How Business Intelligence and Big Data Affect the Applications Market

Marcus_JensenIn this special guest feature, Marcus Jensen, Editor-in-Chief of technivorz.com, focuses on the analytical spectrum of big data through business intelligence and how it can help with app development and most importantly with the release of new apps. Marcus is an IT professional and writes about technology, business and marketing.

Big data and mobile app’s business go hand in hand like rhythm and blues. Smartphones in some way track our daily activities and produce tones of data that can be used for various purposes. The fact that 90% of world’s data has been generated during the last two years, enables us to realize the huge impact of smartphone apps on development of big data niche. Furthermore, due to big/data piling, many other niches are are currently in the state of change.

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Big data tools as app’s integral part

Since many different apps sum up a multitude of data and present them in a way they can be helpful to their users, it is easy to realize a huge role that big data plays in these analytic processes.

Big data processing tools often stand behind various apps and provide filters with which users can find the exact information they need. This is especially important when we are talking about complicated apps made for synchronizing businesses that are being run in several cities, regions or even continents.

Big data integration into business apps which are made for improving supply chain management (SCM) is perfectly explained in this great article written by Ben Kerschberg.

How big data improves app’s customer experience?

Mobile app’s niche is one of the fastest developing businesses. Major corporate app stores are recording huge increase in downloads. In 2015, iTunes reached 100 and Google Play 200 million app downloads. With such a competitive market app developers need to offer the best possible customer experience.

Apps are constantly scooping data from user’s phones. Sounds scary? If you own a smartphone, you’ve definitely authorized at least one app permission. App permissions are one of the most controversial parts of app installation. Phone owners are legitimately suspicious when being asked to permit the access to long list of different smartphone functions including: GPS location, contact list, SMS, microphone, profiles on various other apps, etc. In most cases this is not done on request of CIA or NSA. Data scooping is manly used for improving customer experience or for different marketing purposes.

When it comes to customer experience, app developers can easily track ways in which people use their apps. Additionally, structuring and analyzing all this data can give them great insights on more or less practical features that their app provides. By doing their big data homework, app creators can come up with smart upgrades and new ways in which future products can be developed.

Big data analysis and marketing

With so many apps out there, developers need to invest more time and money into promotion of their product. Various types of accesses apps have, allows them to export users data, which can later be used for marketing purposes. Depending on Privacy Policy developers can obtain and use this data in various ways. Since we are talking about of thousands of terabytes of information, they will definitely need to employ Big Data Analysts, or at least use some advanced big data or business analytics software.

Here are a few examples on using this data for direct promotion of various products, services or the app itself:

  • Shopping apps can recommend products based on users previous searches, inside the app, or on smartphone’s web browser.
  • Review apps like Yelp can recommend certain bars, restaurants or clubs depending on the user’s location.
  • Data scooped from user’s smartphone can also be used by app stores to recommend certain apps, like com, if the user intends to travel, or New York Knicks Tickets, if the users is geo-tagged in The City.

Even more data in the future

At this moment we are already familiar with petabytes and zettabytes, which is weird because just a decade ago a terabyte seemed so huge and far/unreachable. Now the era of yottabyttes is approaching fast and big data creation and development will be even more accelerated with the introduction of Internet of Things concept.

Today, only smartphones and limited selection of other gadgets have internet access. If only these few gadgets were able to increase world’s data amount by 9 or 10 times, imagine how much data we will need to manage, when everything from TVs, to stoves, cars and washing machines start connecting to the internet and sharing information about their work processes.

Of course, for managing piles of data received from thousands, and sometimes even millions of smart devices, companies need to hire skillful Big Data Analysts. They will have to structure all received information, determine patterns and categorize users in groups by their location, interests of behavior. This way app creators, companies and marketers can use app data in the best way and increase their campaign’s performance and profits. Since big data concept is quite new and has huge growth potential, it’s advisable for companies to start thinking as soon as possible about the benefits data analysis brings.

 

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