Have you noticed companies that are invested in providing online platform to sell products or services, simultaneously gather user information also, that will be helpful to them in the future? Provided these companies do not sell this information to any third party for a price or have lousy systems safeguards, thereby making them vulnerable to hacking, storing data is now considered to be a smart practice. It is now becoming a norm for companies to invest a lot of time and money on data that helps them make predictive analysis and monitor user behavior. Information gathered not only helps the company increase its sales, but it also helps the user using the product for future purchases. For example, delivery and billing address saved or a garment size stored, cuts out duplication of effort for future purchases. No wonder these companies are able to scale up with ease, with absolutely minimum physical customer contact and yet provide the best of service.
Most online retail firm’s work on the assumption that their customer is smart enough to adapt to new technologies, even if he was a novice to begin with and always depended on a salesman to sell him a product. Armed with data and the ever improving user friendliness in navigating vendor websites, a customer is now able to get answers to his queries on the product, not forgetting the extra bonus customer reviews on the same product. The entire process might slowly eliminate the need for a salesman, to close the deal, but that is inevitable, and like it or not everybody will have to learn to deal with it. This is the power of data, once given freely to a potential customer, it can work wonders in their independent decision making ability and that too without any human persuasion.
From the company’s point of view data stored not only gives them an edge over its competitors in terms of customer satisfaction, but also takes care of its other processes such as inventory management, logistics, etc. Since all information is now entered and updated seamlessly in real time, managements of these companies are equipped with data which is then analyzed for their patterns to make proper business decisions. Data stored has grown so rapidly in recent times, because it is now gathered by Internet of Things devices such as mobiles, digital cameras etc. Imagine the cost on companies to store all this big data, and yet no sane company wants to stay out of this big data push.
Critics might argue that Big Data will not be able to make decisions for you, at least not till artificial intelligence moves to the next level, but it helps in detecting patterns of large data sets which can then be helpful to humans to make decisions in the interest of its company or customers, a win-win situation. Most governments all over the world have started using Big Data to better serve their citizens and along with analytics have now become two of the most important trends world over, which allows governments to make informed decisions. Our own Aadhaar Card platform if used with the right intentions and without infringing on the citizens privacy, is an example of big data initiative the government has embarked upon, supposedly to better serve its citizens. If this platform is used beyond tracking government subsidies, then the potential could be huge to make informed decisions in the interest of its citizens.
Data gathering is not wrong entirely, but it cannot be a one-way traffic, if government has the right to gather information on its citizens, then citizens have the right to gather information on politicians, government servants and everybody and every project which utilizes our tax money. Many might argue that this information is already made available through the Right to Information, politician’s affidavits, status of numerous government schemes, but most of it is tedious enough for the common man to decipher. Citizens cannot be hurled with unprocessed raw data just for compliance sake and expect them to understand and make important decisions of electing the right set of people for the country.
So long as data is not processed, analyzed and proactively released regularly in the public domain by an independent agency, most of the country citizens will be really electing people in the dark and human tendency in the dark is to cling on to someone that shows us the light. No wonder every election citizens fall prey to the same politicians that hardly live upto expectations and yet manage to retain office because of want of credible data.
Considering Goa’s miniscule population, compared to other Indian states, it hardly qualifies as Big Data and yet we are deprived of essential data that should be made available to us by default. Data on village wise exodus of Goans through the Portuguese Passport route, unemployment rate of Goan youth, present Government servants in employment, citizens availing government schemes. All this data can be easily made available once a month, processed and summarised, and in an easy to understand format. No government is interested in giving this proactively, because it will only expose their performance. When data is deprived Goans then depend and even get addicted to political speeches where data might get mentioned but only selectively.
Indian bellwether IT Company Infosys tweaked the United States of America’s official motto “In God We Trust” into its core philosophy which reads as “In God we trust, everybody else brings data and facts to the table”. It is this core philosophy that made Infosys work out the minor glitch it had recently with speed. This philosophy also effectively shuts out big mouths in the company and their arguments if it is not backed by data. If Goa needs to be professionally managed than we need to revere ‘Data’, unfortunately Goans still consider some of the politicians as ‘Datta’, and till we do not rectify that situation ‘Big Data’ will be just a distant dream.
(The author is a business consultant).
