A small business guide to tackling big data

It’s called having business intelligence, savvy, and it doesn’t just mean knowing the ropes or being well versed with the client. It means having an eye to the current, an intuitive ability to respond to the river of data coursing through your company, and if yours is a small business, it probably means knowing where to turn to have that information processed, organized, and returned to you in palatable “intelligence” packets.

If you are operating a small business you might be missing serious opportunities if you aren’t paying attention to everything your business is telling you. Here are a few examples of the ways big data can be, and should be used to the small business operator’s benefit.

1. Company performance monitoring

Using advanced software, many companies are monitoring the details of their performance in a nuanced way. Details about spending, efficiency, budget, and more can all be consolidated and regurgitated into easy to read graphs and charts and even in the form of a report.

2. Mining data sets

Using big data correctly can be easy with the correct skills and knowledge. Using a service or software that can help eliminate bad data, sort through large amounts of information, and determine correlation and causation by looking at the numbers will open up a whole new world of incredibly useful information.

3. Cleaning the data

Making sure the data being parsed is clean is one of the most important elements of an intelligence operation. If the data isn’t clean, money is wasted in advertising, customers and clients can become disillusioned or break brand loyalty, and other major breakdowns can occur. All of this because the data used is dirty. Ensuring clean data is easy with the know-how, and if your company is too small to provide the man hours and knowledge, bring in an outside company. With business intelligence, so much of the work is specialty and time intensive that contracting the work is often the best decision.

4. Creating financial models and providing analysis

There’s only one way to ensure that the financial model your company uses is the right one. Using the hard data to determine relevance, reduce overhead, assess risk and ensure risk minimization, and forecast the company’s liquidity and cash flow will stabilize any company and ensure its long and healthy life. Remarkable what a few numbers can do.

5. Determining which processes can be automated

The way to ensure that efficiency is always the name of the game, and that no one sacrifices their lunch break to ensure smooth running success, is to automate anything that can be automated. This means assessing via data what processes are taking an undue amount of time, and determining whether or not portions of these processes can be left to the machines. A smart and surefire way to increase efficiency and empower already overburdened workers and management.