While oil was the most valuable commodity available in the 20th century, data has snatched the crown for the 21st century. Businesses receive greater insights regarding their markets by integrating the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and other progressive technologies across all operations to improve productivity and workflows.
Less than two decades ago, this would have seemed impossibly futuristic, but rapid innovation has brought us to a highly critical juncture for small businesses.
Today, small business owners stand at the precipice of great opportunities that were only a faraway dream in the past. With Big Data by their side, leveraging prospects and information becomes an opportunity to create winning strategies. Whether they use in-house data warehouses or have access to business analytics software, there are infinite possibilities for success.
In this blog, we are going to take a look at the reasons why adopting big data modalities will ultimately help small businesses gain a competitive edge over their competitors.
In the past, one of the biggest pitfalls for a small business would be the lack of scale and cohesiveness to conduct production activities like their larger counterparts.
Moreover, managing employees across floors and shifts was complex, especially with impending deadlines and delivery timelines.
Today, Big Data has made streamlined workflows simple, with accessible details of every shift worker. From the hours they clock to their availability and work done, monitoring the output can help reduce time consumption, overstaffing, or understaffing.
Any business owner with a small production line wishes to expand the production capacity. And it can be done with the help of Big Data and Machine Learning. The technology combined with sensors posted across production and assembly lines can capture data regarding the production process such as approved and rejected outputs, downtime, and wastages.
By taking stock of the data accumulated, a manager can adjust the input and output within shift times to adhere to orders received, thus maximizing the capacity when needed while making provisions for known downtimes, and reducing wastages to manage output quality.
Every company collects a staggering amount of data each day whether it is regarding their customer leads or production specs. No organization can go a day without gathering such data sets.
However, these rarely get used productively due to the sheer volume and lack of support to convert data into actionable insights. With human labor and generic tools to collect data, assimilate, and create information, logs can be extremely taxing.
However, Big Data platforms and service providers have in-built analytics as their functionality that can help a business use all the gathered data which would otherwise be siloed. By combing through quintillions of terabytes collected from operations and competitors, Big Data analysts can help find all the factors that affect your business and provide insights as comprehensive visualizations to help the management make major decisions more effectively.
Employee turnover is a huge challenge that several companies are facing for the last couple of years. What is known as the Great Attrition is now becoming a huge stressor for businesses that invest millions into employing the right talent.
The same has also affected small businesses who hire critical roles and train these candidates only to find out it was a bad hire.
What is deemed a bad hire? A candidate who does not fit into the role has a lower output than what was determined or is simply not adept enough despite training. Big Data can help a company comb through and analyze tens of thousands of job applications to connect you with only the most accurate match to the role, thus reducing your attrition rates.
One of the biggest letdowns for small businesses is not being able to hop on to trend bandwagons early on. For any business, knowing what’s coming next is perhaps one of the biggest markers of decision-making.
Big data can help small companies catch trends and ride the wave to build momentum in the market. This not only makes a business receive greater visibility but being able to anticipate changes also helps business owners create remarkable thought leadership in the market.
Research in the past took ages due to endless testing and development practices. However, the process today is highly streamlined due to Artificial Intelligence that helps entrepreneurs conduct multiple calculations simultaneously to arrive at a working variable.
As another example, a small pharma company looking for the right formulation would have struggled in the past due to a lack of extensive infrastructural provision. Today, however, it can get the job done quickly with the use of big data and AI, avoiding lengthy trials.
The role of Big Data analytics in any industry vertical can provide substantial scope for business expansion and enhancement. Small businesses can leverage Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to find big opportunities without any of the conventional barriers or limitations to trade.
Today, you will find start-ups and solopreneurs diving deep into Big Data in order to double down on every aspect that contributes to their long-term success. This was only exclusive to bigger sharks in the economy’s proverbial ocean.
Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.
