Big Data changing business landscape

Big Data is increasingly being used by prominent companies to outpace the competition. It comprises extremely large data sets that may be analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions. Be it established companies or start-ups, they are embracing data-focussed strategies to outpace the competition.

In healthcare, clinical data can be reviewed for treatment decisions based on big data algorithms that work on aggregate individual data sets to detect nuances in subpopulations that are so rare that they are not readily apparent in small samples.

Banking and retail have been early adopters of Big Data-based strategies. Big Data is useful not just for its scale but also for its real-time and high-frequency nature that enables real-time testing of business strategies.

While creating new growth opportunities for existing companies, it is also creating entirely new categories of companies that capture and analyse industry data about products and services, buyers and suppliers, consumer preferences and intent.

Analytics can help organisations answer new questions about business operations and advance decision-making, mitigate risks and uncover insights that may prove to be valuable to the organisation.

Most organisations are sitting upon heaps of transactional data. Increasingly, they are discovering and developing the capability to collect and utilise this mass of data to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions.

Big Data and analytics tools allow users to work with data without going through complicated technical steps. This kind of abstraction allows data to be mined for specific purposes.

Big Data analytics leads to generation of real business value by combining analysis, data and processing. Mobile technologies tracks can now track where customers are at any point of time, if they're surfing mobile websites and what they're looking at or buying. Marketers can now serve customised messaging to their customers. They can also inform just a sample of people who responded to an ad in the past or run test strategies on a small sample.

Data is more than merely figures in a database. Data in the form of text, audio and video files can deliver valuable insights when analysed with the right tools.

As Big Data analytics tools continue to mature, more and more organisations are realizing the competitive advantage of being a data-driven enterprise.

Social media sites have identified opportunities to generate revenue from the data they collect by selling ads based on an individual user's interests.

This lets companies target specific sets of individuals that fit an ideal client or prospect profile. The breakthrough technology of our time is undeniably Big Data and building a data science and analytics capability is imperative for every enterprise.