How to reap the benefits of Big Data in your company

4 min reading
API Business Models / 17 February 2020
How to reap the benefits of Big Data in your company
How to reap the benefits of Big Data in your company

BBVA API Market

In first place, it is important to define the main goals pursued with its use. The collection of data should be directed to a specific end, following the clear mission of the business. There should therefore be collaboration between all the people in the company. It is important to assign a leader to be responsible for the project.

Once the objectives have been established, the next step is to analyze the data you have and identify what additional information you would like to obtain.

Try to connect and sort this information into packets to obtain something more substantial and valid. One way of doing this is to set specific objectives for an initial project, identifying the categories you need to separate. Once you have identified and connected your data, you can now automate these processes to improve the company’s response capacity.

The key is to relate all this information in a program that is easily accessible to all the members of the work team.

A way of getting to know your customers better

Big Data shows you the detailed behavior of the users of a service. Companies like Spotify, King or Netflix have already proved how useful this can be.

The information that the customers of a service provide daily through their behavior and their simplest actions are of incalculable value, and allows companies to change their strategy to be more in line with consumers’ expectations. So Big Data can be a major ally for companies in their decision-making.

The idea is to seek out and look more closely at the transaction data. The aim of most Big Data projects is to gain more knowledge of the customer, because this will serve as the starting point for developing a business.

Knowing what drives someone to purchase a product, to go to a particular store… All this can be found in data. The distance a person covers between their usual geographic area, the popularity of that shopping area, the climate that day… Everything can tell you something about the user.

Success stories: Netflix, Spotify and King

APIs that make it possible to collect data on users have already played a role in numerous success stories and have become indispensable for companies as diverse as Netflix, Spotify, the videogame developer King and the eCommerce giant Amazon.

eCommerce is precisely one of the sectors that reaps the most benefits. According to a study on Big Data by the Harvard Business Review, eCommerce firms that have adopted Big Data analysis have seen their productivity rise by between 5-6% ahead of their competitors.

The reason for this is that data analysis allows the creation of more personalized offers and communications. At the same time, by assessing consumers’ behavior, it enables occasional users to be converted into loyal customers.

Big Data has proved its utility in the specific sector of music streaming. To name just one, Spotify harvests its users’ data to determine what is trending, to create lists of popular songs and to customize each listener’s individual experience by suggesting music based on their tastes.

This demonstration of the power of data analysis, which has also been tested by other companies like Next Big Sound to predict the musical preferences of its users, was taken to extremes by Spotify when it dared –successfully– to predict the winners of the 2018 Latin Grammy awards.

The developer King has also studied its users’ behavior in detail in order to create games that they like even more.

The producers of the popular Candy Crush introduced certain changes into the popular candy franchise to observe how users reacted. The aim was to encourage (even greater) loyalty among the players, taking into account the information compiled during the analysis. This was how King launched the second version of the app onto the market: Candy Crush Soda.

Companies can not only benefit from the data generated by their own customers –with Big Data they can go much further. Thanks to APIs from other services it is possible to extract really useful information to develop new products or improve existing ones.

This is the case for example with the Netflix API. Many companies have used the data from the streaming platform to create websites with information on series and films, for example. Others have gone even further, like the American company Plaxo, which used each user’s assessments of films and series to contact others with similar tastes on their Pulse social network, now closed.

Commerce 360 and BBVA’s APIs

Until now, market studies were reserved for major distributors, but since mid-2016 all businesses with BBVA POS can register with Commerce360, a service from BBVA Data & Analytics that aids decision-making in a business. This tool delivers a market study to the customer each month, giving them data from their sector in addition to the data on their own business.

This is a business intelligence tool aimed at the commercial distribution sector and service businesses such as hotels and restaurants.

The information provided is extremely useful, as it can be used to redefine any aspects of the business model that can be improved.

The in-depth knowledge of the market in which these businesses are competing will allow them to clearly segment the most appropriate user group or market segment so they can present their products and services and position themselves by defining a value proposition for their customers and understand where they come from, so they can adapt their offer to their tastes.

This can also be done with other data APIs available at BBVA API_Market, like Paystats. Thanks to the access to the vast amounts of aggregate banking information on the bank’s customers, any developer or company can analyze the evolution of a specific economic sector or a certain geographic area, for example, and base their decisions on it. All this thanks to the power of data.

Are you interested in financial APIs? Discover all the APIs we can offer you at BBVA

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