Big Data Analytics refers to the complicated process of analyzing big data to unleash information such as market trends, customer priorities, hidden patterns, correlations, etc. It assists businesses in making informed business decisions.

On a large scale, data analytics ways and technologies offer businesses a means to examine data sets and retrieve new information. Business intelligence (BI) provides solutions for basic queries related to performance and business operations. Big data Analytics is a kind of advanced analytics. It consists of complex applications along with elements like statistical algorithms, and predictive models. 

What are the key technologies and tools in Big Data Analytics?

Big Data Analytics
Source: Heath IT Analytics

Several kinds of tools and technologies assist in Big Data Analytics processes. Some of the common tools and technologies used to support big data analytics processes are mentioned below:

Hadoop

It is open-source software that stores and processes big data sets. This technology is capable of handling structured and unstructured data in large amounts. 

Predictive Analytics

It is a technology that is capable of processing complex data in large sums. It uses statistical algorithms and machine learning to predict future event results. Organizations use predictive analytics tools used by businesses to detect risk assessment, fraud detection, marketing, and operations.

Stream Analytics Tools

It is used to aggregate, filter, and study big data. Further, the data can be stored on several platforms in different formats.  

Data Lake

It refers to a large storage repository. It stores native-format raw data until it is required. A flat architecture is used by the Data Lake.

Data Warehouse

It is a repository that handles large sums of collected data by multiple sources. Usually, predefined schemas are used by data warehouses to store data. 

Knowledge discovery/big data mining

This tool allows companies to mine the bulk of structured and unstructured big data.

In-memory data fabric

It is a tool that dispenses large sums of data across system memory resources. It offers low latency for data processing and access. 

Data virtualization

Data virtualization tool allows data access. It offers no technical barriers.  

Data integration software

It allows big data to be rationalized across different platforms such as Hadoop, Apache, Amazon EMR, and MongoDB.  

Data quality software

This tool enriches and purifies large data sets.

Data pre-processing software

This software helps in preparing the data for further research. Unstructured data is purified and data is reorganized.  

Spark

It is an open-source cluster computing framework. It is used to stream and batch data processing.

What are the benefits of Big Data Analytics?

There are several benefits of using Big Data Analytics. Some of them are: 

  1. Quickly analyzes large sums of data from different platforms, in several types and formats.
  2. Makes rapid better-framed decisions for efficient strategizing, It improves and assists in the operations, supply chain, and other parts of strategic decision-making.
  3. It assists in Cost savings. It further leads to optimizations and efficiencies for new business processes.
  4. It understands the customer behavior, demands, and sentiments in a better way. This results in better marketing perspectives and offers information for product betterment.
  5. It offers competitive risk management strategies to businesses. 
  6. Analyzing structured and unstructured data is also a part of big data analytics. 

What are the major challenges in Big Data Analytics?

Even though big data analytics comes with wide-reaching advantages, it also has some challenges associated with it. It includes: 

Accessibility of data

Managing and processing data becomes a complex process while dealing with larger amounts of data. Big data requires proper storage and maintenance to make sure it benefits even the less experienced data analysts and scientists.

Data quality maintenance

With bulk data retrieving from multiple sources and in several formats, big data quality management demands proper efforts, resources, and time for maintenance.  

Data security

The complex big data technology brings several security drawbacks. In such a complex big data ecosystem, it becomes cumbersome to address security issues properly.  

Choosing the right tools

A lot of confusion and chaos arises when you have to select from a variety of data analytics tools and software present in the market. Businesses must learn to select the best tool that meets the infrastructure and needs of the users.  

In addition, hiring experienced data engineers and scientists is expensive and your engineers may lack internal analytics skills. In such a case, it becomes difficult for businesses to fill the gaps.   

How is big data analytics useful for businesses?

Big Data Analytics can be used to assist businesses in several ways. Here are a few examples:

Customer acquisition and retention

Consumer data assists the marketing processes of businesses. It results in customer satisfaction. For illustration, personalization engines for Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon can offer better user experiences and build client loyalty. 

