INTRODUCTION TO BIG-DATA

Big Data; as its name implies, the data which is bigger is known as big data. The data size is
increasing day by day. An individual deals with data using mobile phones, tabs, and laptops
while an organisation deals with business data; statistically it has been noted that the data
size has drastically increased in the past decade.
What is Big Data?
The term "Big Data" usually refers to datasets that are too large, complex and unable to be
processed by ordinary data processing systems to manage efficiently. These datasets can be
derived from a variety of sources, including social media, sensors, internet activity, and
mobile devices. The data can be structured, semi-structured and unstructured type of data.
Big Data Analytics
A process of analysing large and diverse data sets is known as "Big Data," It discovers
hidden patterns, unknown relationships, market trends, user preferences, and other important
information. It uses advanced analytics techniques such as statistical analysis, machine
learning, data mining, and predictive modelling to extract insights from enormous datasets.
Organisations across the world capture terabytes of data about their users' interactions,
business, social media, and also sensors from devices such as mobile phones and
automobiles. The challenge of this era is to make sense of this sea of data. This is where big
data analytics comes into the picture.
Where Big Data Analytics Used?
Big Data Analytics strives to assist organisations in making more informed business
decisions, increasing operational efficiency, improving customer experiences and services,
and making sure to sustain industries in a competitive world with their respective industries.
The Big Data Analytics process involves data gathering, storage, processing, analysis, and
visualisation of outcomes to make strategic business decisions. The process of converting
large amounts of unstructured raw data, retrieved from different sources to a data product
useful for organizations forms the core of Big Data Analytics.
Overall, Big Data Analytics enables organizations to harness the vast amounts of data
available to them and turn it into actionable insights that drive business growth and
innovation.
What is Big Data Analytics?
Gartner defines Big Data as “Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety
information that demands cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that
enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation.”
Big Data is a collection of large amounts of data sets that traditional computing approaches
cannot compute and manage. It is a broad term that refers to the massive volume of complex
data sets that businesses and governments generate in today's digital world. It is often
measured in petabytes or terabytes and originates from three key sources: transactional data,
machine data, and social data.
Big Data encompasses data, frameworks, tools, and methodologies used to store, access,
analyse and visualise it. Technological advanced communication channels like social
networking and powerful gadgets have created different ways to create data, data
transformation and challenges to industry participants in the sense that they must find new
ways to handle data. The process of converting large amounts of unstructured raw data,
retrieved from different sources to a data product useful for organizations forms the core of
Big Data Analytics.
Steps of Big Data Analytics
Big Data Analytics is a powerful tool which helps to find the potential of large and complex
datasets. To get a better understanding, let's break it down into key steps −
Data Collection
This is the initial step, in which data is collected from different sources like social media,
sensors, online channels, commercial transactions, website logs etc. Collected data might be
structured (predefined organisation, such as databases), semi-structured (like log files) or
unstructured (text documents, photos, and videos).
Data Cleaning (Data Pre-processing)
The next step is to process collected data by removing errors and making it suitable and
proper for analysis. Collected raw data generally contains errors, missing values,
inconsistencies, and noisy data. Data cleaning entails identifying and correcting errors to
ensure that the data is accurate and consistent. Pre-processing operations may also involve
data transformation, normalisation, and feature extraction to prepare the data for further
analysis.
Overall, data cleaning and pre-processing entail the replacement of missing data, the
correction of inaccuracies, and the removal of duplicates. It is like sifting through a treasure
trove, separating the rocks and debris and leaving only the valuable gems behind.
Data Analysis
This is a key phase of big data analytics. Different techniques and algorithms are used to
analyse data and derive useful insights. This can include descriptive analytics (summarising
data to better understand its characteristics), diagnostic analytics (identifying patterns and
relationships), predictive analytics (predicting future trends or outcomes), and prescriptive
analytics (making recommendations or decisions based on the analysis).
Data Visualization
It’s a step to present data in a visual form using charts, graphs and interactive dashboards.
Hence, data visualisation techniques are used to visually portray the data using charts,
graphs, dashboards, and other graphical formats to make data analysis insights clearer and
