ALL YOU NEED IS… (18/02/13)
Modern technologists are debating whether big data is a revolution or an evolution.
Research director at Gartner, Svetlana Sicular, argues that big data may look like an evolution for those people who deal with it on a daily basis but it’s certainly a revolution for others who have never dealt with data before.
Whatever your idea of big data is, it has significantly changed the decision making process of every business as well as the outcome of those decisions.
Here is all you need to know about big data:
The information behind data-driven decisions is of limited use in its raw form.
Instead, we define metrics and build software that turns data into numbers that humans can easily digest.
Unfortunately, given the huge volumes of data businesses increasingly have access to, one of the biggest challenges companies face today is choosing the metrics worth adopting.
The real problem, however, is not choosing the metrics, but the fact that the maths behind them is often flawed, says Econsultancy’s tech reporter Patricio Robles.
Often decisions are based on numbers that don’t mean anything, and become the product of a flawed calculation which, in some cases, proves to be worse than decisions made on instinct.
But good metrics do exist and are better than instinct, so businesses might want to slow down and make sure that the maths behind the numbers is really as solid as they’ve come to believe.
The explosion of devices, apps, the cloud and the Internet has ushered in the era of big data. Survey results uncover several key trends as companies grapple with big data and start to use it to gain a competitive advantage. The infographic below shows a snapshot.
According to Econsultancy, the average smartphone owner has around 41 apps on their phone and with so many businesses investing in mobile apps is clear that the need to measure and monitor the performance of these apps is becoming of vital importance.
There are a number of good app analytics tools available for measuring and evaluating the performance of apps, such as free software like Google’s Mobile App Analytics.
There are also specific analytics tools designed solely for mobile apps including Flurry and Localytics, and paid for options like the Adobe Analytics suite.
By understanding these stats, businesses can understand not only more information about the target audience and their devices of choice, but also if there are devices an app needs to be tested on in order to improve the experience.
The surprising thing is that a lot of organisations still aren’t aware of the mobile analytics tools available to them and invest in mobile app without measuring the ROI of such investment.
Socially Devoted is an industry standard that measures social media customer care. When it first started being adopted just over a year ago it showed that, overall, 70% of Facebook questions were ignored.
However, more recent figures show that brands have become more Socially Devoted as the overall response rates increased from 30% in Q2 to 55% in Q4.
Walmart seem to have taken the metric in the most literal sense. Only a half a year ago they were ignoring 8,794 customers’ questions per quarter but in Q4 they left only 143 questions unanswered achieving an exceptionally high level of customer care.
If you too are trying to increase your social media customer care throughout 2013 don’t miss these six tips on social media engagement.
Big Data: What’s in It for Me?
This video by IESE Business school answers the question that every business owner asks their analyst every day: what’s in it for me?
Watch the video below to find out.
Remember that ‘sharing is caring’ so leave a comment below and make your opinion count. Until next week… Gabs (@gabrielegenola)
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Comments (1)
February 20th, 2013 at 2:58 am Posted by Roland
Worthy to read!
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