Small is Big
Big Data has been the Buzz word
across the corporate world,
consulting and analytics firms
off late. Leveraging BIG data
is a new mandate this year
across many organizations. This
includes
data
management,
application
of
business
intelligence and analytics – all
to integrate, mine, process and
draw rich insight and inferences
for BIG picture towards making
decisions
which
make
BIG
impact on business.
For better clarity on what exactly
is BIG data – it is primarily
combining and aggregating data
in new and innovative ways in
order to discover new emergent
properties in the data, resulting
in an outcome “greater than
the sum of its parts”. Through
integration and combination of
data, and through the resulting
complex
relationships
and
patterns present in the combined
data, BIG Data delivers immense
value in the form of insights and
analysis.
There is no argument that
BIG data can be leveraged for
making BIG decisions which can
make a BIG difference; in many
cases though, an undeniable
fact about BIG data is that it
comprises log files; i.e., event or
transaction files. For businesses
with BIG data as intrinsic part
of
business
like
Facebook,
Google and Twitter, leveraging
BIG data makes sense; and the
rest need to acknowledge that
transactional data in isolation
doesn’t give a complete picture.
Therefore
analytics
applied
on BIG data, though usually
over a quality of time will leave
gaps and uncertainties with a
possibility of key linking data
being absent or unavailable. This
is definitely not to take anything
away from BIG data, but to call
Ola Cabs Mobile App for
example, asks customers
for reason on cancellation
of booking – in a very
simple straight
forward way, and in a
way it’s so convenient for
customers – right on the
App, right at the moment
of
cancellation; small piece
of data – but so timely &
actionable
TinyOwl, a platform
for ordering food from
any restaurant they’re
connected with, is another
example – on processing
the order, collects specific
feedback on delivery time
– again, very small piece
of data, but so timely and
actionable.