Conquering big data

For all the tech­no­log­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties open to them, mid-mar­ket busi­ness­es are still wary of tak­ing big leaps into the world of data min­ing. With­in the bits and bytes zip­ping around their net­works lies val­ue, yet find­ing it involves expen­di­ture, time and poten­tial secu­ri­ty issues.

In a recent study, infor­ma­tion man­age­ment com­pa­ny Iron Moun­tain and con­sul­tan­cy PwC found that, com­pared to larg­er organ­i­sa­tions, mid-mar­ket firms were not as keen to car­ry out analy­sis on their infor­ma­tion sys­tems for busi­ness ben­e­fit. More than 30 per cent of enter­prise firm respon­dents claimed that using data to dri­ve inno­va­tion was a pri­or­i­ty com­pared to only 21 per cent of mid-mar­ket firms

Busi­ness­es are much more con­cerned about pro­tect­ing data on their sys­tems rather than exploit­ing it, accord­ing to Chris­t­ian Toon, head of infor­ma­tion risk at Iron Moun­tain. “While many busi­ness­es claim to under­stand and har­ness val­ue from their infor­ma­tion, their infor­ma­tion pri­or­i­ties are over­whelm­ing­ly pas­sive and pro­tec­tive,” he says.

“They are more con­cerned about avoid­ing a data breach and lit­i­ga­tion, or fines for non-com­pli­ance or enhanc­ing exist­ing process­es. More active uses, such as reach­ing new cus­tomers and mar­kets, and using infor­ma­tion to dri­ve inno­va­tion fall to the bot­tom of the pri­or­i­ty list.

This ten­ta­tive approach is like­ly to be borne out of the lack of finan­cial reserves to deal with pun­ish­ments result­ing from a sig­nif­i­cant breach and fear of expo­sure to rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age, Mr Toon adds. “A €500,000fine could mean the end of the busi­ness.”

If mid-mar­ket organ­i­sa­tions that haven’t tak­en the plunge want to make the most of their dig­i­tal assets, they will have to start by look­ing at how they col­lect and store infor­ma­tion before adding the analy­sis tools on top.

There are var­i­ous options on the table, from stick­ing with in-house tech­nol­o­gy that can be more expen­sive, but car­ries less risk, to the cloud, which does the oppo­site. Mid-mar­ket com­pa­nies shouldn’t just jump into either, but align the deci­sion with their over­all growth strat­e­gy, says Clive Long­bot­tom of ana­lyst firm Quo­cir­ca.

“If you have wor­ries about data secu­ri­ty and the cloud, you will nat­u­ral­ly default to on-premise. If you are host­ing your appli­ca­tion in the cloud or using soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice, then your data should be in the cloud for per­for­mance rea­sons and there­fore your ana­lyt­ics should be near to the data for the same rea­son,” he says. “We believe that increas­ing­ly cloud secu­ri­ty and avail­abil­i­ty will trump in-house, on-premise capa­bil­i­ties, mak­ing the best place for apps and data to be in the cloud.”

REVENUE FROM DATA

Though star­tups are seen as the hottest tech­nol­o­gy users around, due to their agili­ty and abil­i­ty to adopt fresh projects at speed, mid-mar­ket firms have the ben­e­fit of sit­ting on tech­nolo­gies and infor­ma­tion that are prime for open­ing up fresh rev­enue streams.

Lee Frater, dig­i­tal growth man­ag­er at the Busi­ness Growth Hub, an organ­i­sa­tion­al sup­port body in Man­ches­ter, has seen numer­ous mid-mar­ket firms use this to their advan­tage. She points to an events and trav­el com­pa­ny that designed its own back-end book­ing sys­tem and decid­ed to set up a sep­a­rate soft­ware devel­op­ment house as demand for their prod­uct was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than expect­ed. That new busi­ness is now help­ing pro­vide addi­tion­al growth in a com­plete­ly new sec­tor.

Mid-mar­ket firms have the ben­e­fit of sit­ting on tech­nolo­gies and infor­ma­tion that are prime for open­ing up fresh rev­enue streams

A tex­tiles man­u­fac­tur­er, mean­while, inte­grat­ed mobile tech­nolo­gies into all their retail out­lets to engage both staff and clients. “They used mobile to cre­ate cama­raderie among their remote work­ing staff and to tap into bespoke online e‑learning plat­forms to pro­vide on-site train­ing, ulti­mate­ly dri­ving staff reten­tion,” says Ms Frater. “Along­side this they also look at using mobile devices to dri­ve on-site pur­chas­es with clients, backed up by a clear data strat­e­gy.

“If an exist­ing prod­uct is out of stock, they are cap­tur­ing the sale with the client at the point of con­tact. As the sys­tem devel­ops, the data analy­sis means the organ­i­sa­tion can intu­itive­ly know which prod­ucts are more pop­u­lar.”

Such anec­do­tal evi­dence is pos­i­tive. But for mid-mar­ket firms to tru­ly thrive using tech­nol­o­gy and the data it cre­ates, more of them would be wise to adopt such pro­gres­sive approach­es, ones that look to mould the busi­ness with the future in mind rather than the past. “Today’s needs are far more for pre­dic­tive capa­bil­i­ties so the busi­ness can re-align itself as need­ed, rather than be for­ev­er fight­ing fires,” Mr Long­bot­tom con­cludes.

CASE STUDY

BIG DATA FOR MID-MARKET

Lon­don-based Cog­nia sits right in the mid­dle of the big data world. On the one hand, as a provider of voice record­ing solu­tions to a range of indus­tries, it’s giv­ing com­pa­nies the infra­struc­ture they need to col­lect tele­pho­ny infor­ma­tion and probe it for insight. There are var­i­ous pat­terns that can be gleaned from the mass­es of data com­ing into and out of call cen­tres and offices via the tele­phone, whether it’s a stan­dard or inter­net-con­nect­ed line.

Sales staff are con­stant­ly on the phone and though busi­ness­es know how well they per­form in terms of deals sealed, they have lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of why they suc­ceed or fail. This is where Cognia’s cloud-based big data ser­vice comes in handy, col­lect­ing every word said and then attempt­ing to cor­re­late cer­tain phras­es with wins and loss­es. This form of emo­tion­al analy­sis has been used to help busi­ness­es tweak their sales train­ing so they can deter­mine when a con­tact is either inter­est­ed or needs more entic­ing, cre­at­ing a kind of vir­tu­ous cycle.

Cog­nia has also helped on projects to deter­mine what typ­i­cal spikes in activ­i­ty are like­ly fol­low­ing TV adver­tis­ing. By col­lect­ing big buck­ets of data and throw­ing them up to the cloud, it was able to help cus­tomers pre­dict upticks and downticks in traf­fic.

The company’s vice pres­i­dent of tech­nol­o­gy Nick Hills says most mid-mar­ket firms he sees doing big data are look­ing to the cloud. “On-premise can be huge­ly expen­sive – a lot of firms can’t afford to do that,” he says. “It does­n’t make eco­nom­ic sense for them to do it.”

Mean­while, Cog­nia is itself a user of big data ser­vices. Just recent­ly, it’s been using ser­vices from big data provider Splunk to com­bine weath­er data with call infor­ma­tion. After some ana­lyt­ics work, it found more calls were com­ing in from its cus­tomers on sun­ny days. They deter­mined that many were tak­ing time dur­ing extend­ed breaks in the sun­shine to make calls on their mobile. This has now helped it alter oper­a­tional process to ensure it has the right capac­i­ty when the lines get busy.

REVENUE FROM DATA

CASE STUDY

BIG DATA FOR MID-MARKET