big data
5 Big Data Solutions for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
Big data solutions are beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses. They help you to make data-driven decisions.
According to an Accenture study, 79% of executives agree that companies will perish unless they embrace big data.
This holds true for businesses of all sizes and types. There is a prevalent misconception that small and medium-sized businesses and start-ups do not require big data technologies because that would increase their operational costs without substantial benefits.
This can’t be further away from the truth. Big data applications are relevant to any business that wants to make informed decisions in any business aspect like sales, marketing, advertising, branding, manufacturing, investments, and even human resources.
On the contrary, small and medium-sized enterprises run on a specific budget and have limited resources at their perusal. Making mistakes is likely to affect them more than larger organizations; therefore, putting big data analytics to use is all the more critical for them.
Here are the 3 significant reasons why big data technologies are beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses.
Big Data Benefits For Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
The three significant big data benefits are as follows.
1. Reduces cost
According to NewVantage Venture Partners, Big Data is delivering the most value to enterprises by decreasing expenses (49.2%)
One of the major big data benefits is that it helps make business precise decisions. Companies do not have to go back and forth to learn from trial and error. By analyzing the market trends, digital footprints of visitors, and other metrics, big data tools can predict businesses’ right rewarding strategies.
Utilizing big data benefits businesses across all silos like marketing, advertising, human resource, and even investments.
2. Boosts sales
Nearly 50% of respondents in a recent McKinsey Analytics survey said that analytics and Big Data have fundamentally changed their sales and marketing functions.
Big data helps to leverage the power of people-based marketing. When you analyze the digital footprint left behind, visitors and customers can target them with relevant information at the right. This data-driven targeting or remarketing very effectively leads to conversions.
3. Improves pricing decision
A study titled, Use Big Data to Give Local Shoppers What They Want by Boston Consulting Group found that Big Data majorly helps retailers optimize the prices that eventually result in a substantial hike in sales.
Big data leverages information like the duration of a patron’s association with your business as a customer, the number of purchases they make, and their likes and dislikes, among other things. These data can then automatically optimize prices for specific customers to increase sales, upselling, and cross-selling.
Now, if you’re starting with adopting big data technologies or want to optimize your existing business intelligence strategy, here are the big data tools you need to have.
The 5 Big Data Solutions For Small Businesses
Here are the 5 big data solutions to keep an eye for if you run a small and medium-sized business or a start-up.
1. SAS
SAS, founded in 1976, is a leading business analytics software. SAS translates your business data into intelligible insights that would help you make data-driven business decisions. This big data solution gives you a better perspective as to how and where to lead your business.
Data analysis is required regardless of the size of your business, or even type.
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) face the same challenges as large corporations when it comes to not having adequate business growth insights.
SAS’s easy-to-use analytics, automated forecasting, and data mining capabilities enable SMBs and start-ups to achieve more with limited resources at their disposal.
With these data-driven insights, these companies can overcome challenges to scale up quickly.
SAS’s slogan for SMBs is simple: “Identify what’s working. Fix what isn’t. And discover new opportunities.”
Price
You can get a free trial and then ask for a special price for your business here.
2. KissMetrics
All metrics are measured and optimized for the one single, important metric — which is ROI.
The Return on Investment allows you to see if the investment you have undertaken for your branding and marketing efforts is worth it or not.
Kissmetrics is a leader in terms of helping you gain the ROI you deserve. It does this by enabling you to understand, segment, and engage your customers based on their behavior. You can then strategize and optimize your marketing endeavors in accordance with what your customer wants.
This big data tool has recently launched Kissmetrics for E-commerce, a big data application exclusively for e-commerce businesses. This technology will help businesses to reduce cart abandonment rates and increase customer loyalty and repeat sales.
Price
New customers get a dedicated customer success agent for 2 months and help use it to full potential. The price starts at $500 per month. Know more about Kissmetrics pricing here.
3. Google Analytics
How can one miss Google Analytics while talking about big data analytics?
Google created this tool to help businesses make data-driven decisions with insights from the biggest search engine itself.
Google Analytics helps you extract long-term data to forecast trends and other valuable information like keywords to help you make highly rewarding decisions.
This big data tool helps you track and analyze visitor behavior, like where the traffic comes from, how the audience responds to marketing materials, what the bounce rates are, etc.
Additionally, you can also keep an eye on social media metrics like social media traffic, social media ads impressions, clicks, etc. This allows you to alter even your in-flight social media marketing campaigns to experience better results.
Google Analytics also helps you with device metrics as to from which devices the majority of your customers access your website? This can help you make your online products and services multiple device friendly.
Price
This is a free available big data service offered by Google.
4. IBM Watson Analytics
IBM is a powerful big data solution used by big organizations that need data processing.
The most important feature of IBM Watson Analytics is that its features are very easy to use, making it a go-to tool for both the data scientists and analysts and normal business people.
For instance, IBM’s Watson Analytics makes advanced predictive business analytics easily understandable and accessible to small-and-medium businesses.
Business owners can generate and understand data reports without needing complex data mining and data analysis skills.
This self-service big data analytics solution consists of a suite of data access, refinement, and warehousing services. These big data analysis services give you the tools to fetch and read data yourself to guide your business decision-making.
Its NLP (natural language processing) technology helps businesses detect problems, scan patterns, and gain meaningful insights into what kind of content and campaigns drive sales when deals are likely to close or go cold and what causes maximum customer satisfaction.
Price
Contact IBM for pricing here.
5. Alteryx
Recently acquired by Alteryx, ClearStory Data is another big data solution that offers complex business data benefits to everyone. This big data analysis tool provides advanced data mining and big data analytics capabilities.
This big data solution primarily works by integrating your business’s internal data with information available publicly, to give you more precise insights. These insights are displayed in a storyboard format.
You will also be allowed to create graphs, storylines, and interactive visuals from this storyboard. It also comes with collaborative features enabling team discussions. Your team members can comment on individual StoryBoards, much like one would on social media platforms.
This attractive storyboard feature makes ClearStory data stand out from other big data analysis solutions. StoryBoard provides a better user experience than other tools.
Price
Contact ClearStory Data for pricing information here.
Conclusion
Without leveraging data, you are shooting in the dark. And when resources are limited, or you’re beginning your business journey, you have no choice but to make precise business decisions.
Big data solutions help you do just that. They allow you to make data-driven decisions where your chance of going wrong is highly unlikely.
A data-driven strategy is vital in all business verticals, from sales, marketing, manufacturing, to human resources.
