These vast quantities of data aren’t just being used to provide us with better entertainment. Businesses of all kinds are beginning to realize the enormous potential of big data - harnessing its power and applying it to solve problems, improve processes and make better strategic decisions.

It’s already being put to incredibly effective use in data-driven recruiting, where companies are finding that they can significantly cut down the complex and time-consuming activity of finding the right candidates for jobs.

IBM has streamlined, and more-or-less revolutionized this process by using Watson, its artificial intelligence platform, to automatically surface the right candidates - and how they compare against each other - for any role.

By factoring in various types of historical and external data, recruiters can access insights such as how difficult a position will be to fill, resulting in better prioritization and more focused efforts: building a pipeline of candidates best suited to the organization and placing them in jobs that best match their skills, experience and expertise.

This actually gives recruiters the ability to source applicants they themselves might have missed - often in positions they hadn’t even known needed filling - a real advantage in a world where job roles adapt and evolve constantly.

Watson’s vast network of data and predictive technologies can also identify and remove human bias from the hiring process, ensuring a diverse and inclusive culture.

We already know that big data isn’t just being used to help businesses make more informed operational decisions. With all that data we’re generating as individuals, it’s also being used to create genuinely innovative customer experiences.

Virgin Holidays was facing a problem: it was growing in size, but not in profit. Competing with much larger companies on price, it was neglecting efforts to create great sales experiences for its customers.

Recognising the need for a serious change in strategic thinking, the focus was shifted from the head to the heart. It analyzed thousands of touchpoints across countless trading channels - with a huge variance in buying intent - and discovered three key ‘moods’ to target. The dreaming state, where customers are inspired and thinking ahead to their holiday; the anticipation state, filled with pre-holiday anxiety and excitement; and finally the reminiscing state: reflecting and battling the post-holiday blues.

The approach called for mood-enhancing content to be delivered across dozens of touchpoints, in accordance with the different states, from gamified interactions and customized itineraries, to ‘miss you already’ postcards awaiting travelers upon their return.

As you might expect, personalized experiences really are the key to winning customers over. Changing its mindset to serve customers’ emotional needs not only enhanced the customer experience, but also the company’s profits.

What you need to realize is that enormous volumes of data are generated today within the operations of almost every business. Whether you’re an established brand or relatively new to the market, you’re bound to be inundated with the stuff, especially as it relates to your customers.

And the revolution is truly underway. Forward-thinking teams are taking seriously the question: what can we do with this? These huge volumes of data can be used to identify and address problems you wouldn’t be able to tackle before. What might you want to explore? What kind of patterns or trends might you look to analyze... and why?

Challenge yourself and others to think and talk about big data in the language you normally use, and strive to imagine and deliver big data projects that are truly about big ideas for your business and those it provides for.

Big Data in Action