more actionable.
Interpretation and Decision Making
Once data analytics and visualisation are done and insights gained, stakeholders analyse the
findings to make informed decisions. This decision-making includes optimising corporate
operations, increasing consumer experiences, creating new products or services, and
directing strategic planning.
Data Storage and Management
Once collected, the data must be stored in a way that enables easy retrieval and analysis.
Traditional databases may not be sufficient for handling large amounts of data, hence many
organisations use distributed storage systems such as Hadoop Distributed File System
(HDFS) or cloud-based storage solutions like Amazon S3.
Continuous Learning and Improvement
Big data analytics is a continuous process of collecting, cleaning, and analyzing data to
uncover hidden insights. It helps businesses make better decisions and gain a competitive
edge.
Types of Big-Data
Big Data is generally categorized into three different varieties. They are as shown below −
 Structured Data
 Semi-Structured Data
 Unstructured Data
Let us discuss the earn type in details.
Structured Data
Structured data has a dedicated data model, a well-defined structure, and a consistent order,
and is designed in such a way that it can be easily accessed and used by humans or
computers. Structured data is usually stored in well-defined tabular form means in the form
of rows and columns. Example: MS Excel, Database Management Systems (DBMS)
Semi-Structured Data
Semi-structured data can be described as another type of structured data. It inherits some
qualities from Structured Data; however, the majority of this type of data lacks a specific
structure and does not follow the formal structure of data models such as an RDBMS.
Example: Comma Separated Values (CSV) File.
Unstructured Data
Unstructured data is a type of data that doesn’t follow any structure. It lacks a uniform
format and is constantly changing. However, it may occasionally include data and time-
related information. Example: Audio Files, Images etc.
Types of Big Data Analytics
Some common types of Big Data analytics are as −
Descriptive Analytics
Descriptive analytics gives a result like “What is happening in my business?" if the
dataset is business-related. Overall, this summarises prior facts and aids in the creation of
reports such as a company's income, profit, and sales figures. It also aids the tabulation of
social media metrics. It can do comprehensive, accurate, live data and effective
visualisation.
Diagnostic Analytics
Diagnostic analytics determines root causes from data. It answers like “Why is it
happening?” Some common examples are drill-down, data mining, and data recovery.
Organisations use diagnostic analytics because they provide an in-depth insight into a
particular problem. Overall, it can drill down the root causes and ability to isolate all
confounding information.
For example − A report from an online store says that sales have decreased, even though
people are still adding items to their shopping carts. Several things could have caused this,
such as the form not loading properly, the shipping cost being too high, or not enough
payment choices being offered. You can use diagnostic data to figure out why this is
happening.
Benefits of Big Data
The use of Big Data analytics in today’s market allows businesses to have immense
advantages. The explanation of the benefits of Big Data is as follows:
Customer Acquisition and Retention
Big Data helps analyse customer behaviour in the market and collects data on customer
feedback regarding their purchase of different products. Customers in the current market
demand to be treated respectfully and acknowledged for their investment. Especially in the
case of online purchases that customers indulge in, they want to receive gratitude for the
same.
Big Data helps in this aspect and thanks the customers for their investment, increasing
engagement. Additionally, there are times when customers complain about specific products
and require a brand to take action. Big Data helps take real-time steps by checking the
customer profile and enabling reputation management.
Product Development
Big Data helps companies to enable product development within their business. Therefore,
Understanding customer demands and feedback on existing products and engaging with
them through social media helps collect data. Moreover, it allows companies to make
innovations within their products for redevelopment to gain higher customer satisfaction.
Improve Manufacturing Processes
With the help of Big Data, you can make minor changes within a product’s images and test
different variations of Computer-Aided Design. Furthermore, it helps understand the impact
of minor changes and becomes a crucial step in manufacturing.
Competitive Advantage
Businesses use Predictive Analysis to analyse future trends and patterns in the market. Big
Data facilitates the analysis to analyse the data and provides valuable insights.
For instance, identifying trends and patterns from social media feeds and news reports and
analysing them using Big Data helps you understand your competitor’s strategies. As a
result, it helps develop strategies that might take you ahead of your competitors.
Risk Management
Business organisations typically operate in high-risk environments and require practical
solutions and plans to eliminate the risks. Big Data helps eradicate chances by planning risk
