Big Data for SMEs — You must see it differently
Big data is trendy now, right? But what we see now are fantastic solutions for big enterprises only. It’s like what cloud computing was when it was released. In fact, it’s like most of all new IT solutions: they’re expensive and made exclusively for big companies.
While it’s not become a commodity, SMEs and start-ups must think about how to access big data without paying what Facebook and others huge companies pay. It’s not impossible. Actually, it can be done for free.
The good thing about big data for SMEs is that SMEs doesn't really generate big data. I mean, yes they do, but their big data is small, because only very big branded firms have large big data about them. They have a massive number of customers and have a massive number of people talking about them.
So if you’re small, it’s a lot easier to analyse your big data and the simple tools that don’t help big companies, can help SMEs and start-ups.
Let’s see some options:
Google Analytics
It’s free and you can access some very good big data there. Visitor locations, URL referer, search terms, etc
Google Trends
See what people are searching. Check search terms that are important to your business. Compare them.
Quantcast
Check others big sites stats. You can also track your site.
CRM apps
There are lots of CRM apps, lots of them are cheap and some of them are free. Sometimes CRM solutions are the best databases to do big data using your customers data. You only must fill them and check the right reports. You can do that easily with a simpler CRM solution, because you’re small.
Actually, for small business, a good CRM and a good CRM strategy (of course) can be the only thing you really need.
NoSQL databases
The first thing you must own before starting analysing data is good stored data that answers the right questions for your business. So eventually you’ll need to create your own database to insert that unique data that your ERP or CRM solution don’t store.
So, NoSQL is the answer. It’s a type of database made for huge loads of data that can be easily created and can be quickly accessed.
There are lots of NoSQL solutions and some of them are free and Open Source like MySQL is. IaaS and web hosting vendors often delivers NoSQL databases. They’re not expensive, you just need the right engineer to deal with it.
