If you are a small business with a lot of data, why not use it for your advantage?
Many small business owners feel that big data is for large-scale companies with millions of customers. But if you have any kind of volume of information, you can reap the rewards by looking at it better.
It’s a complex subject, but anyone can get started fairly quickly. You just need to know where to look! Here are some big data tools to help you on your way.
Supercomputers
Struggling with big data? It’s elementary with Watson. IBM’s software-as-a-service supercomputer can be used to get information from your customers. Even insights that you had never even considered.
Watson learns as it goes, and can talk to you in language you understand. So, that makes it an excellent starting point in your big data journey – and it should have positive effects on your business.
Courses
Before you start getting into the large numbers, you will need to know how to use them. According to many top business analysts, big data is changing the way we do business – and you need to hop on board and join the ride.
There is a huge range of courses available – try your favorite search engine – but one we picked out was from SimpliLearn. The big data course available at http://Simplilearn.com/ is technical. But it will start you on the right track and help you get to grips with the basic open source language that is used widely in the industry.
Products
Insightsquared is a very accessible starting point for those wanting to start mining their big data. Their products come in reasonably-priced packages for single users up to unlimited.
They also have a wide range of free products that can help you start getting to grips with your sales funnels, lead generation, and overall performance. If you want to keep your best clients, you can use products like these to do it.
Visualization
The one problem with big data is that it is hard to penetrate it. Reams of paper filled with numbers is going to be hard to process for most employees in your business, no matter how expert they think they are.
Pentaho offer a nicely balanced solution to those problems with their interactive visualization in Hadoop. This takes your numbers, crunches them, and provides you with easy to read insights. You can use these to improve your business, or send them out to journalists as a press release.
Resources
Data Science Central have an amazing list of resources for all your big data needs. Whether it is machine learning, databases, or any other subject related to high volume figures, it has pretty much anything you could ask for.
We hope you find our recommendations handy. Big data is a complex subject, but once you start on your journey it won’t be long until you understand the fundamentals. And the effect it can have on your business – however small – could be profound. We wish you luck with your big data challenges, and with any luck they will help you expand your company!
