How Big Data Became So Big - Assignment Example

? Big Data Executive Briefs Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Executive Briefing 5 Context 5 World View 6 Q&A 6 Company View 8 Q&A 8 Partner’s View 10 Customers 10 Q&A 10 Suppliers 11 Q&A 11 Strategic Alliance Partner 12 Q&A 12 Financial Community 12 Change 12 The Ask 13 Call to Action 13 Details 14 Q&A 14 References 16 Executive Summary The world of today has become a highly competitive environment. The existence of open economies which provides limitless business opportunities to organizations all over the world has played a major role in the process of increasing the level of competition in the markets all over the world. This has in return resulted in the process of a generation of a large number of alternatives to the buyers and consumers in the open market, who essentially pick up the items that best suits their interest and budget expenses. However, it can be said that the lifeline of business organizations all over the world is to cater to demand of the consumers and customers, and hence the customers become the life line of the organizations and businesses. With the increase in competition in the market place, the companies are finding it tough to gain competitive advantage over their rivals, who are targeting the same group of consumers with similar product offerings. The application of Big Data technology helps the companies in a major way in the process of accumulating and analyzing large amounts of data in real time scenario by building various kinds of predictive models that helps the companies to understand the trends and patterns of the multiple variables that might affect the prospects of the business. Talking about this particular company, it has been assumed that the company has mainly product based offerings in its portfolio. Highlighting in these lines, it can be said that because of the company’s global presences in more than 18 countries around the world, which comprises of markets like Asia Pacific, the western and Latin American markets. Hence it can be easily mentioned that the company’s products are often exposed to consumers all around the globe, however, under a different brand and product portfolio. The product portfolio mostly comprises of fast moving consumer goods which are non perishable in the short term. However, it is of utmost importance to mention the fact that the product portfolio for various countries are variable in terms of market to market and region to region, as the product needs to be marketed in order to cater to the needs of the customers of that particular market. So, the application and extent to which the big data can be applied in this product based global company is tremendously wide. In more specific terms, the big data if applied in the process of mining information from the company’s social media marketing forums will result in the gaining of significant needs and wants of the consumers, which are highly different in nature in regards to the location and region of the market. The implementation of the big data will also benefit the company in the process of increasing automation in the process of supply chain and thereby increasing the efficiency of product deliveries and potentially removing the option of stock outs of fast moving and high selling consumer demanded products. The implementation of the big data will also provide significant improvement in the reduction of lead time and thereby raising the productivity range and scales. On a note of conclusion, it can be said that the company will gain a lot of advantages if they are successful in the implementation of Big Data. Executive Briefing TO: Senior Company Executive FROM: Manager DATE: 11/21/12 SUBJECT: Need for Implementing Big Data in the Business Context The 21st century is the era of globalization. The pace of change of today’s society is so fast that what is new today, becomes old tomorrow and obsolete and redundant the day after. Masses of most of the developing and well established economies around the world are turning towards the virtual world. The tremendous surge of high speed internet in various countries as well as the spurious and unlimited rate of growth of new technology low cost smart phones have played a major role in the process of eradicating the barriers of today’s geographical boundaries. As a direct consequence based impact, this process has opened up a lot of opportunities for the business firms around the globe, in terms of catering their products and services to the global customers, located all over the world. The power of worldwide connectivity brought forward by the large number of internet surfing global population highlights the power that the consumers holds in terms of making their voices heard by the companies and making significant amount of influence in the company’s business processes in terms of value generation, value communication, value distribution and value capture. Due to the easy availability of low cost data browsing plans provided by the telecom operators of the developed and developing economies, this power of the customers has been brought down to the reach of the bottom of the pyramid. The customers are using the internet as a medium for information gathering and are hence getting involved in the process of generation of data for the companies. The important factor in the entire situation is that companies have realized the fact that in order to design and implement better forecasting tools, techniques and models, proper analysis of consumer data is highly needed. As a result, the companies are encouraging the process of generation of data from the consumers by getting them involved in making their choices, opinions and preferences heard. By doing this, the companies are gathering the valuable consumer based data that is being provided by the consumers through the virtual world as well as