［DATA 1］The Age of Big Data

Digital marketing is the most important part of business. But who is behind the digital marketing? BIG DATA

Abstract Stock Market Charts. Zip includes CDR, AI and high-res JPEG files.Map source: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=8392
Software used: CorelDRAW X6
Date created: 14.10.2012
Layers of data used: Outlines

According to the recent business report(Skemp, Kerry, MA, Salem Press Encyclopedia, January, 2015,Facebook.,Research Starters), half of the world’s estimated online population now check in to the social networking giant Facebook at least once a month.  The number is equal to half of the estimated three billion people who use the internet worldwide.(business,BBC NEWS,2015)  The company is run by Mark Zuckerberg, operating an online social networking service “Facebook”. It is valued at 12.466 billion dollars(2014), and  its success is due to  translating data to business opportunities.

There is a trend that using advanced technologies will result in the correct organizational strategies.  Business strategy has always been premised on assumptions about technology(Philip Evans, Mar 2014,Informative, Fascinating).  Hidden behind the technology is data.  Those assumptions are changing, and changing quite dramatically.  Therefore, data is the key word to predict the trend of business and make a successful organizational plan.  That is to say, most companies, especially 500 top companies, pay attention  to the value of data. This essay will explore the relationship between data and business organizational plan.

The definition of data

It is necessary here to clarify exactly what is meant by data. Data is the numerical value, which is the result of observations, experiments or calculations.  Data has many kinds, the most simple one is the number while  it can also be text, images, sounds and so on.  in the beginning, scientific research emphasized using ample data to deduce the results. With the increased use of laptops (disseminating) over recent years, data can now  be used  in a multitude of places.  wider regions.  Lots of enterprises use data to analyze the market trending and dig out-explore new  business opportunities. Consequently, the term “data” has a new definition, called “big data”. Big data increasingly has a multiplicity of functions/uses.

Big data means about the growing challenge that organizations face as they deal with large and fast-growing sources of data or information that also present a complex range of analysis and use problems.(Richard L. Villars,June 2011,Big Data : What It Is and Why You Should Care). In other words, big data is collecting sea information which are not only just  figures but also figures of human activity. A further definition is given by Mee Chi So (2014,University of Southampton) who describes  “Big Data” as the large quantity of data being collected in different formats through various sources almost every second.

More and more companies are keen on data analytic to create more changes. However,as for this proposition we have seen in this essay that not all data is good.The good data is useful for the staff to make a right decision.That is to say, they would think more reasonably, critically and objectively after reading these database. Nevertheless,the most imperative thing is  find out the reasonable data. There are several steps to create useful data. Respectively, they are collection,statistical analysis and mining information.Firstly,use a variety of light data base to receive data from the client.MySQL, Oracle, HBase, Redis and MongoDB are the normal applications to collect information from client, and the users can be a simple query and processing work through these databases.  Analyzing the data is the second step of using big data. The massive data from the front client put into a large distributed storage such as Hadoop. Those system deal with massive data into the general query and  classification so that meet the demand of most common analysis. Last but not least,turning the useful  information to greater opportunities is the most significant part.

What is good organizational plan?

As discussed above, all the data is used for making successful organizational plan.Organizational planning means that organization attains a goal though multiple steps. What should do in this week and what will do in this season. That is a direction for companies and include different components to obtain the targets. There are three steps to complete a perfect strategy. At first, using analytics to identify valuable business opportunities from data to drive decisions and improve marketing return on investment(McKinsey&Company 2013, big data,analytics,and the future of marketing&sales). After digging out new opportunities, it is turning those insights into well designed products and offers that delight customers. Finally,that is delivering those products and offers effectively to the marketplace.

