Big data is becoming increasingly important in business decision-making. The market for data analytics applications and solutions is expected to reach $105 billion by 2027.

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However, big data technology is only a viable tool for business decision-making if it is utilized appropriately. Google has shown how to use big data effectively for decision-making, but many other companies don’t understand the principles to follow. Far too many businesses fail to develop a sensible data strategy, so their ROI from their data collection methodologies is often subpar.

Guide to Creating a Big Data Strategy

A lot of companies are still struggling to develop data-driven cultures. One poll cited by Harvard Business Review found that 72% of companies had not achieved this goal yet. Fortunately, there are steps that can be taken to address this.

Big data and data analytics have started to dominate the way that businesses operate, changing the way that decisions are made on a managerial level. However, without a prior knowledge of data analytics and AI competencies to facilitate your data collection and analysis techniques, it can be difficult to harness the data that you have stored in the right way. This guide will break down how you can make your business data-driven and how your big data initiatives can enact positive change on your company.

1. Write Down Your Objectives

In order to ensure that your data repository is beneficial to your long-term strategy, it is paramount that you create objectives before you begin to collect the data that you will need. For instance, this could be trying to find out a piece of information that you are missing, finding trends with regard to your customer’s experience, or exploring why your business has not been successful in an aspect of its operations. By doing this, you will ensure that you can formulate a data driven strategy to create solutions to the problems that your business is facing, which can help your company to improve and grow.

2. Take a Business Administration Degree

Before you begin to look at the technical knowledge that you will need to create a data-driven culture within your workplace, it is important that you are able to understand the foundational elements that will drive the success of your business. This can then help to support your decision making by ensuring that you have specialist business knowledge. At Aston University, you can study for a DBA UK that will help you to gain inside knowledge of international markets, as well as allow you to conduct your own research project, which can be focused on data and its uses. This will then give you a good grounding in a variety of business topics that you can apply to your own business, allowing you to see patterns and understand the data that you collect.

3. Download the Right Data Analysis Software

If you are not tech-savvy or simply do not have time to collect and analyze your company data yourself, you should consider downloading the latest tools that will help you to utilize data. This will reduce the risk of human error within your results, while also allowing you to sift through vast amounts of data each day in order to come to the quick conclusions that you need. Not only this, but they can reduce your costs by ensuring that you can harness your data by yourself, without the need to employ a data analyst.

The best data analysis software can help you to collect and organize your data, to construct potential data models, and can also help you to write up reports. The qualitative and quantitative data that it analyses can then be used to make difficult financial and operational decisions that can have a positive outcome on your company both now and in the future.

4. Keep in Mind Metrics and KPIs

If you have decided to track your company’s performance and collect data manually, you will need to keep your KPIs and metrics in mind. These can help you to measure your success against certain indicators, such as website traffic, profits, and customer acquisition costs. By choosing the right metrics, you will be able to get the most out of your data by pinpointing the stats that are most important to your business and which can be used to make decisions and to improve your company. These can help to indicate whether you are reaching your company’s targets and staying on track for a fruitful 2020.

5. Utilize Your Reports and Insights

Once you have collected and analysed your data, it is time to put it to good use. In order to make data-driven decisions, you should not leave the data that you have collected to linger on your hard drive. Instead, you need to use this data to edit your goals and your business plan, compare your data to your objectives, and to fill in unanswered questions and gaps in your knowledge of your business. Not only this, but the information that you have discovered and written up in reports can then be used to make decisions that have been backed up with evidence, and that are not purely being implemented on conjecture.

Making data-driven business decisions can be incredibly difficult, especially since big data and data analytics are fairly recent innovations on your business horizons. However, by implementing the correct software and by utilizing your reports for good, there are many ways that you can use your data analytics to make decisions that have been backed with evidence.