through the use of traditional market research channels. The new trends in the real life environments are helping the businesses in terms of generating significant amount of information about their target consumers and helping them in the process of understanding their consumption trends, and patterns and thereby having better and improved ability of demand forecasting. Recording of data of various dimensions and categories is resulting in the generation of a huge pool of qualitative and quantitative data, which can be collectively referred to as the Big Data. The Big Data has become the recent buzz word in various high level corporate meetings in the hope that its implementation will provide significant growth to the company’s businesses (IBM, “Big data spans four dimensions”). World View The application of Big Data and analytics are finding tremendous applications and takers in the real world. Q&A Q: How does Big Data help the business organizations around the world? Ans: Talking from the business related viewpoint, it can be highlighted that today’s consumers, due to the evolution of a demanding and highly busy lifestyle are often subjected to standards of being cash rich, yet time poor. The consumers are highly dependent on the internet as a part of their daily lives for the purpose of work or entertainment and networking. This change in the lifestyle of today’s society coupled with the widespread internet access has brought in to focus the emergence of various new retailing formats like online shopping and order delivery. This has led to the process of emergence of various new business whose entire business model is focused on delivering value based products and services to the customers located anywhere around the world, while using the medium for taking or orders or even delivery. The consumers and customers all over the world are more and more getting aware and are actively participating in the process of getting information about the brands of their choice through the usage of internet. The companies in an attempt to gather information and aid in the process of information search of the consumers are actively rolling out online campaigns which are helping in increasing the level of consumer connectivity with the brand. This is resulting in the process of generation of a huge amount of data that are highly resourceful to the companies for determining future consumption trends and patterns of the target consumers. Q: What is the chance of applying Big Data in government organizations? Now talking from the commercial application of big data, it can be said that this particular technology has tremendous takers in various government and private organization because of its ability to generate validated output by analyzing large streams of data, that has been collected through the widespread use and implementation of the automation processes in various fields ranging from production to public safety. Q: What is the application of Big Data in the real world? Ans: Big Data is gaining tremendous importance in the real world application with every passing day because of its ability to provide better prediction and thereby aiding in the process of better decision making (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 64). Talking in the points of its benefits, it can be said that the big data has four unique dimensions comprising of volume, variety, velocity as well as veracity, which helps in the process of analyzing massive amounts of relevant yet varying formats of data for organizations as well as government agencies at a very short span of time. This significantly aids in the process of successful monitoring and detection of abnormalities, diversions, errors and even crime and frauds in a much more enhanced and effective manner (IBM, “Analytics: The real world use of Big Data”). Company View The most important factor that has to be taken in to consideration is that the company is a product based company which has presence all over the world. As a matter of fact, there are large numbers of customer present all over the globe, who have a high preference and inclination towards the product offerings of the company. Q&A Q: Will Big Data help in mining insights from online sources and campaign? Ans: Since the company already has a presence in the various social networking sites in an attempt to make its presence felt to the consumers located in various countries and markets, the implementation of the big data will provide a great deal of aid in the process of analyzing the success rate of the online marketing campaigns, besides analyzing the consumer feedback and responses for understanding their evolving needs in terms of the company’s products. By the process of combining the firm’s ability to understand the consumers’ mindset in regards to their needs, the big data implementation will be very helpful in the process of increasing the company’s ability to predict the consumer behavior of the target consumers and thereby help in the process of maximizing customer satisfaction for the company’s products (Rayport, “Use Big Data to Predict Your Customers' Behaviors”). It can be mentioned that since the big data has the ability to analyze and measure large amount of data of both qualitative and quantitative nature, so big data is often integrated with the market research of an organization. In this case, it can be said that the large volume of inputs generated by the market research efforts of the organization, can be analyzed in a better manner through the usage of big data. Q: Can Big Data help in the better assumption of the demand of the organization’s product portfolio? Ans: The implementation of the big data in the organization will provide a better demand forecasting for the next season or quarters because of the technology’s ability to significantly analyze multiple input variables that have been collected by the