management processes and strategies.
Market Trends and Patterns
Big Data analytics help identify the customer’s trends and patterns in terms of the type of
products and services they demand. By focusing on customer feedback, companies can
understand in-depth requirements. It further helps the company to induce customisations
within their products for higher customer engagement.
Wrapping Up!
The above blog post provides a detailed explanation of Big Data. From the importance of
Big Data to understanding the benefits of Big Data, the blog has offered explicit conceptual
knowledge on it.
Technological advancements and the ability of businesses to induce innovation require the
help of Big Data Analytics to conduct business operations effectively.
Through Big Data, companies have been gaining operational efficiency, enhancing their
competencies in analysing customer behaviour and, thus, gaining competitive advantage.
This kind of analytics looks at data from the past and the present to guess what will happen
in the future. Hence, it answers like “What will be happening in future? “Data mining, AI,
and machine learning are all used in predictive analytics to look at current data and guess
what will happen in the future. It can figure out things like market trends, customer trends,
and so on.
For example − The rules that Bajaj Finance has to follow to keep their customers safe from
fake transactions are set by PayPal. The business uses predictive analytics to look at all of its
past payment and user behaviour data and come up with a program that can spot fraud.
Prescriptive Analytics
Perspective analytics gives the ability to frame a strategic decision, the analytical results
answer “What do I need to do?” Perspective analytics works with both descriptive and
predictive analytics. Most of the time, it relies on AI and machine learning.
For example − Prescriptive analytics can help a company to maximise its business and
profit. For example in the airline industry, Perspective analytics applies some set of
algorithms that will change flight prices automatically based on demand from customers,
and reduce ticket prices due to bad weather conditions, location, holiday seasons etc.
Tools and Technologies of Big Data Analytics
Some commonly used big data analytics tools are as −
Hadoop
A tool to store and analyze large amounts of data. Hadoop makes it possible to deal with big
data, It's a tool which made big data analytics possible.
MongoDB
A tool for managing unstructured data. It's a database which specially designed to store,
access and process large quantities of unstructured data.
Talend
A tool to use for data integration and management. Talend's solution package includes
complete capabilities for data integration, data quality, master data management, and data
governance. Talend integrates with big data management tools like Hadoop, Spark, and
NoSQL databases allowing organisations to process and analyse enormous amounts of data
efficiently. It includes connectors and components for interacting with big data technologies,
allowing users to create data pipelines for ingesting, processing, and analysing large
amounts of data.
Cassandra
A distributed database used to handle chunks of data. Cassandra is an open-source
distributed NoSQL database management system that handles massive amounts of data over
several commodity servers, ensuring high availability and scalability without sacrificing
performance.
Spark
Used for real-time processing and analyzing large amounts of data. Apache Spark is a robust
and versatile distributed computing framework that provides a single platform for big data
processing, analytics, and machine learning, making it popular in industries such as e-
commerce, finance, healthcare, and telecommunications.
Storm
It is an open-source real-time computational system. Apache Storm is a robust and versatile
stream processing framework that allows organisations to process and analyse real-time data
streams on a large scale, making it suited for a wide range of use cases in industries such as
banking, telecommunications, e-commerce, and IoT.
Kafka
It is a distributed streaming platform that is used for fault-tolerant storage. Apache Kafka is
a versatile and powerful event streaming platform that allows organisations to create
scalable, fault-tolerant, and real-time data pipelines and streaming applications to efficiently
meet their data processing requirements.
Big Data refers to extremely large data sets that may be analyzed to reveal patterns, trends,
and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions.
Big Data Characteristics
The characteristics of Big Data, often summarized by the "Five V's," include −
Volume
As its name implies; volume refers to a large size of data generated and stored every second
using IoT devices, social media, videos, financial transactions, and customer logs. The data
generated from the devices or different sources can range from terabytes to petabytes and
beyond. To manage such large quantities of data requires robust storage solutions and
advanced data processing techniques. The Hadoop framework is used to store, access and
process big data.
Facebook generates 4 petabytes of data per day that's a million gigabytes. All that data is
stored in what is known as the Hive, which contains about 300 petabytes of data [1].
Fig: Minutes spent per day on social apps (Image source: Recode)

