Anything to do with Big Data is always big! Be it the hype around it, the volume of data or the number of Google searches. Yes, these two words “Big Data “ throw a staggering 277 million results on Google! That’s definitely a big number!

These numbers lead us to curiosity and we get to hear questions such as:

Are the benefits of Big Data equally big?

Does Big Data impact the ROI of an entity big time?

Does Big Data actually convert into measurable results?

Is the hype and hoopla surrounding Big Data justified?

Of all the questions surrounding Big Data, the ROI questions are the most pertinent. Let’s root for Big Data and play by its side to see how big is the business benefit of Big Data.

If you are a professional looking working with large datasets, it is good to know the benefits of big data. Getting a big data certification can give your career a boost and help you have an edge in the job market.

So how does big data benefit business and help industries grow? We can try to understand this from the following two study reports.

TERADATA STUDY REPORT:

Teradata conducted a study, “Betting on Big Data”, which focused on the ROI question. The company partnered with Forbes Insights and McKinsey for a study on big data. The study spanned across 316 senior decision makers related to IT and Data in companies.

The study focussed on companies with an average revenue of $500 million. It found two thirds of companies reported results from Big Data investments. The rest of the companies were still finding their way to the results.

This graph from Teradata’s study shows that the maximum ROI is at a mere 3%. By itself, the percentage is negligible. But if you take into account the company size, the money value is huge. This is definitely a case in point in favor of investment in Big Data.

Img Source: Teradata Study – “Betting on Big Data”

ACCENTURE ANALYTICS REPORT

To quote an Accenture Analytics Report:

“Executives report big data delivering business outcomes for a wide spectrum of strategic corporate goals—from new revenue generation and new market development to enhancing the customer experience and improving enterprise-wide performance. Organizations regard big data as extremely important and central to their digital strategy.”

Accenture Analytics called their study report - Big Success from Big Data. This study made a survey on CXO level leaders from several companies. The survey spanned 19 countries and 7 industries.

According to this survey, Big Data helps companies identify business impact areas like:

New sources of revenue (56 percent)

New product and service development (50 percent)

Winning and keeping customers (47 percent)

Enhancing the customer experience (51 percent)

The above statistics show that Big Data is definitely having an impact on the ROI. It is a positive result going by these two reports.

How Big Data helps drive businesses across industries

What kind of specific business benefits can come from Big Data?

Well, Big Data provides data from all angles. It really boils down to using this data to draw intelligent and useful correlations. A good number of companies across different industry segments use Big Data. They make a detailed study to tackle their problems and find innovative solutions. Following is an illustrative list:

Automotive sector

Ford has been a leader in the automotive sector. It also is a leading company in this sector to use Hadoop for improved features in automotive design. The automotive sector can gain a lot of valuable information from Big Data. You can have a look at Deloitte’s analysis of Big Data and analytics in the automotive sector. It will give you further insights into various slices of this aspect.

Airlines sector

The Airlines industry as a rule has to be a customer focused segment. Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines use Big Data to improve their customer focus image. They used the big data results to their advantage.

Delta has pioneered in the use of Big Data for tracking baggage. For many international travelers lost baggage worries can give nightmares. Delta solved this situation by using Big Data to track bags through a smart phone based app.

Southwest Airlines used Big Data to study patterns in customer behavior. They made a study about how customers behaved while purchasing tickets online. They worked on their offers with all the insights from the data. The results helped them increase their base of loyal customers.

Financial Services

Financial services industry is one of the most competitive sector out there. Data backed decisions for any financial service company is an advantage. The financial companies just cannot ignore data inputs.

Biggies like Morgan Stanley have put Hadoop to successful use in analyzing investments. Most financial institutions have used Big Data for sentiment analysis and predictive analysis. IBM’s study on Big Data for financial institutions reports that 71% of the population they surveyed affirms that they enjoy a competitive advantage because of Big Data.

Media sector

Media is the most sensitive industry in the whole world. Social media has made this industry a lot more fast paced and information packed than before.

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published a report based on a two year study. According to the report, Big Data has helped big media houses improve their content planning. Some of them include Huffington Post, CNN, FT.com and Buzz Feed.

The benefits of big data helped them provide real time content for their readers. It also ensured steady inflow of traffic for the media companies.

Retail sector

Amazon, the retail segment leader uses 1 million Hadoop clusters to run its business operations. These include website updates, risk management, affiliate network and the likes.

Companies like Sears and Kmart also use Big Data for competing with giants like Amazon and Target. They have been able to put Big Data to effective use in personalized marketing campaigns. According to this article on Forbes, big data is a game changer for retail sector.

This post focuses on five industry segments among the multitudes that use Big Data to their advantage. There are a lot of companies that are turning out to be trailblazers in using Big Data for better ROI.

These companies cover most of the business verticals but are not limited to sectors such as:

Logistics

Hospitality

Telecommunications

Gaming

Entertainment

Travel

Engineering services

If you are an aspiring IT analyst, getting a big data certification can help you a lot. It can open avenues for you to get that high paying job and can be one of the best decisions you ever made.