easy route, many business owners try to make decisions about their business based on gut feeling. This may work, but the chances of failure are greater. Making business decisions based on intuition or gut feeling is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, you can make as a business owner. So, what’s the solution? The solution is simple: leverage the business data and insights you get from the various channels to make your decisions.
Whether it is a small business or a large enterprise, every business needs valuable data and insights. In fact, data is one of the most important things required to understand target audiences and customer preferences. Additionally, using this data, businesses can anticipate their needs. So, how you can make better and more accurate business decisions? You can improve your business decision making by using big data analytics. What is big data analytics and how it can help your business is what we’re going to discuss next.
Understanding Big Data Analytics and How It Can Help Your Business
Today, the expectations of customers are at an all-time high. Moreover, business competition is constantly increasing. In such times, there is a constant pressure on businesses to increase efficiency and improve results. There is good news though: the data available to businesses is also increasing.
Today, companies can accumulate information from across their organization and industry. As they’re able to see where improvements are required, where potential gaps exist and where sales trends have increased or decreased, businesses with access to big data can gain serious competitive advantage.
Considering what’s been said above, it is no surprise that many businesses today, big and small, are using big data analytics. With big data analytics, businesses are able to get deeper insights into customer preferences and organizational needs. By putting the information in the hands of business users and business analysts, big data analytics helps to create value and competitive advantage for a business.
There are countless benefits of using big data analytics including differentiating your business from competitors, development of marketing strategies, improving procurement efficiency, supporting business growth and lowering costs. While data analytics can help you to achieve all of the above, following are the biggest reasons to use it for business.
Maximizing Customer Value
Acquiring new customer is costly to say the least. Even if you do win new customers cheaply, you will find it extremely hard to get them to spend their money on what you have to offer. Today, customers have countless options available to them and as a result, they’ve become fickle and demanding. For this reason, the best option you have is increasing retention and getting the most out of your existing customer base and you can only do that if you give your customers what they want.
The key to giving your customers what they want and as such, increasing their lifetime value, is having access to the exact data you need. Also, you need to leverage that data the right way. Big data analytics helps you to identify your repeat customer and when you’re able to identify your repeat customers, you can use this knowledge to optimize your marketing investment. By focusing on your repeat customers, you will able to build a long-term relationship with them, which in turn will allow to maximize customer value.
Improved Service
One of the biggest reasons to use data analytics is improving service performance. Let’s suppose, you keep going to the same bakery every day and buy the same type of bread. After some time has passed, the attendant at the bakery would give you exactly what you want even before you ask for it. The shopkeeper knows you well enough to offer you exactly what you need or want.
Big data analytics works in the same way. It gathers information related to your customers—their tastes, preferences and demographics, and provides it to you so that you can make more accurate decisions and offer a more personalized service to your customers. With data analytics, businesses can better predict their ability to fulfill customer demands. This in turn allows them to improve the performance of their service.
Identification of Emerging Trends
Another benefit of using data analytics is being able to identify new and emerging market trends. Using this knowledge, you can introduce products and/or services that help you to gain a competitive advantage. Big data analytics lets you know what’s trending among your customers, allowing you to offer or modify products/services based on the evolving needs/wants of your customer base.
We all know, making business decisions is never easy. However, you can improve your business decision (making better gut decisions) and make more valuable decisions by using big data analytics. With big data analytics, you no longer need to depend on your gut feeling or intuition to make the decisions important to your business!
by Bobby J Davidson
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