Three Phases of the Big Data Journey
- Datameer, Inc.
- February 23, 2018
At Comcast, working with big data is considered a journey, not an overnighter.
The Big Data Journey
TDWI contributer Ulrik Pedersen described three phases to becoming a data-driven organization that also map nicely to the phases of a big data journey:
- Understanding the health of the business
- Experiencing operational excellence
- Shaping competitive strategies
Let’s explore these phases in more detail.
Phase 1: Understanding the Health of the Business
In this first phase, organizations use big data and diagnostic analytics to dig deeper into how various aspects of the business are executing.
Think of it like a doctor running tests to make a more accurate diagnosis and define the right treatment.
Most companies have built data warehouses that can answer descriptive questions — telling them what happened. Diagnostic analytics answer the details about the how and why, giving you a detailed diagnosis on the business execution to create an actionable plan for improvement.
By way of example, let’s say a company was looking to improve their customer acquisition. They would use big data analytics for a detailed diagnostic examination of campaigns, costs and conversion across all channels.
Phase 2: Experiencing Operational Excellence
In this next phase, firms build upon the diagnostic analytics to predict events and define the right strategies for those events.
These analytics will add items more data to the mix to identify specific actions to take. As the analytics are operationalized, the data and actions will be driven to the business teams regularly. Regular execution of the analytics will allow the organizations to continuously improve.
To keep with our example of improving customer acquisition, a firm would supplement the diagnostic analytics with more attribute, behavior and offer data.
This data would provide answers about where to most effectively target, what behavior to look for and which offers work best so the marketing team can execute optimal campaigns. The result should be higher conversion and lower customer acquisition costs.
Phase 3: Shaping Competitive Strategies
In this phase, an organization will add even more data to the mix, including external data, and create analytics that create competitive differentiation in the market and drive new strategies.
While the earlier phases help improve execution, this phase takes the streamlined execution and expands the company’s revenue and footprint in the marketplace.
Continuing on our theme of customer acquisition, the expanded analytics add eternal demographic, targeting and channel data to identify new segments to go after. Offers and channels will be aligned via the analytics to create new campaigns to expand the customer base. The result should be increased revenue, larger customer lifetime value and broader set of customers.
The Rewards of Starting With Big Data Analytics
Follow these three steps to each area of the business you need to improve and your journey will bring tremendous value to your business. Big data analytics is truly a journey worth undertaking. Organizations that understand big data analytics is a journey gain much more value out of their efforts, expanding how they use and apply the data to multiple parts of the business.
Ready to start your big data journey? A Datameer Demo is a great way to kick-start your efforts and learn what big data analytics are all about.
