Big Data: Our Customers' Digital Trail
Article based on the original of the ESADE's professor Josep Lluís Cano, published in the ESADE Economic Report 2015.
According to Gartner, big data is "high-volume, high-velocity, and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making". In its conception of big data, IBM further includes the need for the data to be accurate. Meanwhile, Forrester defines big data as the "techniques [data mining, neural networks, etc.] and technologies [business intelligence, etc.] that make handling data at extreme scale affordable".
Big data can be applied to different organisational areas in a wide variety of industries, among other things, to enhance the information used in decision-making by facilitating a more comprehensive view of customers and their loyalty.
Data Production in Different Interactions
All consumer interactions with marketing channels generate data that can offer companies greater insight into their customers, allow them to better understand their preferences and even enable them to develop new products or services.
It is no longer enough for customers simply to price shop or compare products’ features. They also want to learn about other people’s experiences with the product or service (including medical treatments) or about the level of social commitment of the company or brand. The resulting data flow is reciprocal, moving back and forth between different people. We are thus simultaneously producers and consumers ("prosumers") of information.
Another type of data is the data generated by people’s interactions with their devices. These most often take place with smartphones, as they can be used to look up an address, check the weather, take a picture, do banking, check in for a flight, or find out when our favourite team has its next match. Each of these interactions generates data, including the date, time (hour, minute and second) and location.
Another source of data is communications between devices, including everything from scanners to security cameras, thermostats, etc., not to mention so-called wearables (devices that are built into clothing, footwear, etc.).
The ability to process this large variety of high-speed, high-volume data is one of the main opportunities that big data offers for understanding consumers, tourists and service users.
The adoption of big data is a learning process. We are only just now beginning to use these information technologies. As a result, we must set prudent goals that enable us to make steady progress, learning in successive stages, developing our professional profiles and increasing our knowledge of our customers.
The Value of Data
In the current technological environment, both the quantity and quality of the information gathered through data generation and capture have increased exponentially. For instance, big data is what makes it possible to process the more than one million customer transactions registered per hour at Walmart. The Walmart database is estimated to contain more than 2.5 petabytes of data, or about 167 times the information held in the US Library of Congress.
These technologies, which require multidisciplinary teams for proper implementation, are already available to any organisation or company, including the necessary visualisation tools required to analyse such high volumes of information.
Big data thus makes it possible to process the information needed for decision making better and at the right time, with the ultimate goal of providing value to companies and their shareholders.