company through an exhaustive market research exercise. This is important as big data analysis of the market research data will take in to account the various direct and indirect variables that can affect the consumer behavior and significantly the demand for the upcoming future and will significantly aid in the process of better decision making in regards to future assumption of demand. Q: Will Big Data be able to help in increasing efficiency in the production process? Ans: The implementation of big data will also provide a significant amount of advantage for the production division of the company. In an attempt to better monitor the quality and proper and efficient usage of raw materials, implementation of big data will significantly enhance the organization’s ability to bring a development in the production efficiency levels of the company. Q: What is the cost benefit analysis for applying Big Data in the organization? Ans: Now, talking in terms of cost benefit analysis in regards to the incurring of cost by the company for the implementation of big data infrastructure in the company, it can be said that the technology can be tried and tested in a small division of the company, rather than implementing a large module of the entire technology all at once (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 68). Through this process of step by step implementation, the company will be able to incur the cost of investment over a long period of time, rather than having to invest a large sum of money at once. Also, talking from the perspective of return of investment it can be highlighted that the process of better and more efficient decision making will significantly contribute to the process of overall growth and development of this globally present product based company. Talking in these lines, it can be said that the application of big data will be instrumental in the process of bringing a massive transformation in the entire business model of this organization. Partner’s View The implementation of the big data within the organization will have a revolutionary impact in the process of managing the business partners and stakeholders of the organization. Customers The big data will provide a great mileage to the company in terms of managing the customers. Big data through the process of step by step implementation of various monitoring and customer data capturing tools will help in the process of generation of various quantitative inputs regarding various critical business variables. Q&A Q: How will Big Data implementation help the customers? Ans: Talking from the point of managing customers in the physical store outlet of a particular region, the big data will help the company to track which product lines has a faster sales conversion as compared to others. This will help them to track the merchandise movement of the shelves of the outlet (HBR, p.62). By the process of tracking merchandise movement in the stores of various regions, the big data will help the company to identify the nature demands of the company’s products arising from various regions. This will automatically help them to decide on better segmentation and targeting of the customers in the future. The deep insight of store to store merchandise movement data will help the company to decide on offering store based promotion of various regions which will help the retail outlets get relieved of stagnant inventory, formed as a result of slow sales for that particular product lines for the company. The big data can also provide a significant level of advantage for online shopping since it will be able to capture and analyze large amounts of data related to consumer behavior of the customers and thereby design effective product assortment in the website to promote online shopping. Suppliers The implementation of big data in the company will provide the advantage of integrating the ordering system of the company with that of the suppliers IT infrastructure. Q&A Q: What is the advantage for the suppliers of the business Ans: The process of capturing of highly relevant information on a store to store basis will help the company to have a better forecasting for future demand of the company’s products. The suppliers can automatically access the nature and amount of demand of essential material and will thereby help in the process of increasing efficiency of both the company and the suppliers. Strategic Alliance Partner The most important strategic alliance partner for a company is the logistic handler. Q&A Q: What is the advantage of the strategic alliance partner for the business? Ans: Through the process of gathering data on movements of merchandises in various outlets all over the world, the big data, when implemented in the company will help to provide significant delivery of company merchandises in various global locations by placing orders in time and thereby increasing the efficiency of logistics handler in regards to making delivery of products on time. This will help in the process of solving the company’s problems of inventory stock outs while helping the logistics handler in the process of making timely deliveries Financial Community It can be said that the implementation of the big data technology will help in gathering more individualized insights of the business processes which will provide better decision making. Better decision making will lead to increasing the profitability of the company by generating more sales of the products through better understanding of the consumers. Having high company profitability will attract the financial community to invest in the company’s stocks which will help in attaining growth in the future. Change Talking in the lines of change, it can be said that there are certain factors that needs to be considered. For proper implementation of the big data processes, the most important factor that needs to change is the process