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Just like oil became a valuable commodity in the 20th century, data is also proving to be priceless to companies and business organizations in the 21st century. Data analysis specialists have projected that by the end of 2020, business enterprises will have data amounts equivalent to 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.

Companies are gaining more insights into their markets by embracing big data and stream processing technology now than ever before. Business enterprises are also using big data to improve their business operations efficiencies in ways that could not be imagined just two decades ago.

As technology continues to evolve, big data analytics service providers are devising new methods to help smaller companies make use of this valuable resource efficiently. After the birth of the internet barely a decade ago, firms are in a rush to adopt business analytics software and warehouses for in-house data. Business organizations are also reaching for private and public databases to kick-start their machine learning and artificial intelligence strategies.

In this article we are going to highlight the reasons why embracing big data will ultimately give your company a competitive edge in the current cutthroat capitalist global economy.

Improved Efficiency of Business Operations

The efficiencies that accrue after a company embraces big data technology ultimately causes a ripple effect of increased production and reduced cost of doing business. The colossal amounts of data that is generated by companies in the modern world makes its analysis and management virtually impossible. For example, 20 terabytes of information are generated by one airplane sensor group in just a single flight.

Moreover, massive intelligence stockpiles are created by companies that deal with fleet vehicles and product deliveries such as company parcels compounded with RFID technology. Computers that communicate with each other without the need for any form of human input have been devised to manage this large amounts of data that barely generated on a daily basis.

These technological advancements in big data technology have made it possible for alerts to be sent to the head office of transport and logistics companies whenever there issues with consumer product delivery or warehouse systems that send a signal to logistical systems whenever there is low inventory.

Increased Human Capital

The retention of company employees has been a regular concern for business enterprises although it is taken more seriously in some niches that it is in other industries. A recent study that was conducted by IBM infers that a business enterprise had over 5,000 job applications reviewed but only hired 200 employees on a monthly basis. Big data has made it possible for companies to quickly analyze longtime worker’s histories to identify the job traits for long-term employment prospects.

As a result, corporations and small business enterprises are revamping their recruitment process which reduces employee turnover significantly. Companies can dedicate resources that are newly available to activities that are of more productive value to the business and increase their levels of service delivery. The retention of an experienced pool of employees can significantly assist a business enterprise to outperform its competitors using their long-term experiences.

Fuel for Research on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

From business analytics tools and intelligent narrative generator to chatbots, machine learning and Artificial intelligence have become a competitive edge for firms that promote automation, smart decision making and intends to reduce the cost of doing business. However, companies need high-quality data offered by significant data technology to kick-start their artificial intelligence strategies and train their machine learning models.

Tech giants such as Google and Facebook have naturally solved this problem by using their user-in-the-loop model where data is generated by users through search queries, comments, and posts. Other firms can access the data by going to commercial and public databases cloud sourcing classification services and data collection and working in collaboration with businesses that are driven by data. You will, therefore, need to incorporate data acquisition strategies that are highly effective regardless of the approach that you decide to use.

About the author

Kevin Faber is the CEO of Silver Summit Capital. He graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in Business/Managerial Economics. In his free time, Kevin is usually watching basketball or kicking back and reading a good book.

Follow him on Twitter: @faber28kevin

Featured image via Yayimages.