One of those catchphrases that
emerge from time-to-time in business circles is ‘Big Data’. Its genesis would
appear to have been the huge amounts of personal data held by social media
organisations such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in. However, it has taken on
great significance for all companies, large and small.
What the experts in digital
marketing are saying is that success in business no longer depends on one
powerful message being delivered to millions of consumers through the mass
media. The theory goes that we all, as individuals, have different preferences
in our daily lives, and that it is the prerogative of brands and companies to
deliver messages to us that will chime with our personal aspirations.
So far, so good. But there is
also a backlash taking place against those global giants with the fastest and
biggest computers that are holding all of this valuable data. It goes something
like this: Information is more important to the economy than manual labour, and
yet we are expected to surrender information generated by or about ourselves –
a valuable resource – for free.
For instance, digitisation has
allowed banks to repackage the information contained in a mortgage debt and
sell it on as an increasingly complex product, whilst excluding the indebted
homeowner from a percentage of the profits.
Jaron Lanier, in his book ‘Who
Owns the Future’ imagines a world in which participants achieve economic
dignity by being awarded ‘nano-payments’ for all of their contributions to the
Big Data that is circulating around the internet, a form of global digital
democracy.
‘All very worthy’ I hear you
say, but what does all of this mean for our highly specialised and technically
sophisticated industry? Well for starters, the data that we accumulate is of a
business, rather than personal nature, but it is no less valuable as a result.
Business-to business data provides us all with privileged intellectual
property, which we have a duty to use responsibly.
At Riley Surface World, we
place huge importance on the quality, accuracy and security of the data that we
hold, and treat it with great respect. We make great efforts to fine tune the
information that we send to our opted-in members, in order to ensure that it
matches the requirements that they have requested. I have to admit that we
don’t always get it right, but we are constantly putting new processes in place
to try and achieve this goal.
What our own ‘Big Data’ is
telling us is that the applications for, as an example, automated vibratoryfinishing, no longer can be put into the predictable slots or traditional
industries that used to be involved in the process. Enquiries for such
equipment can nowadays emanate from a wide spectrum of manufacturers,
re-manufacturers, sub-contractors, cottage industries, hobbyists, researchers
and much more. This is without going into the geographical spread, which can
range from Bradford to Brisbane and everywhere in-between.
We can often get sucked into a
collective feeling of despondency due to the general state of the economy. As I
am writing this, commentators are once again talking about ‘triple-dip
recession’. However, one economist that I heard on the radio this morning
pointed out that the majority of the world is booming. In the UK, our currency
is weakening, something that will benefit our exports, and we are sitting on a
wealth of knowledge that is unrivalled across the globe. This particularly
applies to the surface finishing industry, where we are world leaders.
How we accumulate, protect and
manage our data is something that will have a far greater impact on our future
success, prosperity and reputation than almost any other measure.
