Our ever-expanding tool sets allow us to access more data via more devices as we trawl, isolate, scoop up and machinate relevant information to make better sense and add more meaning, and bring more value into our world.
Picture: The USA’s NSA Data Centre in Utah, shown under construction. Reported to be the largest repository of data ever created.
But what is Big Data and what value do we ascribe to its importance and how can it help us in our daily travel related pursuits? This article highlights the high value assets as we seek more and more relevance and deeper insights into our experiences and business decisions. The value and application of Big Data is as broad and complex as our own creativity, inventiveness and our desire to understand the relativity of the Parts of the Whole.
Today’s commercial environment has become so complex that our human skills are no longer sufficient, nor deemed reliable to manage our information needs needed for an almost risk free business. Neither is access to somewhat limited internal corporate data (Little Data) able to support our needs.
The intuition of Ages past has been replaced by data driven immediacy and context relevant decision-making. The sum total of collation, interpretation and trending of past experiences, both internal and from the web, is Big Data and it’s becoming the most transformative and empowering development in a generation.
The sum total of all the discrete parts is what we gain from collective insights, including the total of all those from others’ experiences. This gives us the ability to better predict, manage and thus influence personal decision-making – such is the utopian nature of Big Data.
Aristotle’s much quoted observation – the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts, has resurfaced with vigor in the 21st Century. It is no truer today with the advent of Data Intelligence, when we break down the large (Big Data) and the small (Little Data) and, some massive data stacks, to extract valuable lines of information to then reformat it into a vital business decision, to develop a business plan, build a strategy, create a budget or develop other business outcomes.
Several companies are now starting to show the promise of what Big Data can do. Two companies are presented here as specializing in Travel:
- Hopper formed from some ex-Expedia players has taken in more than $30 million to set up a Big Data business making the data relevant to consumers.
- Boxever formed by some ex-Datalex players has received significant funding to set up a Big Data business analyzing travel data assisting Travel retailers and suppliers to make sense of their data.
More will follow.
Intelligent use of data both in house and external (true Big Data) is what we gain from the sum of our collective insights and experience, supporting the ability to better predict the individual human decisions, even drawing insights from others’ or competitor experiences – such is the power of the capability now available. It enables deeper analytics and exposes massive trend sets at its best.
We live in a readily connected, comprehensive and easily exposed data world where meaning can be as easy as, as relevant as and as accessible as, the sum total of others’ experiences. Facebook and others following didn’t begat sharing; they transformed how we view the sharing of information for better overall results.
Big Data: what’s the big deal and what’s the pay off? To this point let’s consider the sheer size of it. Each year the world generates obscene amounts of data – for example in 2012,it reached 2.5 Exabyte’s – that’s 2.5 billion gigabytes – of data was generated every day, with 75% being unstructured created via text, voice and video sources.
Put simply we are generating large quantities of unstructured data that has meaning implicit but we can’t get at it. According to IBM, the size of data sets that are feasible to process in a reasonable amount of time were in the order of Exabytes, that is, millions ofterabytes. But now we actually HAVE the tools to process and start to assimilate all this data. And, as our levels of inventiveness and available tool sets increase, so do the commercial dependencies, applications and usage levels grow. Consider the use of personal devices smart phones, tablet, video, voice, etc, coupled with commercial system generated data output pushes us closer to infinity, or at least a lot closer than we ever imagined.
What’s the point of all this? Data is on the move, it’s telling us something and when it finds greater meaning it creates a stronger business anchor. It’s a new value system for businesses to leverage, commercialize, create a new service and certainly reap a greater return. Big Data’s natural affinity and alignment with travel technology, distribution and customer service is spawning considerable work to leverage targeted solutions, direct highly personalized information, deeper planning, scheduling, enhancing productivity, better cost control, precision targeted marketing, et al, through more informed decision making.
It would be foolhardy to understate the absolute value of Big Data across the intricate web of the global travel industry. It is the most significant development-opportunity in a generation for the broader industry to embrace what ever the sector or niche. It is also the most positive and transformative market disruption seen in 30 years of travel technology. The value of new and deeper insights, degrees of personalization, targeted selling and the ability to leverage every customer, every interaction, every time, everywhere is an industry game changer.
The global travel industry is data intensive by its size and structure and Big Data is a natural decision platform to emerge. Amadeus, backed by its substantial technology infrastructure and global travel services divisions, has dedicated a considerable line of business to this area, and Sabre has recently announced its intent to work this space, plus many more niche specialists.
So, look out – the race to bigger, more personalized business intelligence is on.
It’s Big, it’s for the Bold and it’s a game changer… for now anyway.
* Gill Hazel is Managing Director of Consult@Strategy a Global Consulting Firm specializing in strategy and business development. Gill has held senior management positions in Europe and Asia/Pacific. You can reach her here.
