As we mentioned earlier this month, big data isn’t always the answer. Data-driven marketing and business strategies, however, are right for everyone. If you’re thinking about a big data investment, consider this first. Sometimes optimizing information for your company means finding the right data to match your goals, whether or not it’s the biggest.
An essential part of the big data movement is learning how to shape business decisions with data. We couldn’t agree more that data optimization is one of the best ways to make an impact on business growth; in fact, we’ve added a specialist to our team to lead the new Data & Insights group that will address this need for our clients. As you’re moving towards data adoption at your own company, it’s important to understand the specific nature of varied data sets and their relevance to your company’s needs.
Your data investment might be better aimed at high-quality analysis than big, cumbersome sets of information that may or may not solve your problems.
Where is your data coming from? How reliable is it? Who manages it? These are all questions to ask when you determine the quality of a particular set of information.
Sure, maybe a data set has been brought to your attention that provides really fascinating information about your customers. It’s important to be discerning, though – will this new insight help you reach customers in a way that impacts your bottom line or takes your company to the next level?
Be careful not to use data out of context. Information can be intoxicating, and along with that comes a desire to force it to serve your purposes. Use the information for what it is, and if it isn’t applicable to your business goals, move on to the next thing.
Big data is never going to make business intuition go out of style. As companies move towards data adoption, senior leadership will have a good grasp on what will work and what won’t, and that should be trusted even amidst the hype.
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