Big Data For Small Business For Dummies

Bernard Marr

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781119027034
• eBook ISBN: 9781119027041
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Imprenditoria
• Index: Business

Capitalise on big data to add value to your small business

Written by bestselling author and big data expert Bernard Marr, Big Data For Small Business For Dummies helps you understand what big data actually is—and how you can analyse and use it to improve your business. Free of confusing jargon and complemented with lots of step-by-step guidance and helpful advice, it quickly and painlessly helps you get the most from using big data in a small business.

Business data has been around for a long time. Unfortunately, it was trapped away in overcrowded filing cabinets and on archaic floppy disks. Now, thanks to technology and new tools that display complex databases in a much simpler manner, small businesses can benefit from the big data that's been hiding right under their noses. With the help of this friendly guide, you'll discover how to get your hands on big data to develop new offerings, products and services; understand technological change; create an infrastructure; develop strategies; and make smarter business decisions.

• Shows you how to use big data to make sense of user activity on social networks and customer transactions
• Demonstrates how to capture, store, search, share, analyse and visualise analytics
• Helps you turn your data into actionable insights
• Explains how to use big data to your advantage in order to transform your small business

If you're a small business owner or employee, Big Data For Small Business For Dummies helps you harness the hottest commodity on the market today in order to take your company to new heights.

Part I

Getting Started with Big Data Basics

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In this part …

Understand what big data is and why you need to know about it.

Find out the key characteristics that define big data.

See why there’s so much hype around big data right now – and why all the fuss is justified.

Check out key big data uses for small businesses.

Chapter 1

Introducing Big Data for Small Businesses

In This Chapter

Understanding what big data is and why it’s so important

Taking a peek at the different types of data

Putting big data to work in your business

Big data has been making big headlines over the last couple of years, but it’s much more than just a buzz phrase or the latest business fad. The phenomenon is very real and is producing concrete benefits in so many different areas – from business to medical research to national security.

The basic idea behind big data is that everything you do is increasingly leaving a digital trace (or data), which you (and others) can use and analyse. Big data therefore refers to that data being collected and the ability to make use of it.

In this chapter, I look at how this phenomenon is transforming the way you do business. I also look at what sorts of data are available these days and introduce my step-by-step processes for using big data in business.

Personally, I don’t love the term big data because I think it places far too much emphasis on the sheer volume of data, when, as I talk about in this chapter, what you do with the data is much more important than how much of it you have. I have a feeling the term will gradually disappear and what’s now called big data will, in the future, just be known as data.

Why Big Data Matters to Every Business, Big and Small

Given all the hype around big data, it’s no surprise that market researchers Gartner found in 2014 that 73 per cent of businesses have already invested in a big data plan or are planning to do so in the next few years.

The online behemoths that have come to dominate business in the Internet age – Google, Facebook, Amazon, you know the ones – all base their business models on big data. It’s by collecting and analysing huge amounts of information from us that they’re able to determine precisely what we want. The data also enables them to sell advertising services capable of precisely targeting their clients’ preferred demographics.

But big data isn’t just for giant corporations, it matters to every company – no matter how small or traditional. To cater for this huge demand, many companies have sprung up to offer services to other businesses, enabling them to launch big data initiatives of their own.

I’ve found that the term big data can scare some business owners off, especially the big part. Some think it doesn’t apply to their small business – or that it’ll be prohibitively expensive to use. The truth is, in the current business age, if you want to grow, you need to start using data strategically. And yes, some companies have massive big data budgets. Most companies, however, are working with much smaller budgets but are still able to use data to gather insights that help their business grow.

Entering a world filled with data

Of course, data collection itself isn’t new. But technological advances like chip and sensor technology, the Internet, cloud computing and the ability to store and analyse data have changed the quantity of data you can collect.

Activities that have been a part of everyday life for decades – shopping, listening to music, taking pictures, talking on the phone – increasingly happen wholly or in part in the digital realm and therefore leave a trail of data.

