How can you incorporate Big Data to improve your company’s operations?

1. By Kole Hicks, Sr. Director, Products
How-To Successfully Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
The Solution
 Understand your infrastructure requirements and create
an implementation plan that clarifies what each Big Data
project means to your organization.
 At a minimum, that plan should include the following 8
steps.
The Challenge
 How can you incorporate Big Data to improve your
company’s operations?

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 1:
Gain Executive-
Level
Sponsorship
 Big Data projects need to be proposed and fleshed out to
be successful.
 These projects take time to scope, and without executive-
level sponsorship and a dedicated project team, there’s a
good chance they’ll fail.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 2:
Augment
Rather than
Re-Build
 Start with your existing data warehouse…
 Identify and prioritize additional data sources.
 Determine the right hub-and-spoke technology.
 Get approval to evaluate a few options before you
decide on the appropriate technology.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 3:
Make Value to
the Customer
a Priority
 Connect the data sources you’ve identified and prioritized
to the needs of your customer.
 For example, let’s say you know that Customer A…
 Likes jelly donuts
 Is walking near a donut shop
 Wouldn’t it be great if you could immediately send a
coupon for a free donut to Customer A’s smartphone or
tablet?

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 4:
Run an Agile
Shop (and
Increment Over
Time)
 Once you’ve established priorities and a project team,
begin to work on incremental releases and incorporate
new data hubs one at a time.
 Many projects fail because they try to do too much at
once.
 Instead, start slow, learn, adapt, and then move on to the
next step.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 5:
Link Customer
Data to
Company
Process
 Each new data set presents an opportunity to change the
way you deliver products and services.
 Push data-driven decisions into the organization at all
levels.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 6:
Create
Repeatable
Process &
Action Paths
 Once you have new data sets, it’s tempting to run one-off
reports to answer interesting questions without
connecting those answers to actions.
 Ask team members what actions should be taken from
the learnings of a particular data set.
 Clear a path for execution within your company that
connects data learnings to customers or products.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 7:
Test, Measure,
and Learn
 With each data set, test your assumptions.
 Responsive marketing systems let you push personalized
marketing out the door with a variety of messages.
 If you’re using Big Data appropriately, you can determine
instantly which messages are performing, allowing you to
optimize them on-the-fly.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Step 8:
Map Data to the
Customer’s Life
Cycle
 Once you’ve successfully completed a Big Data project,
you can move on to mapping Big Data needs to each stage
of the customer life cycle.
 Find out where customers discover new products, then
connect that activity to your promotional initiatives.

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How to Implement a Big Data Project in 8 Steps
© 2014 GoGrid
Learn More
 For more information on implementing Big Data
successfully:
 Read the full blog post
 Check out our 1-Button Deploy™ solutions
 Get started with a 14-day free trial of a development
or production cluster on GoGrid