Big Data in Business Today
With 2.5 quintillion of data produced every day, Big Data is gaining tremendous traction in analyzing this humongous volume of data from disparate structured and unstructured sources. It has proven to drive enhanced business performance with the help of real time analytics and enable smart decision making backed by strong data analysis.
Here are some examples of how our daily lives are changed for the better with the help of Big Data applications:
1 – Big Data in healthcare
As healthcare costs keeps rising, Big Data and related technologies are stepping in for more efficient patient care. It can reduce clinic visits with the help of vitals monitoring devices fitted on the patient. These monitors relay information such as heart rate or BP level, so that the physician can take real time action to prevent escalation of deteriorating health condition. This remote physician care can be administered even if the physician is located miles away from the patient.
2 – Big Data in e-commerce
An online shopper’s entire journey from visit to sale is tracked by Big Data to provide insightful information about buying behavior, preferences, and socio-economic demographic profiling. This helps in segmenting the shoppers into appropriate groups so that deeply customized and targeted marketing messages can be relayed to the appropriate group at the right time.
Big Data also tracks purchases made 3 to 4 months prior to a big ticket event like Black Friday or Big Billion Day Sale. This helps in a better understanding of what products need to be stocked and thus ensure proper inventory management.
3 – Big Data in Navigation Assistance
Our Maps services are enabled by GPS. This in turn is made more precise with the help of tons of reports fed into the systems so that the coordinates are made as accurate as possible. Big Data relies on diverse sources of information such as individual data from apps, incident reports, or road traffic reports for value added services like depicting the shortest route or the fastest route from the source to destination.
4 – Big Data in Entertainment
See recommendations in music based on your music playing preferences? This is nothing but Big Data at play. Apps like Pandora and Spotify have mastered the use of Big Data to generate personalized recommendations to music lovers based on their listening preferences. Spotify’s work in this sector is particularly interesting. It has acquired The Echo Nest to power up their music recommendation engine algorithm. The algorithm isn’t limited to simply analyzing and classifying music. It also uses web crawling to obtain information about the artist, the song, or the music label and includes this insight into the analytics engine.
To conclude
These real life use cases aptly denote the extent to which Big Data has entered our lives. From healthcare to education, there is no sector is left untouched by Big Data. As a smart business owner, it will be unwise to ignore these trends.
