Big data has become a phenomenon in the world of business in the last few years. It is changing the way business decisions are being made routinely. Because of the increasing use of big data today, many jobs are opening up in the field of big data analytics. Not only freshers, but experienced professionals are also signing up for online analytics courses to improve their career prospects. An online data analytics course is similar to the one taught in a regular college and it offers the flexibility of studying from a remote location at a convenient time.
NASSCOM – a trade association for Indian IT businesses has predicted that the Indian analytics industry will reach the $16 billion value by the year 2025. This means that it will account for 32% of the global analytics market. This shows how big is the scope of big data analytics in India. India is witnessing high growth in the big data analytics industry due to its large resource pool of technically skilled, English speaking population. Currently, India has 90 thousand analytics professionals employed across industries. And there is still a shortage as the supply is less than demand. Around 600 companies are working in this field already in India. With more and smarter devices in the market coupled with increasing usage of the internet, the amount of data churned out will also increase. Already, India ranks second highest in internet usage in the world. This means that with the expected growth, analytics will be a very exciting career field for Indians to work in.
The Indian government has understood the value of big data in the coming years and has already formulated a ‘big data management policy’ launched by Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The objective of this policy is to manage the tremendous volumes of data that are generated by different state and central government departments. For example, the government is working on the historical and current power consumption pattern in India to analyse and draw insights from it. These will help in better governance in the power sector.
There are a lot of high-risk industries that have relevant use of big data in their daily operations. Take the banking and finance sector as an example. Big data analytics is a useful way to minimise the losses and avoid the risks in the insurance domain. When a customer approaches an insurance company for an insurance or when a customer approaches a bank for a loan, they can check his profile and historical pattern to understand if he is a good customer for them or a bad one.
A similar big data use case scenario exists in the healthcare sector. This industry also deals with a lot of unstructured data sets on a daily basis such as prescriptions and test results etc. Since big data analytics can handle both unstructured and structured data sets and do complex analysis to make business decisions, it is especially helpful here. India has a strong rural population. In rural areas, access to affordable health care has been an issue since forever. With big data analytics, the government can efficiently manage healthcare support to the last mile and deploy automated systems and predictive analytics that will enhance the quality of health care in the country. Health care access will become easier to manage and faster to provide with automation and access to real-time information through artificial intelligence and smart devices.
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We are already observing how big data analytics is proving to be useful in the field of marketing. Marketers are using the data available from digital marketing platforms and industry to better understand the behaviour and needs of their customers. This field of analytics is improving the planning of their marketing strategies and thus improving their business performance. It is also improving the time taken to deliver the product to the market or customer, through automated systems.
In the logistics industry, big data along with artificial intelligence is making delivery of cargo faster by making it trackable in real-time and improving the processes within a company’s ecosystem.
Big data analytics has several uses in the field of research, customer service, sales and marketing, healthcare, public welfare etc. It helps them in tackling business problems by using advanced technology for data analysis as it makes it possible to sort, store and understand data sets which were earlier unmanageable. By using this technology along with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, startups are already working on making devices that can get critical data 24*7 from the customers and the environment. This, in turn, will improve the services given to them. A smart car that gathers data that is utilised to improve the car’s performance is a good example of what big data can do in the near future. The future of big data is surely bright in India.
Big data is the storage, measurement and analysis of large data sets. These data sets are so huge that it is not possible to work on them using traditional data analysis tools. The data sets may also be unstructured in nature which further makes them complex to deal with using traditional data sets. These days companies are investing in big data to enable their organization’s decision making and enhance its efficiency. They hire big data analytics specialists to work on big data sets and are willing to pay competitive salaries to them. These specialists earn their data analytics certification before they can be hired by organizations.
Major tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon etc use advanced big data methods and tools to work on their data and gather relevant customer insights. They also use it to enhance the user experience on their websites and apps. The unmanageable data of the past can now be effectively managed and understood thanks to big data.
Major financial institutions store huge volumes of data related to their customers. They operate on razor thin margins and need to focus on creation of useful insights for better outcomes. Big data can provide them with bigger profitability. McKinsey and company says that big data analytics is one of the top five catalysts that will drive job market growth and will boost the US economy by the year 2021.
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Big data analytics has several benefits for the organizations.
Some of the benefits of big data are listed below –
Big Data Helps Identify Business Problem Areas
Financial institutions have used big data analytics to make sense of the relationship their customers share with them. They check the impact of each channel of the bank such as net banking, apps etc. Through their analysis they can understand what issues they are facing and how to solve them. They can address problem segments in their customer base and find the areas of concern within their business. Big data helps businesses to leverage the power of data and achieve better outcomes so that companies can stay ahead of competition.
Big Data Improves Speed of Decision Making
Big data also helps companies in taking faster decisions as it improves the speed of getting data insights. It also brings more accuracy to analysis compared to traditional data analysis tools. In this way, big data helps an organization stay one step ahead of their competition.
Big Data Helps Understand Customers Better
Big data helps understand the customers better. Customer data sets are large and unstructured and are usually found in different isolated subsets. Due to this, it is impossible working on them or understanding them to derive customer related insights. But big data solves this problem by providing quick and reliable insights related to customer preferences, purchase patterns etc.
Big data helps derive maximum benefit from marketing campaigns
Big data also helps a company in finding out key insights derived from their marketing campaigns on digital channels. By understanding what is working well in their campaigns and what is not, they can improve on their conversion rates through implementation of their learnings in real time.
Big data also provides detailed insights on existing customers’ preferences and buying patterns. This can be used in keeping the customers satisfied and upselling relevant products and services to them. Hence, big data helps retain existing customers as well as create new ones. This helps them stay ahead of their peers in the market as their own customers do not leave them while new ones keep on adding.
Big data allows companies to manage data efficiently
Big data provides strong computing power and robust storage solutions for large data sets. There are many third-party cloud service providers that help companies do this. This makes it possible for companies to work on data sets without burning a hole in their pockets.
Big data also allows the companies to let their employees work on these tools without having complicated technical knowledge of procedures related to collection and storage of data. Various formats of data can be worked on big data tools for multiple types of analysis. Data can be analysed in methods such as data visualisation, among others. This makes it possible to analyse data in an easy to understand manner. It also allows non-technical and non-statistical workforce to understand the data related insights in a user-friendly manner.
Big data helps improve organizational processes and allow companies to stay ahead of their competition in the market. Big data analytics is a necessary competency for businesses to have today. It acts as a key differentiator between companies and their competition. Big data analytics is still in early stages and many companies are yet to catch up. However, organizations have realised the potential that it has in helping them outperform their competition.
More Information:
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