Fig: Engagement per user on leading social media apps in India (Image source:
www.statista.com) [2]
From the above graph, we can predict how users are devoting their time to accessing
different channels and transforming data, hence, data volume is becoming higher day by
day.
Velocity
The speed with which data is generated, processed, and analysed. With the development and
usage of IoT devices and real-time data streams, the velocity of data has expanded
tremendously, demanding systems that can process data instantly to derive meaningful
insights. Some high-velocity data applications are as follows
Variety
Big Data includes different types of data like structured data (found in databases),
unstructured data (like text, images, videos), and semi-structured data (like JSON and
XML). This diversity requires advanced tools for data integration, storage, and analysis.
Challenges of Managing Variety in Big Data −
Variety in Big Data Applications −

Veracity
Veracity refers accuracy and trustworthiness of the data. Ensuring data quality, addressing
data discrepancies, and dealing with data ambiguity are all major issues in Big Data
analytics.
Value
The ability to convert large volumes of data into useful insights. Big Data's ultimate goal is
to extract meaningful and actionable insights that can lead to better decision-making, new
products, enhanced consumer experiences, and competitive advantages.
These qualities characterise the nature of Big Data and highlight the importance of modern
tools and technologies for effective data management, processing, and analysis.
What is Big Data Architecture?
Big data architecture is specifically designed to manage data ingestion, data processing, and
analysis of data that is too large or complex. A big size data cannot be store, process and
manage by conventional relational databases. The solution is to organize technology into a
structure of big data architecture. Big data architecture is able to manage and process data.
Key Aspects of Big Data Architecture
The following are some key aspects of big data architecture −
 To store and process large size data like 100 GB in size.
  To aggregates and transform of a wide variety of unstructured data for analysis and
reporting.
 Access, processing and analysis of streamed data in real time.
Diagram of Big Data Architecture
The following figure shows Big Data Architecture with its sequential arrangements of
different components. The outcomes of one component work as an input to another
component and this process flow continues till to outcome of processed data.
Here is the diagram of big data architecture −

Components of Big Data Architecture

The following are the different components of big data architecture −
Data Sources
All big data solutions start with one or more data sources. The Big Data Architecture
accommodates various data sources and efficiently manages a wide range of data types.
Some common data sources in big data architecture include transactional databases, logs,
machine-generated data, social media and web data, streaming data, external data sources,
cloud-based data, NOSQL databases, data warehouses, file systems, APIs, and web services.
These are only a few instances; in reality, the data environment is broad and constantly
changing, with new sources and technologies developing over time. The primary challenge
in big data architecture is successfully integrating, processing, and analyzing data from
various sources in order to gain relevant insights and drive decision-making.
Data Storage
Data storage is the system for storing and managing large amounts of data in big data
architecture. Big data includes handling large amounts of structured, semi-structured, and
unstructured data; traditional relational databases often prove inadequate due to scalability
and performance limitations.
Distributed file stores, capable of storing large volumes of files in various formats, typically
store data for batch processing operations. People often refer to this type of store as a data
lake. You can use Azure Data Lake Storage or blob containers in Azure Storage for this
purpose. In a big data architecture, the following image shows the key approaches to data
storage −