This can be seen in the case of P&G company shows how to use data  to make an outstanding plan of new products.  As we all known, P&G company have lots of products such as Beauty (Head & Shoulders Olay Pantene Wella SK-II ) and Grooming(Fusion Gillette Mach3 Prestobarba). They produce different products for different groups.  Thus, the company have a research of Asian preference when P&G  company launched a new product in Asia.  The personnel found out what Chinese people prefer from data. These data came from different channels and reflected that which flavor and chemical factors  are  suitable enough for Asian hair.( Cincinnati,Procter & Gamble Company MarketLine Company ProfileDate:May 8,201) If the manager regarded  that the popular products in  the USA would have same situation in Asia, it would not sale  as predicted.Owing to these data, the manager made a right decision and a new fit-able products of Chinese were invented. Thus,data is the most important role in making successful organizational plan.

The value of data and how it change business strategy

In last section, we recognize that it is necessary to use data analytic in developing strategy. There are several reason why data act as major character in successful planing. Those are  volume, velocity and value.

Volume means the quality of data, it has lots of information under consideration more than ever before. In 1908, on the island of Crete,archaeologists discovered a clay disc. They dated it from 2000 B.C., so it’s 4,000 years old. Now, there’s inscriptions on this disc, but we actually don’t know what it means. It’s a complete mystery, but the point is that this is what information used to look like 4,000 years ago. This is how society stored and transmitted information.(Kenneth Cukier,2014,Big data is better data) Now we also store information on discs, but the storage capacity is tens of millions of times more than before. It means  you have more data. Then You can see something that you couldn’t see when you only had smaller amounts of it(Kenneth Cukier,2014,Big data is better data).  Therefore, the market analyst search an accurate information with ample data. Comparing  several decades ago, market analyst collect information by traditional way such as Paper questionnaire survey. The sample is too small so that the data is not accurate.

However, big data with ample volume result in an accuracy organizational plan.

Value means that the data are valuable. Market analysts or managers are able to dig out a new business changes and make reasonable marketing strategies.  Online shopping is a good illustration of this theory.Take infant products as examples ,personnel could analyze the data of visiting website, so that realizing the peak time of website visiting is 3pm-9pm.In this period, young mothers have a leisure time to shopping online.Thus,there must be a customer service to answer the question to avoid customer churn. Comparing to online enterprises who make a strategy without any relative data.They judge the situation or case by feeling and work as normal people,starting work at 8am and ending it at 5pm. Then the transactions will reduce.As shown above,online enterprise have a reasonable working hour so that increase profits due to the data. It can also mine new business changes such as having a outlet activities when the data reflect that period of slack sales comes.

“Velocity” in this context means how fast the data is generated and processed to meet the demands and the challenges that lie in the path of growth and development. Customers share their feelings in real-time through Twitter and similar instant-messaging services where the staff could collect useful information. Then analysts could adjust or change their strategy immediately rather than getting unsatisfactory performance.  It is an important way in modern organizational environment.

conclusion

    Thus it would seem clear that data play an irreplaceable role  in successful organizational planning. Data is the biggest game-changing opportunity for marketing and sales since the internet went mainstream almost 20 year ago. (July 2013 | by David Court, Jesko Perrey, Tim McGuire, Jonathan Gordon, Dennis Spillecke, big data analytics,and the future of marketing &sales pp2 ).Companies must inject big data and analytics into their operations which bring  higher productivity rates and profitability. That is an big advantage no company can afford to ignore.

References

SKEMP, KERRY, MA, SALEM (2015) Facebook,Research Starters Press Encyclopedia, January, 2015

PHILIP EVANS (2014),Informative, Fascinating,Mar 2014

RICHARD L. VILLARS (2011),Big Data : What It Is  and Why You Should Care,Analyze the Future,June 2011

KENNETH CUKIER(2014),Big data is better data,TED TALK

MEE CHI SO(2014),What is marketing analytics,University of Southampton

DAVID COURT, JESKO PERREY, TIM MCGUIRE, JONATHAN GORDON, DENNIS SPILLECKE(2013), big data analytics,and the future of marketing &sales pp2  July 2013

McKinsey&Company (2013), big data,analytics,and the future of marketing&sales