Regardless of how small or large your company is, there are many valuable lessons to be learned from how companies in the “Big 5 Industries” are handling the promise and perils of big data. With this article, Research Optimus highlights how five major industries leverage Big Data on a daily basis.
Big Data Applications in the Retail Industry
Retail stores use big data to help them identify information that will help them do the following:
Reduce cost of business
- Understand customer buying behavior
- Enhance goods consumption ratios
- Improve customer service quality
- Discover customer shopping patterns
- Design more effective logistics
- Achieve better customer satisfaction and retention
Macys.com uses a variety of big data technologies — and is growing at an annual rate that is 50 percent higher than other parts of Macy’s. As noted by Kerem Tomak, Vice President of Marketing Analytics for Macys.com, “We only invest in a technology if it solves a business problem for us and that is why we go for Big Data Technology”.
The Banking Sector and Big Data
The information in the banking industry could easily overwhelm anyone without a big helping hand from big data analytics to accomplish tasks like the following:
- Ranking investments
- Assessing high risk loan applicants
- Predicting payment defaults
- Optimizing stock portfolios
- Segmenting customers
- Analyzing credit scenarios
- Identifying profitable credit card customers
- Predicting payment defaults
For example, with credit scoring data, banks can focus on factors that are more likely to reflect loan repayment probabilities. Bank of America uses big data technology to help them manage and monitor 50 million small business and consumer accounts while analyzing what is going on with more than $2 trillion in assets.
The Entertainment Industry and Big Data Analytics
Entertainment is big business and big data applications are one reason. This is particularly true for data analytics involving customer service, marketing and loyalty. The ability to access and use data in “real time” has proven to be one secret to big data success for the entertainment industry.
Caesar’s is a visible example of an entertainment company that has invested in big data technology for the long haul. They regularly use customer data involving web clickstreams, rewards royalty programs and real-time play slots machines. Caesar’s has recently expanded their foray into mobile data by making targeted real-time offers to users of mobile devices. This coincides with a recent decision by Google’s search engine developers to expand their emphasis of websites that cater to mobile users.
Insurance and Big Data
The insurance industry is another example of companies that have seemingly have endless amounts of data to manage. Insurance companies often rely on big data to help them acquire new customers and retain existing clients. The “big data market opportunity” can involve a combination of identifying new markets to explore while not overlooking existing market opportunities.
With risk factor identification, data mining can assist the insurance industry by analyzing customer claims history and assessing the overall level of risk for each insured individual or business. Insurance companies must constantly keep an eye on fraud detection, and big data technology enables insurance companies to establish fraud patterns and identify factors that indicate a high probability of fraud for a claim.
Big Data Applications and Global Healthcare
Perhaps no industry has changed so much as the healthcare industry due to the impacts of big data technology. For example, the availability of patient data in an electronic format instead of paper files has literally transformed how healthcare companies operate. This has improved patient health while also changing reimbursement models.
But most healthcare organizations correctly realize that data is growing at a faster rate than they can manage it. Harnessing big data sooner rather than later requires healthcare companies to achieve at least three primary objectives — building sustainable healthcare systems, collaborating to improve care outcomes and increasing access to healthcare. United Healthcare is using big data technology to cope with more than 60 million customers and has adopted a clever big data slogan (“Health in Numbers”) to reflect their ongoing devotion to the benefits of big data tools and techniques.
Staying One Step Ahead of the Competition
Whether you “like” big data or not, it is important to realize that big data marketing is first and foremost required to stay ahead of your competitors. Today’s buyers and customers have high expectations for the companies they do business with — your company will often be judged by what it does not do as well as what it actually does with business data. Experts like Research Optimus can help make your “Big Data Journey” easier and more profitable.
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– Research Optimus
