Cloud services have seen massive growth and rise in popularity owing to businesses wanting to streamline their digital activities. According to a report generated by Grand View Research, the global cloud computing market was estimated to be worth $483.9 billion in 2022 and is predicted to grow steadily at a CAGR of 14.1% from 2023 to 2030. Additionally, data is being rapidly created in different forms and sizes. The use of digital gadgets and growing customer interactions across these digital channels are contributing factors boosting data growth worldwide. In the next three years, global data creation is expected to reach more than 180 zettabytes.
Given the increased data literacy and growing value of data coupled with the technological advances in recent times—Small and Midsize Businesses (SMBs) need to be data-driven now more than ever before. Businesses need hyper-relevant data, without which they end up becoming isolated and losing out in the digital race.
Companies are leaving no stone unturned and are moving towards a data-driven culture to stay ahead of the curve and maximize business performance. To make sense of the immense amount of data at their disposal and construct actionable insights, businesses need to harness the power of cloud technology. Nearly 67% of small businesses worldwide invest up to $10,000 in data analytics tools and over 60% of companies use a cloud-based data analytics solution. Considering the economic uncertainties, it’s become crucial for SMBs to look for ways to build scalable data analysis at reasonable costs. A full-stack tech suite like Azure data analytics is just the solution you need. It is a cost-effective way to store, access, manage, process and extract meaningful insights from large volumes of data.
The road to greater business value
Microsoft Azure is a robust tech stack with comprehensive solutions for your data management needs. It offers impeccable accuracy with built-in machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to deliver rich business insights. SMBs can accelerate data transformation and leverage state-of-the-art analytics technologies that identify hidden trends in data to make sound, data-driven decisions.
Businesses that have discovered the value of investing in data analytics are miles ahead of their competition, acquiring new customers and successfully retaining them. Generating advanced larger data sets is also critical for the success of your Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and mission-critical digital transformation initiatives. Data together with AI and ML will help businesses deliver transformative experiences that people have never seen before or imagined.
Let’s now unpack the benefits that small businesses can tap into by leveraging Azure data analytics.
Benefits of Azure data analytics for SMBs
Businesses thrive on big data. According to a report from FLEXERA, SMBs are now moving to the cloud faster than before. 69% of the SMB workload and 67% of the data will be in the cloud in the coming months.
Source: FLEXERA: 2021 State of the Cloud Report
The insights obtained from processing raw data can bolster your business growth rampantly. Big businesses have been quick to reap the benefits of cloud solutions. However, small businesses are yet to get on the bandwagon. If you are a small business owner and are looking to streamline your operations by investing in data analytics solutions, then Azure’s tech suite is your safest bet. It provides a unified experience to its users offering more than a dozen services to match your business needs.
- Automate repetitive tasks
You can trust Azure’s solution suite to automate and manage repetitive tasks, freeing up employees’ time and allowing them instead to focus on more important tasks to scale business revenues. Small businesses have no dearth of data. However, capturing, managing, and analyzing that data to make it actionable, is the real challenge. This is where Azure’s robust tech suite steps into the picture.
- Make data-driven decisions
Gone are the days when data analytics unfurled as lengthy reports that took days to compile and present. This approach failed to keep up with the fast-paced business demands which need you to stay abreast of new trends, respond and adapt effortlessly to changing market conditions. Azure data analytics, greatly reduces the burden of reporting while making sure that all decision-makers have real-time access to the information they need when they need them. It comes packed with automation capabilities allowing you to make quick adjustments and respond adequately to abrupt market fluctuations.
- Improve customer experience with business intelligence
Apart from this, Azure data analytics can help you gain insights into customer behavior and buying patterns. By identifying past trends, you will know what a customer is likely to purchase in the future. You can further contextualize your offerings based on such insights to create superior customer experiences and provide personalized services that appeal to customer emotions. You can also determine if your marketing campaigns are reaching the right people and make necessary adjustments to increase engagement at every touchpoint. With analytics, you can fine-tune specific campaigns across channels. This way you can reach out to the right people who are likely to be interested in your products and services and customize your messaging to improve marketing-driven qualified leads.
Key strategies for SMBs to embark on their data analytics journey in the cloud
Now that you have understood the significance of leveraging the wealth of digital insights, we will delve into a few strategies that will help you get started with data analysis in the cloud.
● Data analytics goals and strategy
SMBs need to establish goals and have a well-defined strategy in place to use data analytics and drive better business decisions. Without a strategy in place, businesses spend hours capturing data that is either not valuable or cannot be made actionable. Such strategy and goals will drive data architecture initiatives, design of data integration, appropriate usage of Azure analytics services, and visualization mechanisms. The analytics solution can be the integration of business intelligence tools in the existing data ecosystem or a cloud-scale data analytics solution based on data warehouse, ML, and complex visualization techniques.
● Implementation
With so much data to sift through, the implementation of data analytics is a crucial step in identifying valuable insights. Implementation would include analytics solution architecture, data ingestion, data processing, ML, visualization, and more. Each step involves an extensive list of tasks. The implementation of data analytics is the most complex phase where it is best for SMBs to take the help of experts to drive such programs and meet business goals. Trusting the implementation with skilled and experienced partners like nimbusnext will get you the support you need throughout the journey right from developing the strategy, and implementation to the execution stages.
● Optimize
Beyond adopting a culture of embracing data, data-driven businesses need to focus on continual improvement and optimization. With the growing complexity and volume of data on the cloud, it is advisable to continuously review and optimize data analytics solutions not just for fine-tuning the data ecosystem but also for the overall usage of cloud resources. It is important to build a comprehensive model which will serve as the foundation for further analysis and optimization.
Accelerate your data analytics journey with nimbusnext
For SMBs looking to kick-start their data analytics journey, there may be a myriad of areas to look into. Right from understanding the level of effort and costs in data analytics to identifying the right metrics, there are a host of challenges that they come across.
With our seasoned practitioners and network of industry professionals, we are the team you need by your side in your data analytics journey. Contact our team to know how you can leverage Azure data analytics and create personalized, actionable insights in the cloud.
