Without any doubt, Big Data is being considered to be the most disruptive factor active in the business markets in recent times. While a common perception prevailing among business owners and managers worldwide is that Big Data may be used to enhance the business operations and prospects of big scale business enterprises alone, the fact remains that reality is way far from it. As a matter of fact, small and medium business enterprises are not only able to benefit from adopting Big Data, in some ways, they stand better chances than big businesses in leveraging the power of Big Data to increase their business revenue and growth at the same time. Let’s have a look upon some of the ways in which it is possible.
Big Data for Small Business:
Enhancing Overall Experience for the Customers
One of the most significant advantages that small business enterprises may yield from Big Data is getting accurate and meaningful insights about their customers’ overall shopping experience with them. For example, a mid-sized apparel store may find its customers’ year-long purchasing behaviour with the help of Big Data analytics tools, and find the exact points in the process of shopping when they didn’t find what they were looking for, or when they didn’t end up getting satisfied with the shopping experience. These points might be noted out and taking a few necessary steps, it might be possible for the store owner to minimize the customer dissatisfaction so that they get a better shopping experience next time they visit the store.
Formulating Better Marketing Strategies
Big Data gives an enterprise a deeper and more meaningful analysis about the way it customers aspire and feel when it comes to conducting business with it. Therefore, it becomes quite natural for the enterprise to use these facts and insights in formulating more streamlined and successful marketing strategies. While it cuts down the overall marketing expenditure for the enterprise that may mean a lot in case of a small or medium business, at the same time it ensures every penny spent in the marketing endeavours yields better returns on investment.
Making Business Operations More Focused
One important insight that the use of Big Data analytics offers to enterprises pertains to the behavioural patterns of their customers over a period of time. This analysis when used effectively and smartly might end up making it possible for the business enterprise turn its business operations more focused, practically feasible and beneficiary. For example, a medium-sized restaurant might find it helpful to carry out Big Data analytics using its customer data over a number of years and observe the annual lean periods when the customer base tends to fall considerably due to a number of factors. During those lean periods, the restaurant administration might wish to cut down unnecessary expenditures and slow down its operations, so that the overall profits get increased despite adverse circumstances.
Reducing the Time to Market
It’s a logically acceptable fact that bigger corporations tend to take more time in acting upon insights gained through Big Data analytics and bringing any effective transformation to their products accordingly. At the same time, small and medium enterprises are more likely to achieve the same results in a shorter span of time and yield an extra edge over their big counterparts. For example, a medium-sized automobile parts manufacturing unit will find it relatively much easier to carry out Big Data analysis upon its product offerings and observe any possible enhancements that could have been made to the current product lot, so that the same may be introduced in the next imminent lot to be introduced to the market soon; while a huge automobile giant will find it more difficult to apply these transformations that quickly. This way, Big Data analysis is more likely to favour the small and medium business enterprises in this scenario.
Has your small business used big data to increase sales or improve insights? If so, let me know in the comments below!