of decision making. The decision making process of the top management has to be receptive and liberal minded so that they take the inputs and feedbacks provided by the analysis of the large volumes of relevant data on a more serious note (Barton & Court, 82). For the purpose of implementing this change, a corporate seminar for the top management can be conducted to make them aware of the related benefits of application of the big data in the organization. The second change that has to be made is in regards to replacing of age old IT infrastructure (Manyika & et.al, 74). This change can be initiated by making significant investments in acquiring new IT hardware. The Ask There are a lot of factors that has to be communicated for the acceptance and successful implementation of the Big Data in the company. The most important factor that has to be communicated to the company’s management team is the relevance of the implementation of big data technology and its benefits in terms of alignment in the business processes of the company. The next factor that has to be communicated is the implementing the process change in a step by step manner across the multiple divisions of the company. The third point is the process of sanctioning a budget for making necessary IT replacements in order to make the company’s IT infrastructure compatible with the big data. The final point that needs to be communicated is the need of a team of data analysts who will be able to generate significant insights from the large volumes of data Call to Action The following can be described as the action steps for the implementation of the big data Action Steps Who Increasing the awareness about the benefits of implementing Big Data among the top management. Senior Company Executive Getting a budget sanctioned in regards to the implementation of big data in the organization and making necessary changes in the IT infrastructure of the company Senior Company Executive Sanctioning of a proposal related to the hiring and maintaining of a team of data analyst experts to operate and analyze the big data Company Management Announcing the implementation process of the new technology in the company to the company’s internal stakeholders Company Management Choosing the first division of the company to initiate the step by step implementation of big data in the company. Company Management Replacing old IT infrastructure of the company with new hardware technology in order to make the organization’s departments compatible with the implementation of the big data IT Division of the company Conducting a recruitment drive to hire a team of data analysts and experts to handle the big data processes of the organization. HR Division of the company Details Q&A Q: What is the need of having a team of data analytics professionals? Ans: It has to be said that the company needs to have a team of data analysts as they have the power to find treasure within a huge amount of data (Davenport and Patil, 70) Q: What kind of freedom do the analytics team for smooth running of the operations? Ans: The analytics team has to be given considerable amount of freedom in terms of extracting and gaining data from various departments as it will help in the process of their result generation abilities. Continuous insights and inputs from various managers of the organization, who are in charge of various product lines, will also help the data analytics professionals in their decision making processes (Davenport and Patil, 75). Q: How will the big data help in the growth of the business? Ans: Big data is the process of uncovering insights from various data fields of modern communication and technology (Lohr, “How Big Data Became So Big”). Talking in these lines, the data analysts will focus on analyzing the data and will concentrate on building of various analysis models using predictive modeling techniques (Barton & Court, 81). The analysis models will be analyzing the data in the upcoming months, with significant amount of modification and considerable analytical tweaking from the data analytics professionals. The new data that will be generated will help in the process of increasing customer sales and thereby fuelling the growth of the business. References Lohr, S. How Big Data Became So Big. 11 Aug 2002. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. < http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/business/how-big-data-became-so-big-unboxed.html?_r=0 > Barton, Dominic and Court, David. Making Advanced Analytics Work For You. Oct 2012. Web. 21 Nov 2012 < http://hbr.org/2012/10/making-advanced-analytics-work-for-you/ar/1 > Manyika, James and et.al. Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. June 2011. Web. 21 Nov 2012. < http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/technology_and_innovation/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation > Davenport, Thomas. H and Patil, D.J. Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job Of The Century Oct 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2012 < http://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century/ar/1 > McAfee, Andrew & Brynjolfsson, Erik. Big Data: The Management Revolution Oct 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2012 < http://hbr.org/2012/10/big-data-the-management-revolution/ar/1> IBM. What is Big Data. 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. < http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/ >. IBM b. Analytics Study The real-world use of big data. 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. < http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ibv-big-data-at-work.html > Rayport, Jeffrey.F. Use Big Data to Predict Your Customers' Behaviors. 5 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. < http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/use_big_data_to_predict_your_c.html > Read More