Sustained growth is the only way to ensure that your start-up business will survive. You might be willing to put in the necessary blood, sweat, and tears, but this isn’t enough on it’s own. Big data can be the key to success and being efficient. It’s a common mistake to think that using big data is only for the biggest IT companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google. They use data to suggest new friends, suggest tags for photos, and to suggest related products that people might be interested in. The other visible results of big data analytics are seen as the result of major investment into building the infrastructure, developing the tools and training the machine learning models; processes which only large companies have the resources to perform. This doesn’t have to be true. 

There are many sources of data that is publicly available on the state of every market you can think of. Companies post their quarterly reports, analytical agencies organize numbers into tables and indicate trends. There’s a vast amount of information on anything that you might want to know about. Analysing all this data with traditional business intelligence systems or manually can cost you a lot in both time and money. A better way us to use a data API like https://bis.lexisnexis.co.uk/nexis-daas, or to employ a machine-learning algorithm to do this for you. Once trained, these tools will be able to give you an on-demand snapshot of the current industry situation using serverless computing services. You could build a monitoring tool that will provide continuous monitoring and historical data on the current market trends and patterns. Options like this are not available as standalone packages yet but can be taken on as a service from an experienced contractor. At the same time, the price for these kinds of services has dropped significantly over the last few years, as the first wave of hype ended. Many companies now offer big data services, making this much more accessible to start-ups. 

Your competitors offer their products and services and highlight their best features. Their customers then leave feedback and bring up any flaws, and there are discussions and suggestions on some forums and social media regarding the direction of these products and services should evolve. You can use this goldmine of data if you analyze it, you identify the room for improvement, underserved niches, trends, and avoid the mistakes of your competitors, while also providing the features and services that the target audience wants. This process is continuous and should employ big data analytics and machine learning algorithms to help your start-up business to keep your eyes and ears open and react quickly to any changes in your market. 

Loyal customers are the biggest assets of any business (apart from a strong and passionate team of employees). Customer loyalty is built up over time and is made up of a lot of small factors and effects, such as VIP club privileges, loyalty bonuses, discount coupons, and more. Many of these things are taken for granted now, and startups should work to create new approaches to win and hold onto customer loyalty. In time, this can lead to brand advocacy and word of mouth promotion. One example of approaches like this is using big data to track the buying routine of the customers. To put it simply, knowing the shopping routine of the average stay-at-home mother will allow you to send them targeted adverts and limited-time coupons that appeal to them and help them win the deal. Start-ups can use the same principle at the beginning of their journey, as they have to engage their audience, offer something new, and stand out from the competition with their products or services. Being able to predict, fulfil, and surpass the customer’s expectations, is ideal for helping startups to succeed and grow. These are three big ways to make smart use of big data to help your startup to grow and perform well. Making use of big data is not only accessible to international corporations anymore. As the market gets more democratic, and more companies come up that are able to offer more affordable big data analytics and machine learning services, startups can become more data-driven right from the start. 

Aside from the optimal allocation of resources and make good marketing moves, using big data allows you to leverage the rapidly-changing market situation to your benefit.