Big data? You should be happy with ALL data.

Thu 26 Oct 2017
By John Nayler


Throughout my IT career I have always been entertained at the appearance and popularity of new terminology.

All the rage this year is the term "BIG DATA".

I realise that small business and even medium business would immediately glaze over thinking that big means it doesn't apply to them.

It's true that for the global companies big data means that they can do amazing things like speech recognition.
1. Massive computational power to process what people speak and turned it into written words on a global scale.
2. Massive storage to hold the speech recognition patterns for all the different languages along with the nuances of the individual countries and the individual speakers. For example Google speech to text has learnt to spell my name correctly which is evidence that they are tracking me personally and my constant correction of my name spelling.
3. Complex programming. In the case of speech recognition, let's face it, speech recognition is difficult.

What does it mean for small and medium business?
With limited funds and limited information technology infrastructure, small and medium business is not prepared for big data. Particularly if it is an established or older business. Then they are probably dealing with the day to day drama and fundamentals like virus protection and old accounts software.

Here is how big data, or "all data" can be harnessed
At eCentral we are constantly finding that small and medium business use different technologies, software and non-connected platforms to process these marketing
Web site and blogging : Wordpress
Email newsletter: Mailchimp
Social media posting: Hoot suite or individual hand posting
Customer database: An online CRM, email contacts or spreadsheet
Quoting: Generic Xero, etc
Client email: Outlook, linkedin, gmail, etc
Survey Monkey: To check on customer opinion

Problems:
Pain: Lots of different logins and passwords
Pain: Training in different interfaces
Pain: Re-posting information
Pain: Consistent strategy
Pain: No obvious path or drive toward the "sale"
Pain: Data about client and prospect behaviour lost across all the different systems

The struggle for SME's is not a question of "big data" but "all data".
The good news is eCentral we have a solution. Jetstream is our call CRM software product which includes
1. A beautiful and fully supported website growing with your blog content
2. Blog content loaded instantly and efficiently from your phone or computer using it our instablog feature
3. Integrated collating blogs for newsletter dispatch
4. Easy social media posting Toorak from your website bringing new visitors back to your core content daily
5. A simple and effective customer database CRM tracking your interactions
6. Simple quote engine with a range of great features
7. Client interaction recording using JetStream chat
8. Survey and rating module to drive your reputation in social media

The additional benefit here and the link to the story about big data is that our one core customer database provides all these features and benefits to speed your business towards the financial outcome of customer conversion. Along the way the interactions with the website and systems give you valuable insights into customer and prospect behaviour.

Ultimately JetStream CRM supplies you something really powerful - All Data. All Data in one place. All Data where you can drill down and know what your Prospect is up to. All Data so you can easily decide on the next step to closing the sale.