Using Big Data for Business Strategy

Using Big Data for Business Strategy

Any well-thought-out business strategy builds upon data to accurately forecast achievable goals. Thanks to developments in business tech, it’s easier than ever to gather such data. In fact, big data—the term for huge volumes of data that flood businesses on a daily basis—can now be collected and synthesized without you having to so much as lift a finger. Here’s how you can use this data to develop and supplement your business strategy.

Social Media and Interactive Tech

If your company has delved into digital marketing—and at this rate, what companies haven’t?—you’ve likely been able to connect with prospective and current consumers of your product or service. Such connections can be eye-opening as they reveal not just the level of interaction from consumers, but also the general habits of your wider customer base and target markets. AI crawlers can gather big data from social media and interactive tech to report back about keywords, locations, and other helpful stats. Take, for example, the Coca-Cola Company. While it’s not part of the IT industry, Coke has made use of big data to improve its strategy. One way Coke gathered data was through Coca-Cola Freestyle machines in restaurants and movie theaters. As customers placed orders that combined various flavors and syrups, those mixes were reported back to Coke in order to evaluate flavor popularity.

Marketing Insights

As the world continues to spin, consumer demand continues to change. These changes can be difficult to track and keep up with, especially if your company isn’t leveraging technology to gather this data. Thankfully, this is where big data comes in. Using big data, companies can gather information about the spending habits of consumers, whether that means looking into online purchase pathways or overall sales of individual products. If you’ve got a large company that sells thousands of products to thousands of customers, it’s going to be far more beneficial to use big data collection in the background than to employ manpower to gather this data. Such data is vital for updated and refocusing marketing campaigns, as the data demonstrates what consumers care about the most, and what exactly influences their purchase habits. After all, any good marketing campaign utilizes thorough research; why not gather as much as you can through big data?

Efficiency

One of the big benefits of big data is its autonomy. Many pieces of recent business tech—including artificial intelligence, the cloud, and big data—free up time for employees, allowing them to dedicate more effort towards tasks that require a human touch. As you look over your business strategy, you may see that sects of employees are swamped with tedious tasks that could be automated with business tech. Those who work in marketing and other strategic areas could benefit from big data as it gathers records of purchase habits of customers, whereas sales team members could enjoy the ability to easily access data about the purchases themselves, such as profit margins and best-sellers. This gives such employees more time to synthesize the data and analyze findings, as well as suggest new directions for strategic development.

This content was originally posted to MichaelBabyakFinancialAdvisor.net.