What values are created by "Big Data"?

Answer:

Education, Physics, Economics, Astronomy, Telecom, Healthcare, Financial Services, Management, Transportation, Digital Media, Retail, Law Enforcement, Energy and Utilities, Social Media, Online Services, Security are some of the domain and areas where “big data” is already creating a lot of value today and the list is increasing day by day.

First let’s see what generic values it unlocks. According to Mckinsey
1)big data can unlock significant value by making information transparent and usable at much higher frequency.
2)as organizations create and store more transactional data in digital form, they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on everything from product inventories to sick days, and therefore expose variability and boost performance. Leading companies are using data collection and analysis to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions; others are using data for basic low-frequency forecasting to high-frequency nowcasting to adjust their business levers just in time
3)big data allows ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore much more precisely tailored products or services
4)sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision-making
5)big data can be used to improve the development of the next generation of products and services.

Now let’s take a few examples from these domains and see how “big data” has added value to them.

Heavy Industrial Machinery : - In GE complex and high-volume sensor data is in use for years to monitor and test industrial equipment such as turbines, jet engines, and locomotives. Big Data are used currently to predict performance and maintenance needs of these heavy machines. It also helps to deal with unprecedented down times. It helped GE to use more parameters and data points which were not in use previously.

Retail: - Sears was using about 10% of the data produced by its stores and it took eight weeks for them to correctly calculate the “price elasticity”, which is crucial in retail. Enter Hadoop and Big Data techniques Sears is not only able to use 100% of the data it produces, it calculates the “price elasticity” in almost real time. Big Data has helped Sears set more competitive prices and also move inventories according to the current demands.

Medical Science: - National Cancer Institute along with UC – Santa Cruz is planning to create the world's largest depository for cancer genomes. They claim that it will be used in "personalized" or "precision" care, whereby the treatment targets specific genetic changes found in an individual patient's cancer cells. It helps them to complete molecular characterization of cancer which will be of immense help. The entire setup runs with the help of “Big Data” techniques.