Big Data and CRM: What Future Holds for both the technologies?

A lot of people confuse the term “Big Data” with having an enormous amount of data or information. But it’s not that, it’s not about how much data you have, but what you do with your data. In this article, we are going to unravel what big data is meant for today’s world, what it is, how it works, who uses it, and a bunch of other amazing insights. But before going further blabbering about the big data technologies, we want to clear your view of data. In the later part of this blog, we will also be going to discuss the endless possibilities and benefits of Big Data in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) industry.​

​What is Data? 

Data can be defined as the formal representation of facts, figures, numbers, statistics, characters, or symbols which make it simpler to understand, transmit, communicate, and process. However, in the realm of information technology (IT), the definition of data is slightly different.

As per IT, data is the set of information that is processed and stored in a computer. The information could contain any quantities, symbols, characters, or files and it is processed by the computer’s CPU. The elementary form of computer data is in the form of ones and zeros, which is also known as Binary Data.

We hope now you have understood the meaning of data, we can move forward on the quest of learning about Big Data.

What is Big Data?

There is a generic statement that defines the broad meaning of big data, which states big data is a large volume of information coming from varied sources and at an even greater velocity. This is also known as three “V”s i.e. Volume, Variety, and Velocity.

Types of Big Data
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We can broadly classify it into the following three categories:-

• Structured: It is simply defined as a form of data that is stored, accessed, and processed in a specific format. Sometimes, it becomes very difficult to derive value from data that is already structured and has been processed, but now advanced technology as Big data has been able to extract great value out of it. The real problem emerges when such kinds of structured data pile up to form terabytes of data.

 

• Unstructured: Right now, unstructured data is in abundance and has more untapped potential than structured data ever had. As you have guessed from the name unstructured data means sets or collections of information that aren’t stored in a well-structured manner. The unstructured data could be anything for example video, audio, any kind of media, surveillance data, etc.

 

• Semi-structured: Consider semi-structured data not having any organizational framework or organized database, even after that, it could have some structural traits like relation to a specific subject or topic. A few examples of semi-structured data are emails, web pages, etc.

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​​Understand this with an example, suppose you have different data sources that supply complex and large sets of data. The data sets are so colossal that your traditional data processing ecosystem can’t even imagine handling it. But this data possesses such immense value for your business that you can’t afford to lose it. In this case, big data comes into the picture. Now, you have learned rudimentary things about Big Data, we will show you how it works.

How does Big Data work?

Big data analysis could open up gates for insights that were never witnessed before. In this section, we will unfold the crucial three aspects of Big data working and analytics. The person who is responsible for the analysis is usually known as the Big Data engineer.

• Integrate: As we mentioned in the above sections, big data gathers information from a vast variety of sources and platforms. It uses new technologies and strategies to process information of terabytes and even petabytes (1024 Terabytes) scale. During the big data integration into your company, you need to make sure that data comes in a format with which your data engineers and analysts are familiar. 
  
  
• Manage: Big Data means big storage capacity. You can use an on-cloud storage service, on-premises solution, or even both. Usually, it doesn’t really matter which method you use for the data storage, at the end of the day, your main concern should be to keep your data safe and extract useful insights from that data. One way to choose data storage is by looking where the existing data of your company is stored. If the current method is working fine for you otherwise the second option is always there.
• Analyze: Once you are done with integrating and managing your data, the next and most important step is to analyze the data. If you don’t analyze the big data perfectly and thoroughly then it won't be worth the time and effort that you must have put. We are pretty sure that you will discover hidden wisdom, later you can use that to build data models with help of Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.

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​The best way to get an extensive return on investment is by creating an ecosystem of the latest technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data. All of them with their individual functionalities and collective efforts can derive immense revenue to your business.​

Future of Big Data and CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

For customer management and interaction, no other option comes into mind apart from CRM software. Whether it’s an existing client or a future prospective customer, CRM is the one that can do the job for you. Those who are familiar with the concept of CRM know that it comprises a lot of customer’s data. Generally, it is structured data in the form of contact information, sales funnel, etc.
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However, a business can get to the top level by leveraging the unstructured data of customers with the help of Big Data technology. There are plenty of ways to gather the customer’s data which they do directly provide to a business. Think of it like reading between the lines. The access to the insights that no one ever had, but you.

​Benefits of Integrating CRM and Big Data
Some reports suggest that businesses that combine the forces of both CRM and Big Data for processing and analyzing the immense data flow are more likely to grow at an exponential rate. There are a bunch of Big Data technologies available in the market that can analyze the data stream coming from a CRM Database to provide unmatched customer service and experience.

• Pattern Analysis
• Sentiment and Behavioral Analysis
• Market Analysis
• Recommendations Analysis