What is Big Data and How Can It Help My Small Business?

Starting your new business is exciting. Successful small business owners everywhere tell you how amazing it is to be your own boss: you don’t have to follow anyone’s rules, you can take vacations whenever you want, and you don’t have to make the exhausting commute to work everyday. What’s even better is that there is no limit to your income. With an office job, you’ll have annual salaries, but for small business owners, the sky’s the limit. You’ll be making most (if not all) of the profits from your business. Being a business owner is great, but most people don’t tell you about the challenges you’ll face along the way.

One of these difficulties might be keeping track of your business’s data. What products or services do your customers like the most? Are there enough people engaging with your website? Are your social media pages gaining popularity? What are your customer’s buying habits? And, most importantly, what do I need to do to improve?

Managing your business’s data can be confusing and hectic if you don’t know where or how to start. But as the owner, handling this data is your responsibility. This brings us to big data. What is it, and how can I use it to better my business?

What is Big Data?

Big data describes the massive volumes of data that your business will create during normal operations. This includes information about your customers, your social media accounts, your website, and your business’s performance. It’s essentially everything that you need to know about your business. You can use this information to anticipate future trends, capitalize on your customer’s purchase patterns, and capture vital market share.

Big data is made up of two general categories. The first is structured data, which is highly organized and easily searchable, such as cell phone numbers, banking information, product prices, and your customer’s names. The second category is unstructured data, which is raw, unorganized data. Compared to structured data, this kind of big data is more challenging to collect, process, and interpret. However, because of today’s advancements with technology, machine learning (ML) and AI tools help businesses extract meaning from their unstructured data.

Importance of Big Data

If you don’t understand what’s helping or hurting your business, you won’t know how to start making improvements. Understanding your business’s big data allows you to gain insights that can eliminate inefficiencies and improve your marketing strategies. Here are five ways you can use big data to lead your business towards the path of success:

Gain Insights

Once your big data analysis system is set up, not only will new data be automatically added on a regular basis, but your system’s algorithms will analyze this new data instantly, giving you valuable information in real time. You can use this updated information to quickly decide which aspects of your business need improvement.

Cut Costs

Big data also helps you identify less-than-optimal processes so you can fix them, saving your business valuable time and money.

Create Better Quality Control

These systems analyze production throughout the entire manufacturing process, helping you consistently deliver high-quality products to your customers. If there’s a problem with a product you have, you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what the issue is.

Improve Marketing Results

Having difficulty understanding your customers? Big data is here to help. By understanding this information, you’ll also be able to analyze your customers’ purchases and return behavior. This allows you to understand their likes, dislikes, price points, and buying timelines.

Establish Better Customer Experience

The better your marketing processes and products are, the better experience your customers will have. Big data allows you to make necessary changes that your customers want to see, which encourages loyalty, nurtures brand ambassadors, boosts repeat purchases, and increases sales.

Secure a Competitive Edge

Big data provides and regularly updates accurate information about your business, which gives you the edge you might need when competing against other companies. By understanding your business’s data in real time, you’ll be quicker to market, increase your profit margins, and utilize your resources compared to other companies that don’t utilize big data.

How You Can Start Using Big Data

Understanding how big data can help your business is easy, but actually using big data can be confusing at first. Before jumping into big data systems, first identify the data you want to analyze. These systems will give you tons of data, but if you only want to find out how your website is doing, then you’ll have to search through tons of information before finding the one you want. Make it easier for yourself by making a list of the information you want to find out. Then identify big data sources. A few choices could be email marketing reports, sales receipts, social media analytics, and website analytics. Make sure to ask yourself a few important questions as well, such as “which vendors offer the most value?” and “which products need the most improvement?”. Big data gives you a ton of information, but it’s only useful if you know what you’re looking for.

Next, create a system to access, manage, and store your data. You could use a data warehouse, which is a type of data management system, such as Xplenty, Amazon Redshift, or Teradata. Or you could use a third-party cloud storage service, such as Dropbox. Make sure to combine these data sources with commercially available data sets and free tools like Google Analytics to understand the most about your business’s performance.

Now that you have your systems in place, it’s time to finally analyze your data. Remember, big data is essentially useless if you don’t have a plan in place already. Where do you want to take your business? How do you want to improve? What improvements can you realistically make? If understanding this information is difficult for you, try hiring a data specialist or consultant who can help you identify your data patterns.

Whew, that was a lot of information. Big data is essential for small business owners, but make sure to take your time understanding it all. You won’t get it right away, and that’s okay. Take it one step at a time, and remember that success never happens over night. Enjoy the process, and you’ll see the results you and your business deserve.

If you want to read more about Barbie’s business journey, check out the rest of her website at barbiepatel.com. Or if you want to learn about her bridal agency, visit her website at cinderellabridez.com.