Big Data, Mobile and the CXO – What Gives?

A lire sur: http://www.enterprisecioforum.com/en/blogs/ranjani-rao/big-data-mobile-and-cxo-%E2%80%93-what-gives

Blog-post by Ranjani Rao, Thu, 03/06/2014 - 06:50

Big Data has Big Power. As industry pundits, technology evangelists and the media herald the immense potential of data deluge, there is still a section of technology and business executives who are trying to make sense of it all. What strategic benefits does Big Data hold? How can we, as a business, use it? Will it help our bottom line? 

The meteoric rise of smartphones, social networks and online transactions has led to businesses hoarding an immense amount of data that conforms to the three Vs - Volume, Variety, and Velocity. Internet-enabled mobile devices are continuously generating big data. They connect to each other as well, forming a mobile ecosystem. Mobile devices not only generate data but also act as data delivery mechanisms. Consider the following sources of mobile big data:

• Social media data updated by general users, enterprises, corporates, marketing agencies and others.
• Financial transaction data sourced from mobile shopping and banking
• Geo-location data
• Live data streams
• Mobile usage log data
• Consumer purchase behavior and history
• Site visit analysis
• Campaign performance data

Now, if we contemplate on the fact that 6 billion mobile phones are in use worldwide and that mobiles continue to generate reams of data, whether in use or not; we are truly talking Big Data.

Its barely a surprise then, that evaluating and analyzing such to its granular level can yield a wealth of information like buying patterns, consumer behavior and market trends. 

The opportunity for CXOs is BIG (no pun intended) 

Across industries as varied as retail to healthcare and government to education, Big data is the CXO’s chance to sift, analyze and predict when and where the market will need new solutions, answers, innovations and updates. Mobile big data helps CXOs make more targeted and streamlined business decisions for a positive bottom-line impact.

The scope is endless.

• Insights into consumer behavior, sentiment and movement patterns across vast sub-segments can lead to better, more targeted campaigns, engagement tactics and service delivery.
• Economic data, weather data and other external data through mobile sources helps target user sub-segments for macro level trend correlation
• Analytics on real-time mobile big data can help with real-time product alerts using geo-location data, purchase patterns and history, time of day and weather conditions. Or can be a source of timely information to frontline workers and service personnel.

How CXOs must lead an organization wide revolution 

Let us start with some real word use cases: 

A new University of California San Francisco study involving up to 1 million people will use mobile health applications to improve the prevention and treatment of heart disease. 

Amazon.com which is the No.1 online shopping destination with 178 million unique visitors monthly has 29% of it customers who shop only via mobile devices, according to ComScore.

We can cite more such real world examples and we will only be scratching the surface. 

The road ahead 

This is a situation that calls for tight IT-business alignment. Once there is a firm business need established that Big Data can answer, the IT team must rise to the infrastructure challenges that will eventually rise from data creation, storage and analysis. 

The potential is real and there. It is up to CXOs now to be able to use it wisely.