And the amount of data being generated every day is staggering. For example, users of Facebook upload around one billion pieces of content to the social network site every day. In industry, machinery and vehicles are fitted with sensors and trackers that record their every move, and whenever you call a call centre, an audio recording of your conversation is made and stored in a huge digital database.

Big data statistics to blow your mind

The following statistics give you a flavour of the sheer volume of data being generated in today’s world:

• Every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of time until 2003.
• Over 90 per cent of all the data in the world was created in the past two years.
• It’s expected that by 2020 the amount of digital information in existence will grow from 3.2 zettabytes today to 40 zettabytes. (A zettabyte is a unit of data measurement roughly equal to one million terabytes; a terabyte is one trillion bytes.)
• Every minute we send 204 million emails, generate 1.8 million Facebook likes, send 278 thousand Tweets and upload 200 thousand photos to Facebook.
• Google alone processes on average over 40 thousand search queries per second, making it over 3.5 billion in a single day.
• Around 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and it would take you around 15 years to watch every video uploaded by users in one day.
• 570 new websites spring into existence every minute of every day.
• This year, there will be over 1.2 billion smartphones in the world (which are stuffed full of sensors and data collection features), and the growth is predicted to continue.
• The boom of the Internet of Things will mean that the amount of devices that connect to the Internet will rise from about 13 billion today to 50 billion by 2020.
• 1.9 million IT jobs will be created in the US alone by 2015 to carry out big data projects. Each of those will be supported by three new jobs created outside of IT – meaning a total of 6 million new jobs thanks to big data.

Understanding the infinite ways to use big data

Eventually, every aspect of your lives will be affected by big data. However, there are some areas where big data is already making a real difference today – in business and in other areas. Let’s look at the main areas where big data is most widely used right now.

• Understanding and targeting customers: This is one of the most common uses of big data today. Here, big data is used to better understand customers and their behaviours and preferences.
• Understanding and optimising business processes: Big data is also increasingly used to optimise a wider range of business processes, including stock control, supply chain and delivery routes and HR processes.
• Optimising personal quantification and performance: Individuals can now benefit from the data generated from wearable devices such as smart watches and smart bracelets – data like calorie consumption, activity levels and sleep patterns.
• Improving healthcare and public health: The computing power of big data analytics enables scientists to decode entire DNA strings in minutes and allows them to find new cures and better understand and predict disease patterns. What’s more, big data analytics allow researchers to monitor and predict the developments of epidemics and disease outbreaks by integrating data from medical records with social media analytics.
• Improving sports performance: Most elite sports have now embraced big data analytics. Video analytics track the performance of every player in a football game, and sensor technology in sports equipment such as golf clubs allows you to get feedback (via your smartphone) on your game and how to improve it.
• Improving science and research: Science and research is currently being transformed by big data. Experiments with the Large Hadron Collider, for example, generate huge amounts of data. The CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) data centre has 65,000 processors to analyse its 30 petabytes (a petabyte is one quadrillion bytes) of data.
• Optimising machine and device performance: Big data analytics help machines and devices become smarter and more autonomous. For example, big data tools are used to operate Google’s self-driving car.
• Improving security and law enforcement: I’m sure you’re aware of the revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US uses big data analytics to foil terrorist plots (and maybe spy on us!). Others use big data techniques to detect and prevent cyber attacks and police forces use big data tools to catch criminals.
• Improving and optimising cities and countries: Big data is used to improve many aspects of where we live. For example, it allows cities to optimise traffic flows based on real-time traffic information as well as social media and weather data.
• Optimising financial trading: High-Frequency Trading (HFT) is an area where big data finds a lot of use today by using big data algorithms to make trading decisions.

Using big data in small businesses

Big data might seem like it’s something that only big business can make use of. When people first hear that massive volumes of information are being used ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Getting Started with Big Data Basics
• Part II: Unpacking Big Data
• Part III: A Brave New World for Small Business
• Part IV: Show Time! Making Big Data Work for Small Business
• Part V: The Part of Tens
• About the Author
• Cheat Sheet
• Connect with Dummies
• End User License Agreement