The emphasis on big data and the Internet of Things might seem overblown in today’s buzzword-heavy culture, but impact of data analytics on businesses cannot be underestimated. Local giant DBS, as well as global powerhouses Intel, MasterCard, and Samsung, have jumped onto the big data bandwagon in hopes of tackling and improving everything from customer engagement to risk management.
While data analysis itself is not a particularly new field, dating back to a 1890s’ “Tabulating Machine” made to process data on punch cards for a population census, the advent of computing has expanded the field exponentially.
Nowadays, big data is capable of storing and analyzing thousands of terabytes of information (one terabyte is 1000GB, mind you) in a faction of the time it used to take. Change for the better, however, does not happen overnight, but the long term benefits heavily outweigh the temporary costs.
Let’s take a look at local household name DBS and see how their experience with big data has impacted their business operations.
DBS: Enhancing Customer Experience With Data Analytics
DBS, as the largest bank in Southeast Asia and amongst one of the biggest in greater Asia, aims to deliver top-of-the-line customer experience, and they set out to accomplish this with by becoming more data-driven to better anticipate the needs of their customers.
However, due their traditional but archaic technology stack, DBS found it cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming to execute advanced analytics at a large enough scale required for a company of their size. To achieve their goal of superior data-driven customer experience, this required an overhaul of their technology stack.
Teaming up with Cloudera, DBS assembled a strong central data team alongside the implementation of a modern enterprise data hub. This has given DBS the capacity to store and analyze large amounts of data with ease, allowing DBS and its team to the flexibility to experiment with the ways they approach and understand customer experience.
In so doing, they are able to engage with their customers more effectively while providing a better overall service experience.
David Gledhill, Head of Group Technology and Operations at DBS, put it best when he said, “we can scale out more economically, we can experiment more, and we can think about the types of data in terms of billions of events rather than millions of events.”
Moreover, DBS’ shift to becoming a more data-driven company has not just positively impacted the customer experience, but also the various individual departments within the organization.
Analytics can aid human resources with employee retainment by spotting trends in past resignations and applying those trends to current employees, and help individual bank branches recognize and react to customer flows, amongst other benefits.
Data has also driven down costs for DBS – an “80% reduction”, according to Mr. Gledhill – while improving revenue due to the more efficient customer experience.
Other major global players have also started to steer their companies into the future with a more data-driven culture in mind. MasterCard, for one, despite operating one of the world’s biggest and fastest payments processing networks, realized that their domestic data management system could not keep up with their rapidly expanding data volume.
The switch to a more modern enterprise data hub has allowed MasterCard to continue their growth by expanding their capabilities for increased data searching and acquisition.
Similarly, European telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom has also seen their bottom line being positively impacted through big data, with a 20% reduction in revenue loss from fraud after taking a data-driven approach to their business.
Big Data In A Small World
Beyond the specificities of DBS, MasterCard, and Deutsche Telekom, big data and data analytics can be beneficial to businesses regardless of industry or size. From healthcare and insurance to retail and education, data can aid each industry in different ways to bring down the bottom line.
Cloudera’s business intelligence solutions include, but are not limited to, information like customer insights, connected devices and services, and business protection.
For example, customer insights provide business with the information that require to learn about, understand, and improve the experience of a customer, especially essential to retail and e-commerce landscapes where the customer acquisition cost is ever-increasing.
Connected devices and services, on the other hand, uses IoT to manage the interconnectedness of a company’s assets, giving real time reports of an asset’s performance and even wear-and-tear predictions. Data analysis helps to keep businesses running smoothly, all the while picking up on nuances that might adversely affect a company’s bottom line.
Waddling into the deep pool of big data might seem daunting or even perilous at first, but it does not have to be as such. Cloudera offers business an easy way to understand big data, how it works, and how it could be beneficial to an organization’s future.
You can learn more about the positive impact data analysis can bring and the data solution that is right for your organization at one of Cloudera’s briefs here.
