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Big Data unsiloes a hospitality business’ useful data to make operations run more efficiently and help owners make better decisions. But what data are we talking specifically about?
Big Data brings together structured and unstructured data sources in context and in one place. When shown in context with each other, those data sources can show hospitality owners what's really driving the business. Bringing different, disparate data sources together paints a more complete picture of where a business stands – one version of the truth.
Different data, but all important
Structured data refers generally to any data from business applications, including point-of-sale systems, ERP systems, CRM solution data, procurement and inventory information, HR information, and weather and traffic information. Think of the structured applications used across an organization or enterprise that provide data in the same format all of the time.
Unstructured data includes information about the business gleaned through social media, customer profiles, review sites or data from cell phones that tell owners who is in their establishment. For example, access points can now recognize when a cellphone is inside a restaurant, how long that customers is in that restaurant for, or if the customer just stood outside the restaurant without coming in. Unstructured data is great for investigating and revealing customer behaviors.
Big Data’s evolution first focused on structured data – the core business functions. But today, C-Suites, department heads, marketing and HR teams and core operations executives see unstructured data is just as important. In truth, operators need to harness both forms of data in context to get an accurate picture of the true health of the business. Operators can make decisions based solely on structured data. But if they don't also understand a customer's behavior in reaction, they stand to make some potentially bad business decisions. Big Data puts the disparate data together in context so owners can avoid those mistakes.
Better together
An owner might look at structured data to see that the procurement manager has made a deal to buy steaks at a cheaper price from a particular supplier to improve margins. But those margins are a short-term indicator. It might take a while before the sales numbers reflect the cheaper steak’s real impact. What about the long term?
This is where unstructured data -- review site data, customer feedback data, social media data -- comes in. It can be married to that structured data to show negative customer reaction to the cheaper steaks within minutes or hours. Structured data might not show a steak sales drop until a week or two down the line. But structured and unstructured data paired correctly can stave off those losses by showing customer reaction quickly, giving the operator time to adjust before the bottom line takes a big hit.
Or take, for example, an operator whose structured data show sales are up by 5 percent for a particular evening. In isolation, that might be a good performance. But the unstructured data, such as cellphone data using access points, might show there were 10 percent more people inside the bar that night, so there was a missed opportunity to upsell. Or, it could show traffic in the entire city that evening was up 15 percent, indicating that owner’s establishment performed poorly compared with its local competition.
It’s an issue of using leading indicators over lagging indicators. The marriage of structured and unstructured data helps owners see and react to operational issues before they become bigger problems. And that’s truly harnessing the power of Big Data.
