Luc Burgelman – June 12, 2014
I came across David Linthicum’s article in Datamation this week that examines how vertical markets will drive big data, and it got me thinking about why some industry markets are flourishing with big data. It’s interesting to me especially because nowadays, companies can no longer ignore the [big] data at their disposal. Well, they can’t—and shouldn’t—ignore their data if they want to deliver good customer experiences, keep valuable customers and increase revenues, that is.
As David points out, big data adoption grows at different rates in each vertical industry because big data delivers different values for each vertical. At NGDATA, we’re seeing markets such as financial services, telcos, and media/publishing taking the first steps to effectively use their data to drive value.
Why? Well, what are the two things these industries have in common? They have a lot of customers generating plenty of (operational) data, and a continuous need to keep customers happy so as to not lose them.
Financial services, telcos, and media/publishing companies are very customer-facing and data-driven as seen through these examples of how they’re putting big data to work.
For banks, they are sitting on a gold mine (literally), with billions of data points on their customers that can help them better understand their needs. With big data technologies, banks obtain the real-time investment history of their customers and monitor all of their interactions (i.e. payments, mobile and online activity, credit card, calls, etc.) to uncover new investment opportunities.
Telcos’ measure of success is all about the customer—satisfaction, profitability, retention, and advocacy. Understanding customers and the elements that go into their decision-making is a direct correlation to increasing loyalty and revenue. Our telecom customers are targeting their customers at the individual level to learn about their usage, network, context-based interactions and product preferences in order to deliver the services customers want and to improve the overall success of their marketing campaigns.
Publishing and media companies are also becoming great examples for effective big data adoption. Our large international media group customers are using our big data platform, Lily, to gain a single, centralized, and real-time customer view to drive personalized content and marketing.
IDC predicts the market for big data will reach $16.1 billion in 2014, growing six times faster than the overall IT market. That’s a lot of data…and a lot of potential for companies across all industries to gain a smarter, deeper understanding of their customers.
Which industries are you seeing drive big data?
