It is largely now understood that data is the new gold in consumer markets. The global market for data management and analytics is currently exploding, estimated to reach a colossal $135 billion in market share by the year 2025.
So, does efficient data management actually help a business grow? Here is a list of ways in which they can:
Identifying Market Trends
Data can reveal changes in customer behavior and shifts in purchasing patterns. This can help a company to create specific marketing campaigns or come up with unique products that serve their needs better. Predictive analytics can thus enhance customer support. In some cases, they might even help discover a certain niche that can be serviced with the existing resources.
Forecasting Risks
Data analytics can play a major role in forecasting potential risks and help businesses stay a step ahead when it comes to mitigating the same. Moreover, they can help in better dealing with business challenges.
Achieving Better Customer Engagement
Big data tools can help gain valuable insight and build accurate customer profiles. This can help in catering to the needs of an individual consumer by making changes to marketing campaigns and product designs.
An integrated marketing approach can ensure that the intended brand statement remains the same across all social platforms and content channels. A potential customer would now be able to easily associate a product they saw on any social platform with the specific brand.
Monitoring Competition
Discovering how a rival company works with careful assessment of data can help to gain a competitive edge. A company can now learn about the type of content produced by a similar brand that gets the most user engagement and then uses that valuable information to their advantage.
Maintaining Consistency of Data
Incorrect data can lead to improper analysis and prove to be disastrous when implemented. Data analysis platforms help to eliminate such discrepancies and inaccuracies as the manner in which information is processed is now being standardized. This helps an organization make better business decisions backed by a crystal-clear understanding of market trends and not just purely on personal intuition.
Improving Upon Internal Operations
Creating and publishing reports is a crucial part of a business operation. Most companies still leverage human resources for carrying out simple computational processes. The reports generated are highly susceptible to human error and have to go through forecasting and planning teams before a decision can be made. Having a technically sound data analysis team in place will enable businesses to efficiently plan, forecast, and implement the decisions.
Curbing Potential Fraud
Data security still remains a major concern for most growing companies. A security breach can eat up profits and raise doubts among existing customers regarding the authenticity of the services provided. Real-time data analysis can help foresee such risky situations and identify fraudulent claims in a jiffy.
Regression and trend analysis can help organizations identify suspicious activities or irregularities. Further, an introspective look into a company’s data storage options can also offer insight into evading such situations in the future.
Reducing Costs
When companies utilize large data sets, they can conveniently choose cloud service providers for storage and computing power. Cloud-based solutions help businesses in analyzing chunks of information without actually investing in expensive hardware. It is no surprise that most companies today are using cloud-based solutions to store and process data and leverage it as required for an analytical application.
Almost all companies today continue to rely upon IT-heavy data management systems which have now become deeply entrenched into their processes and cultures. This in reality presents as a barrier to change. The need for today is a more robust system that shifts the focus from descriptive analysis to prescriptive analysis. The emergence of newer data management platforms like data fabric that can transform disparate data into a single source to machine learning and artificial intelligence thankfully help to bridge this gap. These newer platforms could prove to be potential game-changers enabling teams to anticipate and respond to emerging market trends better.
Conclusion
Amidst the ever-changing landscape, data and analytics aren’t going to serve just as a competitive advantage but rather would become a competitive necessity in the future. According to a recent survey, over 72% of all companies have already invested or are planning to invest in big data analytics. The right data can enhance the user experience, streamline cumbersome processes, and help a company stay competitive within their respective sectors.