Targeted advertisements

Personalization data from platforms like product page viewing histories, interaction patterns, and past purchases aid in generating captivating targeted ad campaigns for customers on either individual level or a larger scale.

Product development

Big data analytics is capable of offering perspectives to inform development decisions, product viability, and progress measurement. It steers suggestions in the direction of what suits a business’ clients. 

Price optimization

Retailers can maximize profits by choosing those pricing models that model and utilize data from multiple data sources. 

Supply chain and channel analytics

Predictive analytics models can assist with proactive reload, inventory management, B2B supplier networks, notification of expected delays to deliveries, inventory management, and route optimizations.

Risk management

New threats from data patterns for efficient risk management strategies can be identified by big data analytics. 

Improved decision-making

Perception extracted by the business users from related data can assist businesses to make better and quicker decisions.

Is data the new fortune? Keeping in mind the momentum at which data is being used across the world, definitely yes! Let’s analyze it with the help of stats.  

Do you know that OTT platforms save $1 billion per year on user retention simply with the use of big data? Google, the search engine, records 2 trillion searches every year, with more than 50,000 search doubts every second! 20% of those are fresh queries and are never searched before. It points towards the fact that an advanced set of data is entered continuously.  

Before Big Data Analytics, businesses were storing the bulk of their data into their databases without the knowledge of what to do with it.  

Top 5 tips for effective Big Data Analytics

Bad data often results in heavy losses to businesses. On average, they end up spending up to $9.7 million every year. Additionally, poor data perception results in poor decision-making, low productivity, false business strategies, and disturbs the connection between the organization and customers. As a consequence, companies end up losing their goodwill in the market. 

This problem can be put off. Here are the 5 promising tips to be considered by organizations to transform their big data into a huge success. 

Invest in Leadership  

Leadership is the most significant factor for tending data-driven decision-making culture. Businesses must have well-structured leadership roles for Big Data Analytics. It accelerates the successful execution of big data initiatives. Well, only 30% of the businesses have scheduled a chief data executive for big data initiatives.

Skill Development

The following three skills are worth to invest:

  1. Disparate open-source software can be used to analyze and integrate both structured and unstructured data. 
  2. The capacity of framing and asking related business queries with a crystal-clean line of vision like how the perceptions will be used. 
  3. To perform the generation of forward-looking perspectives and predictive analytics, knowledge of statistical tools is a must. 
  4. Perform Experimentation with Big Data Pilots

Initially, identify the critical issues of your organization and how big data can be utilized to serve as a solution to that issue. Big data labs offer a boundless collection of big data tools. It offers excellence that allows businesses to execute a pilot and demonstrate value efficiently without initiating any heavy investments in talent and IT. Executing these attempts at an initial stage can be done with the least investments in the technology. 

Focus on the unstructured data 

Gartner suggested that business’ data will progress tremendously in the upcoming four years, and 70% of that data will be unstructured. Let us consider the three most significant principles related to unstructured data. To store and analyze unstructured data, assurance of having suitable technology is important. Attention and priority to these unstructured data are significantly linked back to the individual. Well, it is essential to initiate such unstructured data that is rich in data sentiments and value. 

Incorporate Operational Analytics Engines 

It’s a good time for organizations to move their idea of traditional offline analytics to technology-based analytic engines. It strengthens the organization with near-time decision-making and real-time. Businesses must adopt a learn-to approach and measured test.

Conclusion

Businesses come across several kinds of data each day. The data exists in several shapes, forms, and sizes. The big data analytics market is continuously flourishing and is expected to reach up to USD 549.73 billion by the year 2028. Businesses have started to consider this progression. 97.5% of them have already invested in big data analytics and artificial intelligence. Therefore, businesses must take suitable precautions for transforming their big data into a huge success. 

In this article, we discussed the different aspects of big data analytics. In case you have any further queries, kindly connect with us at SaaSworthy.

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