We've previously looked at how cloud computing is changing the face of business intelligence through Big Data. By applying highly scalable, but affordable, cloud computing power to the massive amounts of data already being collected, companies are gaining new insights in real time and making data-driven decisions much more quickly. So what kind of practical benefits can you expect Big Data to deliver to your business?
- Monitor online ad campaigns and adjust which ads are served on a day-to-day – or even hour-to-hour – basis. With Big Data, you can tie ad views and clickthroughs to sales to understand which ads are converting the most profitable customers.
- Identify quality control issues in your production process, by applying Big Data to the Internet of Things (IoT): the constant stream of data captured by networked sensors in your factory. The result could be lower manufacturing costs, more reliable products and happier customers.
- Discover which promotions are working and which aren't, as they're running. You can compare live sales across stores and flag up stores that may not be displaying products correctly. You can also quickly spot if a product isn't selling because it's at the wrong price point. With traditional business intelligence, it might take you a week – which means a week of lost sales – to get those insights and change course.
- Provide better after-sales service by using IoT data from sensors on you products to advise customers on when to carry out maintenance, based on how they're actually using the product. You can also use the same Big Data to feed insights back into your design team, helping them develop new products with better performance and reliability.
- Figure out where to build new facilities, such as distribution centres and stores, by combining information about current logistics operations and shipping costs, and customer and supplier locations, with publicly available population statistics.
- Forecast demand for products or services – and get stock or employees in the right locations – for events ranging from a heatwave or hurricane to a bank holiday. Adding publicly available data such as weather reports or traffic flows to your own transaction data can give you extra insights about what customers are going to be looking for.
This is just a small sample of how Big Data, enabled by cloud computing, can have a big impact on your operations. If you want to find out more about how Big Data can help you in your business, come and talk to the Big Data experts on our Google Cloud Platform team.