Big Data means a large chunk of raw data that is collected, stored and analyzed through various means which can be utilized by organizations to increase their efficiency and take better decisions. Big Data can be in both – structured and unstructured forms. Structured Data is more easily analyzed and organized into the database. Unstructured Data, on the other hand, is much harder to analyze and uses a variety of formats. Also, it is not easily interpreted by traditional data models and processes.

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The concept of Big Data is nothing new. In fact, more and more companies, both large and small, are using big data and related analysis approaches as a way to gain more information to better support their company and serve their customers, benefitting from the advantages of big data.

3 Vs of Big Data :

Big Data is the combination of these three factors; High-volume, High-Velocity and High-Variety.

Volume

Big Data observes and tracks what happens from various sources which include business transactions, social media and information from machine-to-machine or sensor data. This creates large volumes of data.

Velocity

The data streams in high speed and must be dealt with timely. The processing of data that is, analysis of streamed data to produce near or real time results is also fast.

Variety

Data comes in all formats that may be structured, numeric in the traditional database or the unstructured text documents, video, audio, email, stock ticker data.

Read More: 7 Steps: How to Create a Successful Big Data Strategy

Why is Big Data Important ?

The importance of big data does not revolve around how much data a company has but how a company utilises the collected data. Every company uses data in its own way; the more efficiently a company uses its data, the more potential it has to grow. The company can take data from any source and analyse it to find answers which will enable:

Cost Savings : Some tools of Big Data like Hadoop and Cloud-Based Analytics can bring cost advantages to business when large amounts of data are to be stored and these tools also help in identifying more efficient ways of doing business. Time Reductions :The high speed of tools like Hadoop and in-memory analytics can easily identify new sources of data which helps businesses analyzing data immediately and make quick decisions based on the learnings. New Product Development : By knowing the trends of customer needs and satisfaction through analytics you can create products according to the wants of customers. Understand the market conditions : By analyzing big data you can get a better understanding of current market conditions. For example, by analyzing customers’ purchasing behaviors, a company can find out the products that are sold the most and produce products according to this trend. By this, it can get ahead of its competitors. Control online reputation: Big data tools can do sentiment analysis. Therefore, you can get feedback about who is saying what about your company. If you want to monitor and improve the online presence of your business, then, big data tools can help in all this.

Conclusion: Big Data-A Competitive Advantage for Businesses

The use of Big Data is becoming common these days by the companies to outperform their peers. In most industries, existing competitors and new entrants alike will use the strategies resulting from the analyzed data to compete, innovate and capture value.

Big Data helps the organizations to create new growth opportunities and entirely new categories of companies that can combine and analyze industry data. These companies have ample information about the products and services, buyers and suppliers, consumer preferences that can be captured and analyzed.

It also understands and optimizes business processes. Retailers can easily optimize their stock based on predictive models generated from the social media data, web search trends and weather forecasts.

Let our experts guide you further on the major benefits of using Big Data outlined specifically around your business model.