The selection of a data storage system is contingent on different aspects, including type of
the data, performance requirements, scalability, and financial limitations. Different big data
architectures use a blend of these storage systems to efficiently meet different use cases and
objectives.
Batch Processing
Process data with long running batch jobs to filter, aggregate and prepare data for analysis,
these jobs often involve reading and processing source files, and then writing the output to
new files. Batch processing is an essential component of big data architecture, allowing for
the efficient processing of large amounts of data using scheduled batches. It entails
gathering, processing, and analysing data in batches at predetermined intervals rather than in
real time.
Batch processing is especially useful for operations that do not require immediate responses,
such as data analytics, reporting, and batch-based data conversions. You can run U-SQL jobs
in Azure Data Lake Analytics, use Hive, Pig, or custom Map/Reduce jobs in an HDInsight
Hadoop cluster, or use Java, Scala, or Python programs in an HDInsight Spark cluster.
Real-time Message Ingestion
Big data architecture plays a significant role in real-time message ingestion, as it
necessitates the real-time capture and processing of data streams during their generation or
reception. This functionality helps enterprises deal with high-speed data sources such as
sensor feeds, log files, social media updates, clickstreams, and IoT devices, among others.
Real-time message ingestion systems are critical for extracting important insights,
identifying anomalies, and responding immediately to occurrences. The following image
shows the different methods work for real time message ingestion within big data
architecture −
The architecture incorporates a method for capturing and storing real-time messages for
stream processing; if the solution includes real-time sources. This could be a data storage
system where incoming messages are dropped into a folder for processing. Nevertheless, a
message ingestion store is necessary for different approaches to function as a buffer for
messages and to facilitate scale-out processing, reliable delivery, and other message queuing
semantics. Some efficient solutions are Azure Event Hubs, Azure IoT Hubs, and Kafka.
Stream Processing
Stream processing is a type of data processing that continuously processes data records as
they generate or receive in real time. It enables enterprises to quickly analyze, transform,
and respond to data streams, resulting in timely insights, alerts, and actions. Stream
processing is a critical component of big data architecture, especially for dealing with high-
volume data sources such as sensor data, logs, social media updates, financial transactions,
and IoT device telemetry.
Following figure illustrate how stream processing works within big data architecture −
After gathering real-time messages, a proposes solution processes data by filter, aggregate,
and preparing it for analysis. The processed stream data is subsequently stored in an output
sink. Azure Stream Analytics offers a managed stream processing service based on
continuously executing SQL queries on unbounded streams. on addition, we may employ
open-source Apache streaming technologies such as Storm and Spark Streaming on an
HDInsight cluster.
Analytical Data Store
In big data analytics, an Analytical Data Store (ADS) is a customized database or data
storage system designed to deal with complicated analytical queries and massive amounts of
data. An ADS is intended to facilitate ad hoc querying, data exploration, reporting, and
advanced analytics tasks, making it an essential component of big data systems for business
intelligence and analytics. The key features of Analytical Data Stores in big data analytics
are summarized in following figure −

Analytical tools can query structured data. A low-latency NoSQL technology, such as HBase
or an interactive Hive database, could present the data by abstracting information from data
files in the distributed data storage system. Azure Synapse Analytics is a managed solution
for large-scale, cloud-based data warehousing. You can serve and analyze data using Hive,
HBase, and Spark SQL with HDInsight.
Analysis and Reporting
Big data analysis and reporting are the processes of extracting insights, patterns, and trends
from huge and complex information to aid in decision-making, strategic planning, and
operational improvements. It includes different strategies, tools, and methodologies for
analyzing data and presenting results in a useful and practical fashion.
Following image gives a brief idea about different analysis and reporting methods in big
data analytics −

Most big data solutions aim to extract insights from the data through analysis and reporting.
In order to enable users to analyze data, the architecture may incorporate a data modeling
layer, such as a multidimensional OLAP cube or tabular data model in Azure Analysis
Services. It may also offer self-service business intelligence by leveraging the modeling and
visualization features found in Microsoft Power BI or Excel. Data scientists or analysts
might conduct interactive data exploration as part of their analysis and reporting processes.
Orchestration
In big data analytics, orchestration refers to the coordination and administration of different
tasks, processes, and resources used to execute data. To ensure that big data analytics
workflows run efficiently and reliably, it is necessary to automate the flow of data and
processing processes, schedule jobs, manage dependencies, and monitor task performance.
Following figure includes different steps used in orchestration −

