Big Data and Big Analytics can be used for a wide array of purposes, including increasing sales, improving competitive intelligence and managing workforces, by all sorts of entities. McKinsey reports that retailers adopting Big Data can increase operating margins by more than 60 percent. During the past holiday season, for example, Macy’s and J.C. Penney partnered with a shopping app provider to reward customers with discounts, or song downloads, for trying on clothes and making purchases. Best Buy and Kohl’s both used location-based promotions to push notifications to near-by or in-store customers.

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Sports and movie fans are well aware of how the Oakland Athletics baseball team studies Big Data to field competitive teams without a mega-payroll. The National Basketball Association also draws on Big Data to provide real-time statistics on even the most subtle of player characteristics, to help coaches make better game-time decisions and to enhance television broadcasts. Pharma companies, which have successfully used Big Data for marketing purposes for years, are now hopeful that it will pay big dividends in the area of research and development by permitting analysis of vast quantities of data across multiple modalities.

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Tags: Big Analytics, Big Data, competitive intelligence