From Big Data to Sustainability
Better results with less data
Designing a strategic approach to your data is a key foundation of your brand, but has the ability to establish better trust with your customers. Find out why a data sustainability strategy is important for your business and how to start putting it into practice.
The volume of digital information stored in data centres is growing. It currently accounts for 2% of global electricity consumption. And by 2030, that number could quadruple, according to Bloomberg. The situation urgently calls for change. Existing 'big data' must be transformed into sustainable data. And that means one thing - moving from quantity to quality.
How to do this and where to start?
According to Statista.com, there will be 74 zettabytes (one trillion gigabytes) of data in the world by the end of 2021. As much as 90% of this has been created in the last two years. To put that into perspective, this means that every person in the world generates a total of 1.7 MB of data per second. Are we really using that? Far from it. More than 50% of the data is just lying around with nothing happening to it. 60-73% of the data never passes analysis and 80-90% of the data has no structure.
So why do we generate so much data and yet use so little of it? There are 3 reasons for this:
- We don't know what to create, what to store and what to use.
- We feel that something might be useful for later.
- We don't know how to work with it.
So how to achieve a more sustainable approach?
Start by clearly defining your results to achieve and at what cost. Set clear KPIs for collecting and using data and for your marketing goals. KPIs must be relevant, understandable, and measurable from a commercial perspective.
A well-articulated strategy has benefits for you and your customers
Do you need to know your customer's address when you provide a completely digital service? And do you need to know the gender of the customer when you send personalised emails? Think carefully about what you really need to know about the client and what is unnecessary.
As a result, you'll reduce the amount of data you store and start achieving your business goals more efficiently. And when it comes to the customer themselves, you gain more trust by being transparent in asking for personal data to improve their experience.
From strategy to practice
Want to know how to best put your data sustainability strategy into practice? What does such a strategy look like and how to work with it to make it really work? Download our quick guide for full details and practical steps.