Workflows that convert source data, transport data across different sources and sinks, load
the processed data into an analytical data store, or output the results directly to a report or
dashboard comprise most big data solutions. To automate these activities, utilize an
orchestration tool like Azure Data Factory, Apache Oozie, or Sqoop.
What is Big Data
Data which are very large in size is called Big Data. Normally we work on data of size
MB(WordDoc ,Excel) or maximum GB(Movies, Codes) but data in Peta bytes i.e. 10^15
byte size is called Big Data. It is stated that almost 90% of today's data has been generated
in the past 3 years.
Sources of Big Data
These data come from many sources like
o Social networking sites: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn all these sites generates huge
amount of data on a day to day basis as they have billions of users worldwide.
 o E-commerce site: Sites like Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba generates huge amount of
logs from which users buying trends can be traced.
o Weather Station: All the weather station and satellite gives very huge data which
are stored and manipulated to forecast weather.
o Telecom company: Telecom giants like Airtel, Vodafone study the user trends and
accordingly publish their plans and for this they store the data of its million users.
o Share Market: Stock exchange across the world generates huge amount of data
through its daily transaction.
3V's of Big Data
1. Velocity: The data is increasing at a very fast rate. It is estimated that the volume of
data will double in every 2 years.
2. Variety: Now a days data are not stored in rows and column. Data is structured as
well as unstructured. Log file, CCTV footage is unstructured data. Data which can
be saved in tables are structured data like the transaction data of the bank.
3. Volume: The amount of data which we deal with is of very large size of Peta bytes.
Use case
An e-commerce site XYZ (having 100 million users) wants to offer a gift voucher of 100$
to its top 10 customers who have spent the most in the previous year.Moreover, they want to
find the buying trend of these customers so that company can suggest more items related to
them.
Issues
Huge amount of unstructured data which needs to be stored, processed and analyzed.
Solution
Storage: This huge amount of data, Hadoop uses HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System)
which uses commodity hardware to form clusters and store data in a distributed fashion. It
works on Write once, read many times principle.
Processing: Map Reduce paradigm is applied to data distributed over network to find the
required output.
Analyze: Pig, Hive can be used to analyze the data.
Cost: Hadoop is open source so the cost is no more an issue.
Benefits of Big Data:
Benefits of Big Data in IT Sectors:
 Many old IT companies are fully dependent on big data in order to modernize their
outdated mainframes by identifying the root causes of failures and issues in real-time
and antiquated code bases. Many organizations are replacing their traditional system
with open-source platforms like Hadoop.
 Most big data solutions are based on Hadoop, which allows designs to scale up from
a single machine to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and
 storage, moreover, it is a “free” open source platform, allowing minimizing capital
investment for an organization in acquiring new platforms.
 With the help of big data technologies IT companies are able to process third-party
data fast, which is often hard to understand at once by having inherently high
horsepower and parallelized working of platforms.

Benefits of Big Data in Business:

 Data quality has a direct impact on business process efficiency. In purchase to pay
process, poor quality vendor data can cause missing purchase contracts or pricing
information which can lead to delays in procuring vital goods. Many companies use
big data solutions or algorithms to simply do what they have already been doing, so
that there is no data loss moreover if we run the algorithm against the data set, the
result might be the list of individual who exhibits attributes of fraudulent behavior.
 In order to cash process, incomplete or inaccurate credit limits or pricing information
can lead to overall customer service loss or reduce revenue or may increase service
cost, with the help of big data technologies and the ability to run various algorithms
more quickly, the data can be updated at regular intervals throughout the day.
 The systematic analysis of data or data profiling is used to assess the overall health
of the data which leads to proper business decisions in accordance with the present
situation because sometimes inaccurate data results in incorrect management, which
means business decisions are based on incorrect information. For example, the more
one can understand customers’ complex relationships, preferences, and interaction
history with the company, the more relevant and timely business outreach.
Benefits of Big Data in Enterprise:
 Big data might allow a company to collect trillions or billions of real-time data
points on its products, resources, or customers- and then repackage the data
instantaneously to optimize the customer experience.
 The speed at which data is updated using big data technologies allows enterprises to
more quickly and accurately respond to customer demands. For example, MetLife
used MongoDB to quickly consolidate customer information over 70 different
sources and provide a single, rapidly-updated view
 Big data can help enterprises to act more nimbly allowing them to adapt to changes
faster than their competitors.

