BIG DATA FOR SMALL BUSINESS

MAKING BIG DATA SMALL - TURN A LIST INTO A DATABASE

Big data is all about joining up various sources of data and using it to improve productivity and profitability through better business intelligence.
Business intelligence (BI) tools are the technology that enables business people (and marketing teams) to transform data into useful information. That is, turn lists into insightful databases allowing marketers to improve customer satisfaction and ultimately sales.

Does Big Data exist for SME's? Well, it may depend who you ask.

According to Campbell Williams, group and marketing director at cloud services provider Six Degrees Group, "big data is confined to consumer mega-brands that are trying to work out what people are saying about them across a variety of unstructured data locations, such as email and social networking platforms."
Conversely, Chad Carson, former Microsoft and Yahoo executive and now VP product at Pepper data states, “Big Data is a hot phrase these days, but the key for SME's is that they should be using data in new ways that are appropriate for their business, whether it's 'big' or not.”
Whereas, Andy Neely, director of the Cambridge Service Alliance takes a different perspective. “One way to think about Big Data, is to think about how you’ll use ‘data’, dropping the emphasis on “big”. After all the value lies in the data…
With such divergence in the market - particularly from the supply side - possibly the more pressing question for SME's, particularly marketing teams, is how can they sensibly use the data they have or affordably source useful data to improve the products and services they deliver to their customers, the types of customer insights they can align to better connect proposition messaging to these products/services, to determine the effectiveness of various campaign activity allowing sustainable success through 'natural selection' rather than 'gut-feel' and finally, more robustly measure outcomes that may lead to reliable business cases for senior management to consider when allocating future marketing budgets.

Data is valuable big or small

As data becomes an increasingly valuable asset, SME's marketing teams will need to have a really clear sense of what data they want to own, what data they will access from others, how they are going to create and analyse this data, and how they are going to generate value and potentially profit from it.
According to Williams, "chances are, all an SME needs is a good CRM system, or entry point ERP if it’s bigger or more complex, and a proper customer contact strategy. Most SME's probably need a marketing consultant more than an over-blown and over-specced big data solution.”
One thing is clear Big Data is here to stay and it might be more a case of how SME's embrace the data they have more than how much data they could have.

Software solutions you already have

So what tools should SME's look for when scoping the IT marketplace for resources. There are really three broad levels of BI tools however the first two levels are more relevant to SME’s, so we'll only explore those:
Level 1 - Guided analysis and reporting. This category includes the traditional BI styles that many SME's have been using for years to perform recurring analyses of specific data. The BI tool styles in this category could include:

• Reports
• Dashboards and scorecards
• Corporate performance management
• Spreadsheet integration
• BI search

Level 1 Software solution could include: QuickBooks (finance) online application comes with its own trending tool where you can benchmark your own operation against similar businesses, Mailchimp (Email marketing) integrates with all the major e-commerce providers (websites) so you can use purchase data to send personalised campaigns and better understand how your marketing affects your bottom line, HootSuite (Social Media) allows data-driven social media marketing decisions with real-time analytics to spot trends and insights on how your social content is performing or Google Analytics (Google) allowing for website traffic to be tagged and tracked.
Level 2- Self-service BI and analysis. This category includes the BI tools business users use to perform ad hoc analysis of data. The BI tool styles in this category include:

• Ad-hoc reporting and analysis;
• Online analytical processing -- also referred to as OLAP cubes;
• Data discovery; and
• Data visualisation.

Level 2- Software solution could include: Sage 300c (business management solution) provides highly adaptable BI solutions for finance, marketing (CRM) and operations or Microsoft Dynamics 365 for every part of your business to better meet the changing market and needs of your customers.
Here are five key steps on how SME's can maximise their existing data to make it big.

Step 1 - Defining the objectives

The first question is what does the organisation want to achieve from their data? Customer satisfaction is usually a primary aim for SMEs, since a happy customer means repeat business. Being able deal with a customer’s request quickly and efficiently, compared to asking the customers to repeat their question or query each time they make contact.

Step 2 - Identify all sources of data

Most SMEs will have data stored in a range of isolated areas. The key is to work with what they have and then join it up.
Start with the CRM system or a basic database of contacts, maybe then add a telephony system that tracks all calls and look at your accountancy system, email records and social media accounts for further data on marketing communications.

Step 3 - Join up the data and consolidate

The next step is to join up and consolidate all the sources of information within a single tool.
While a CRM system may be required to display the combined data most aren’t able to access data from the various data repositories, so you’ll need to bolt on another tech solution that has inbuilt APIs that can hook into databases and deliver that information where its required. An alternative repository (to crm) can be cloud based and that can tap into various databases and systems to present the information in a web-based dashboard for interrogation.

Step 4 - Analyse reports and dashboards to understand the data

The combined data on the dashboard should display key performance indicators based on the communications data gathered, such as full details on customers, their last orders, any previous email communications, when they last called, and who dealt with the call, any Social Media interaction and comments.

Step 5 - Maximise and use the data to benefit the organisation

SMEs can now maximise the data based on their specific business workflow, they will know what customers are expecting and they can access all the available information at the right time allowing SMEs to predict customer behaviour and improve their service before they encounter a complaint. The focus now becomes the ultimate KPI - lift staff productivity and therefore more profitability.