Yes, big data is a significant trend in the industry today. It has moved from a buzzword or a fad to something real. Businesses across all industry verticals and sizes have started leveraging the power of big data and analytics to cut costs, innovate new business models, keep pace with changing business trends, understand their customers better, align the offerings with customer preferences, and increase their revenues. So much so that according to IDC reports, 71% of Big Data innovators are already making use of advanced analytics tools that possess real-time visualization and high-level forecasting capabilities. IDC also predicts that organizations are likely to spend $187 billion on big data and analytics by 2019! Undoubtedly, big data is one of the most valuable tools for organizations providing them with new business insights leading to effective cost management
Apart from all these aspects, one of the other key areas where big data is tremendously helping organizations is in creating operational agility. With structured data, faster analysis, and real-time insights, big data can help organizations transform their business processes that can lead to better performance and productivity to meet the tactical business demands. This may be done through the application of new technologies, capabilities, and innovation which can help in saving costs and improve the existing processes.
Business process transformation is becoming a necessity for today’s enterprises as new industries are evolving and also due to the growth of disruptive technologies such as cloud computing, social media, big data and advanced analytics. By leveraging big data, organizations can transform their business processes to streamline business operations, automate repetitive tasks, improve quality of the products, and respond faster to the changing business environment to stay ahead of the competition.
Here is how some of the leading companies have achieved business process transformation with big data in some of the key areas:
- EDP Renewables is one of the biggest wind turbine companies in the United States. With its 28 individual and geographically dispersed wind farms, the company has a capacity to generate 3.3 gigawatts of green wind energy. Depending on the weather and usage pattern, there are always differences between the margin of energy produced and the margin of energy that is sold. EDP has used big data and analytics to respond to such fluctuating situations. The company constantly monitors weather patterns and the weather events in real time and analyzes this information in context with turbine maintenance. Depending on the potential energy output and the potential price of that energy, the company prioritizes the turbine fixing. Such optimization of repair and maintenance of the equipment using big data has helped the company enhance its field service quality and management.
- A leading beverage provider with thousands of stores all over the world leverages the power of analytics in mobile applications to reduce the store inspection times and improve the customer experience in the stores more rapidly. The field inspectors, armed with a mobile device, perform the store inspection and immediately enter the information using the iPad. With real-time data analysis, the store inspectors get immediate scoring data and they can discuss the action plans with the store managers during their same visit. This business process optimization has helped the company in saving 30,000 hours annually in inspection times.
- T-Mobile USA has strategically integrated Big Data across its multiple systems. These systems combine customer interaction and transaction data and help the company predict customer churn. By analyzing the data in real time, the company is able to take appropriate actions and reduce the customer churn.
- UPS, the biggest package shipping company in the world, very famously uses big data analytics to optimize their routes and create unique service for its customers. But apart from that, the company also uses big data to predict vehicle maintenance and prevent unplanned and unnecessary maintenance.
Big data and analytics offer a huge potential by enabling enterprises to not only understand their customers better but also by offering an ability to transform the core business processes with real-time actionable insights. With rapidly changing economics, market dynamics, and technology landscape, companies of all sizes are looking to transform their business processes to become more agile, adaptable, and efficient and respond better to the ever-evolving market demands. With Big Data and Analytics, business decision-makers can go beyond their gut feeling and take more data-driven real-time decisions.