The rise of social network sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter means this is the age of consumer web based relationships. They not only change the way we interact between one another, but they are disrupting and changing whole sectors, from marketing to FMCG to the media. These information flows generate exponential amounts of unstructured data, and as the following three experts will explain, this is changing the way businesses need to relate to consumers.
Consumer web a large piece of the big data puzzle
Dr. Manuel Aparicio, CEO of Saffron Technology points out that the data we have access to is ever changing. That’s because people never stay the same, and our shifting tastes and habits are reflected in the way we use the consumer web. Saffron’s associative memory technology mirrors the way the human brain works. Big data analytics will need to move this way in order to keep pace with the ever changing nature of the free flow of information online.
Want to know what’s really going on?
In order to know what consumers are saying about your brand, how and why they are making purchasing decisions, you need to go outside your organisation. Keith Holdt is an Investment Director at LDC and explains that customer records and internal data is unimportant compared to the unstructured conversations taking place in the consumer web. The zero moments of truth now take place in the open spaces online, which is where consumers consider their options.
Gaining insight from billions of consumer records
Steve O’Donnell, CEO of S1NED explains that big data is nothing new. It has just got bigger, from millions to billions of records. Scaling up the infrastructure merely allows us to store more data. Using it is the key. Being able to use it in real time is the next goal of businesses looking for a competitive advantage. Then the billions of new records being generated every day can start to mean something for companies with the facility to access them.
Talent v democracy in the consumer web
A columnist for TechCrunch, and digital media entrepreneur, Semil Shah believes the problem is a talent bottleneck in the consumer web. People who understand how to interpret the data and make new products and services from that are very rare. If we can get beyond the need for data scientists, as Saffron wants, with the democratisation of big data, then we will be a lot closer to realising the countless possibilities it represents.