Benefits of Big Data in Other Areas:

 Big Data technologies are used to predict the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ decisions made on the
shares of different companies for the customers.
 Hospitals are analyzing medical data and records to predict those patients that are
likely to seek re-admission within a few months of discharge. The hospital can avoid
costly stays for patients in the hospital.
 Search-Engine retrieves lots of Data from different databases in a fraction of a
second using big data technologies. For example, Google uses the MapReduce
algorithm to search for a given query. MapReduce divides the task into small parts
and assigns those parts to many computers connected over the network, and collects
the result to form the final result.
 Financial Services organizations are using big data for data mining about customer
interactions to slice and dice their users into finely tuned segments, this will help in
creating increasingly relevant and sophisticated offers.
 Insurance companies are using Big Data analysis to see which home insurance
applications can be immediately processed, and which ones need a validating in-
person visit from an agent.
 Web-based businesses are developing information products that combine data
gathered from customers to offer more appealing recommendations and more
successful coupon programs.
Benefits of Big Data
The use of Big Data analytics in today’s market allows businesses to have immense
advantages. The explanation of the benefits of Big Data is as follows:
Customer Acquisition and Retention
Big Data helps analyse customer behaviour in the market and collects data on customer
feedback regarding their purchase of different products. Customers in the current market
demand to be treated respectfully and acknowledged for their investment. Especially in the
case of online purchases that customers indulge in, they want to receive gratitude for the
same.
Big Data helps in this aspect and thanks the customers for their investment, increasing
engagement. Additionally, there are times when customers complain about specific products
and require a brand to take action. Big Data helps take real-time steps by checking the
customer profile and enabling reputation management.
Product Development
Big Data helps companies to enable product development within their business. Therefore,
Understanding customer demands and feedback on existing products and engaging with
them through social media helps collect data. Moreover, it allows companies to make
innovations within their products for redevelopment to gain higher customer satisfaction.
Improve Manufacturing Processes
With the help of Big Data, you can make minor changes within a product’s images and test
different variations of Computer-Aided Design. Furthermore, it helps understand the impact
of minor changes and becomes a crucial step in manufacturing.
Competitive Advantage
Businesses use Predictive Analysis to analyse future trends and patterns in the market. Big
Data facilitates the analysis to analyse the data and provides valuable insights.
For instance, identifying trends and patterns from social media feeds and news reports and
analysing them using Big Data helps you understand your competitor’s strategies. As a
result, it helps develop strategies that might take you ahead of your competitors.
Risk Management
Business organisations typically operate in high-risk environments and require practical
solutions and plans to eliminate the risks. Big Data helps eradicate chances by planning risk
management processes and strategies.
Market Trends and Patterns
Big Data analytics help identify the customer’s trends and patterns in terms of the type of
products and services they demand. By focusing on customer feedback, companies can
understand in-depth requirements. It further helps the company to induce customisations
within their products for higher customer engagement.
Wrapping Up!
The above blog post provides a detailed explanation of Big Data. From the importance of
Big Data to understanding the benefits of Big Data, the blog has offered explicit conceptual
knowledge on it.
Technological advancements and the ability of businesses to induce innovation require the
help of Big Data Analytics to conduct business operations effectively.
Through Big Data, companies have been gaining operational efficiency, enhancing their
competencies in analysing customer behaviour and, thus, gaining competitive advantage.
Importance of Big Data
The importance of Big Data revolves around more than just the amount of data a company
has. Big Data’s importance revolves around how the company can use the collected data.
Effectively, the importance of Big Data for companies has various reasons, which include
the following:
 Cost Savings
Storing the collection of large volumes of data occurs efficiently with enough security
and confidentiality. Accordingly, Big Data tools like Hadoop, Apache, Spark, etc.,
helps keep the data.
 Time-saving
Big Data uses real-time in-memory analytics that helps collect data from multiple
sources. Using Hadoop further helps analyse the data and make efficient decisions
faster.
 Understanding Customer Behaviour
The market conditions change with changes in consumer behaviour. Effectively, Big
Data helps identify these changes and enables organisations to produce products with
higher demand. Further, it helps in achieving a competitive advantage for the
company.
 Social Media Listening
Social media platforms help companies to reach their target customers. By
undertaking sentiment analysis using Big Data tools, companies can gain feedback
from customers on what they think about the brand. Furthermore, Big Data can help in
improving the online presence of companies.
 Boost Customer Acquisition and Retention
Businesses can identify and understand their customers, demands, and needs.
Significantly, Big Data tools help analyse customer demand trends and patterns. It
helps in acquiring new customers and retaining customers.
 Innovation and Product Development
Companies can use Big Data tools to enable product development and foster
innovation. Effectively, it ensures that companies can grow and enhance profitability
in the market.