Emerging tech and, more specifically, Big Data Analytics should be one of the most used tools in your toolbox with the holiday season approaching. Every day, customers generate enormous amounts of data. From the moment they respond to their emails, use a store’s mobile app, tag them on social media, walk into the store, make an online purchase, talk to a customer service representative, or ask a virtual assistant about the store, Big Data Analytics collects and processes that data for your organization.
Big Data Analytics allows us to make meaningful use of the information gleaned over time from our customers, allowing us to more easily recognize areas of improvement. This enables data-driven decisions that are fine-tuned to the ever-changing needs of our customers, improving the overall quality of service.
Big data analytics edges traditional data analytics, employing complex analytical techniques to make sense of vast quantities of data for organizational benefits. Some of the ways this could benefit your businesses during the holiday season include but are not limited to
Demand Forecasting
Moving into the holiday season, it would be essential to analyze historical sales data of slow and fast-moving items, their periods of peak sales, and items frequently purchased together. External factors like local trends and reports could also help predict demand, allow for informed decisions on inventory management, and enable inventory to match season demands.
An easy example would be stocking up on umbrellas, sunscreens, sunglasses, and many water bottles to prepare for the summer. We might not need Big Data to tell us to stock up on sunscreen before summer, but it would help us know which sunscreen is in demand.
Customer Behavior Analysis
Big data analytics also allows us to analyze customer behavior and preferences. This function will enable us to better understand consumer needs, which is essential for gauging customer interest in available products.
Understanding customer behavior allows us to better segment customers by their preferences, values, and relationships between them. This increases the effectiveness of marketing by allowing ads to be better tailored to the evolving needs of the customer and reworking previous strategies for better engagement and results.
Big Data Analytics Word Cloud – Source: Pixabay
Improved Operational Efficiency
With real-time monitoring, big data analytics can assess supply performance and inventory levels and detect bottlenecks that could lead to lost sales due to stockouts. In addition to ensuring proper inventory management, data analytics can identify areas of waste and poor resource allocation, allowing for adequate restructuring of labor and technical resources.
It can also measure gaps in organizational functions, as it can measure employee performance and help highlight employees who stand out in their fields and those who may benefit from extra training. This can improve the overall operational efficiency of the business.
Optimized Risk Management Strategies
Risk management is another area where Big data analytics can shine; it allows for the proper identification of potential threats to the business, such as physical threats such as flooding or fire outbreaks or cyberspace security shortcomings where a fraudster might find a weakness and provides insight into satisfactory risk mitigation.
Outside of business, this function was applied in 2012 to predict where Hurricane Sandy would make landfall five days in advance. This allowed rescue operations to occur ahead of time and focus on the areas with the highest risk, thus saving countless lives and avoiding numerous casualties.
Conclusion
Big data analytics and emerging technologies are more than just buzzwords; they are essential components of modern business operations that leverage vast amounts of data to bring valuable insights and patterns that help inform business operations and drive innovation.
Concerns about the collection and privacy of data should be considered and examined from the perspective of law and consent before being used. Today, data comes from numerous sources, in multiple formats, and in enormous quantities. Big Data Analytics and its surrounding technologies allow us to extract value from that data and make informed, data-driven decisions.
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