The Top 5 Reasons Big Data Is Valuable to Your Business

Have you started thinking about how your company will value and leverage your big data assets? If not, it’s time to play some catch up.

Cross industry businesses have welcomed big data analytics with open arms after seeing its benefits first hand. As proof, the McKinsey Global Institute delves deep into the benefits of big data in their report, "Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity." What they found were five, actionable reasons businesses need to jump into the practice with both feet. Here is what they determined:

[eventPDF]

1. Big Data Brings Improved Business Models, Products and Services
What’s with the flurry of excitement that accompanies each new generation of the iPad? The folks at Apple are pros at understanding what their customer needs – sometimes even before they do. Manufacturers now use data captured when consumers use their products to improve upon their existing offerings, thereby creating new and improved models that benefit the consumer and push them to buy.

2. Putting A Smile On the Face of Your Stakeholders
Improving transparency leads to improved quality of product and service. Big data can be made readily available to relevant stakeholders, which creates value by reducing search and processing time between departments, according to McKinsey. Big data keeps everyone in your department moving in the same direction.

3. Peek Into Personnel Performance
Upper management will be empowered by the collection of more accurate and detailed personnel performance data that can be reported in real or near real time. Find out instantly your company’s turnover rate or its total number of personnel sick days, according to the report, to try to understand the root causes of certain performance-based issues.

4. Customize Your Customer Experience
You’ve been segmenting your customers for years, but now it’s time to microsegment them. Big data empowers organizations to tailor their products and services to meet the very specific needs of each customer. An example the report gives is tailoring applications on a smartphone based on the owner’s personality.

5. Find the Algorithm Groove
According to McKinsey Global Institute, "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden." They site the following examples; tax agencies can flag candidates for further examination or retailers can use algorithms to fine-tune inventories or pricing structures.

Now is the time to jump on the big data bandwagon.