In the present world of growing consumerism, every place is a potential market for goods and services from different sectors. As such, companies are increasingly concerned with the collection of Big Data. This ‘big’ data has become a watchword for them and it stands for a huge volume of information available that can help them in furthering the cause of their businesses. However, this Big Data is often a sea of both structured and unstructured information which needs to be ‘fine-tuned’ in many ways before it can be put to the use of logistics management that can in return contribute to the increase of a company’s market share and profit-making chances.
Removing the clutter and analysing
Today, data is much more than numbers. The social networking arena also provides a lot of information about products and services in the form of likes, comments and descriptions of many goods and services on sites like Facebook, Twitter and other online shopping portals. So, to put this data to use, the first thing to be done here is to remove all clutter in the form of irrelevant data and retain only the meaningful part of it. The meaningful data should be interpreted in a scientific way. Data is like a raw product – it needs to be processed into a finished product so that it can be put to use. Else it is anything but useful. The challenge only increases with Big Data. It is time-consuming to be interpreted and analyzed scientifically, but this is the only way to go. Unscientific processing can lead to disasters for the business and thwart its hopes of going up the ladder. Also, assumptions should not be made too quickly on patterns which do not exist.
After analysis is done, next is integration of data sets. Customers’ demographic details, their transactional data as well as behavioural data should be well integrated so that it results in a clear understanding of the market trend and how sections of the market can be lured to buy a given product.
Building customer contacts
Tracking is another aspect which needs understanding when it comes to dealing with Big Data. Normally it is observed that marketing experts track interactions and comments of customers on their websites to forecast market trends. However, in the highly competitive market scenario, real-time or near real-time tracking is important to be at par with the competition. It is also important that analytical tools are used to track the real-time content interactions so that a clear demarcation can be made between potential and real customers. No doubt that potential customers need to be kept in mind before positioning a product in the market. However, the actual customers need to be given more importance and a relationship needs to be maintained with them by means of regular follow-up and providing services and assistance so that goodwill is maintained. Real-time tracking helps in streamlining content which can help in understanding the needs of potential customers as well as improve the relationship with actual customers.
Delivering with Big Data
There is a world of products waiting to be bought in the market. Name any sector and there are a series of supplementary products in line. Therefore customization is a feature that can help in reaching out to the maximum number of customers. This is where the logistics industry comes in and their need to leverage Big Data. Logistics needs to be managed holistically considering the volume of goods and the courses taken from suppliers to production to customers. Logistics operations include mode and route selection, warehouse and distribution centre selection, change in production and destination location, shipment consolidation, and shipping rates. Leveraging Big Data becomes important in order to remain in the forefront of the competition.
Big Data is thus set to become a development in the logistics industry where it can be of good advantage. Big Data can be applied in optimizing delivery time, resource utilization, and geographical coverage that are always a challenge of the logistics industry. Big logistics need information to function effectively and the sooner they get the information the better the results will be. This can be achieved by advanced predictive techniques and real-time processing.
Big Data is also useful in the delivery of goods that require direct contact with customers. Big Data can be helpful in building dynamic analytics to gather apt understanding on the requirement of the consumer and product quality.
Forward traffic
Logistics are nowadays a part of both production and distribution industries and working closely with customer operations. Logistics providers learn about the core businesses, markets and the regions where they operate. Transporting and delivering goods require Big Data backup. Big Data is helpful not only in creating a network but also gives insights into the flow of goods worldwide. It is also useful in managing delivery traffic by providing demographic, environmental, and traffic information.
Big Data when applied to the entire market, can take a company’s brand marketing to the next level, especially in relation to logistics. Further, innovation and experimentation needs to be done to capture the market and maintain the flow of the market in the desired direction for a long duration. This calls out for robust experimentation, testing innovative and ‘out of the box’ on real customers as well. Suyati Technologies believe in exploring more than the traditional in Big Data management and its application to logistics.
To know more about Big Data and its operation in logistics, you can write an e-mail to services@suyati.com
Advanced Logistics with Big Data
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