Abstract:

The exponential growth of structured and unstructured data in the last few years has resulted in the emergence of ‘big data’ as one of the hottest technology trends.  With data of all kinds being generated in record amounts every minute, big data has become a buzzword across various fields.  The objective of this paper is, therefore, to explore the various ways through which businesses can derive value from both internal and external data. In this respect, it was found out that companies, both big and small - across all industries - can use big data to increase customers’ retention and to meet the need of every individual customer. This huge amount of data can also help a business identify the strengths and weaknesses of its competitors and, thus, stay ahead of them. Finally, big data can provide businesses with real-time insights that would enable them to spot or predict problems, and solve them before they happen. Given all these benefits, we strongly believe that the collection and processing of the massive amounts of data, generated by customers or smart devices, can help any enterprise make more powerful and accurate decisions and, thus, significantly improve business operations and organizational performance.