The rapid development of digital media has brought more opportunities to businesses to approach customers. However, it has also brought challenge: the data boom, or Big Data, has made them puzzled.

New challenges

Director of a travel firm in HCM City said he is meeting big difficulties in gathering statistical data, because his clients come from different sources, from websites or emails, to newspapers or phone calls.

Meanwhile, director of a sweets company in HCM City, the company is meeting difficulties when trying to develop distribution channels in the context of limited financial capability.

Director of a food distribution company said that he wants to distribute food through traditional markets and retail shops, but he does not have concrete information about the partners.

The problem of all the three companies is the same: they cannot handle with the increasingly big data.

A data analysis expert said that in the context of the information boom, collecting information and ensuring its accuracy is really a big challenge for businesses. A bank once asked him to give advices about the position to put an ATM. 

The position needs to be near residential quarters, schools or workers’ rent rooms, and needs to meet some other requirements. In order to have an exact answer, the expert not only had to collect information from online and traditional channels, but also needed a geographic information system.

In fact, big data is not only the problem for Vietnamese businesses. In late 2011, IBM released its survey showing that 70 percent of companies’ directors said they were not prepared well enough to face the data boom.

More useful tools needed to deal with data boom

Dinh Anh Huan, Managing Director of The gioi Di dong, a mobile phone distribution chain, said that the company receives 10 million customers from both the online and traditional channels a month. Therefore, the company has built a customer relationship management system which helps classify customers and build up reasonable marketing strategies.

Besides, Huan said the company has also built up the enterprise resource planning system which allows to manage every sold product and connect the customer relationship management system, so as to set up best sales policies.

Nguyen Duong Huy Vu, Director of Fibo, which specializes in providing services on web basis, said that in some cases, the information from emails or chats cannot show sufficient information about customers. Therefore, the company has established a division in charge of updating information from different sources. Vu also said that the company has also invested in building the database relating to the services Fibo is providing, in order to help the business expansion.

The long term game

Vu said that Fibo began building its database three years ago and it has been facing a lot of unexpected problems over the last three years.

Meanwhile, Huan of The gioi Di Dong said the distribution chain began building up its database in 2008. He said that it is necessary to have a long term plan with long term vision to implement the work, and that money would not be enough to ensure the success of the system.

In general, there are two issues businesses need to deal with when developing their database – the model of data storage and the human resource. Normal data storage models would not satisfy the demand, while businesses would need qualified officers to process information in the most effective way.

Besides, according to Vu, businesses also need to select and clarify data regularly, the work that costs 40-60 percent of the total expenses to maintain the systems.

“In general, building database is really a costly and long term game,” Vu commented.

Source: VNN