If yes, then you’re not alone my dear friend.
For most people, the word data has become synonymous to ‘BIG DATA’, and that in my view is the route cause of the ‘data averse sentiment' we find across people and organizations.
Yes, Big Data is BIG and complex and needs machines and technological intervention.
But Data is not equal to Big Data alone. Data can be Big and Small both.
And while Big data is a relatively newer product of the internet age, small data has been in existence since the birth of human kind. From measuring length with body parts, to bartering for products, to book keeping in a notebook to even budgeting and forecasting on excel sheets.
All of this is Small data.
And yet the mention of ‘data’ is overwhelming for most – because of one wrong notion –
Data = BIG DATA (but in fact, it isn’t)
All data is not big. All data is not complex. All data does not need technological intervention.
Says ex-McKinsey consultant Allen Bonde. Small data is data that is 'small' enough for human comprehension. It is data in a volume and format that makes it accessible, informative and actionable by people without the need for overly complex analytical tools.
Today’s Small Data is what we meant by ‘Data’ before the advent of ‘Big Data’. Large quantities and big potential of Big Data does not imply that small data ceased to exist.
In fact For every big data set (with one billion columns and rows) fuelling an AI or advanced analytics initiative, a typical large organization may have a thousand small data sets that go unused. Customer conversations, meeting minutes, spreadsheets with less than 1,000 columns and rows are all such examples.
The Big data being generated by your business is consumed in the form of small data by decision makers.
Small data typically provides information that answers a specific question or addresses a specific problem. Small data connects people with timely, meaningful insights (derived from big data and/or “local” sources), organized and packaged – often visually – to be accessible, understandable, and actionable for everyday tasks.
There is no surprise then when Gartner says that 70% of organizations will shift their focus from Big to Small and Wide Data by 2025.
Here’s an example of how small data plays a critical role in business decisions and strategies:
“Customer’s kept dropping off at our KYC page” – said the Head of Customer Experience at a Fintech Startup. Big Data on customer engagement with the app helped them uncover this pattern. But why they were dropping off and how to address this problem was yet unknown.
Enter Small Data – To find the answers, they resorted to a smaller pool of customer analytics gathered by making individual calls to customers. This data (small data) showed that contrary to prior assumptions, it was not a) the time consuming exercise of uploading documents or b) document unavailability that led to this drop.
It was in fact a trust issue. Customers were not uploading documents because they were not sure where and how their data might be used.
Once they uncovered this core challenge using a combination of Big Data to uncover patterns and correlations and Small Data to find the causations (the Why), they were able to re-centre their customer engagement strategy to building more trust.
To truly become data driven let’s not overlook the potential of small data. Let’s stop relying on a few data experts to create magic from the Big Data at their disposal. Instead, let's start developing a strong data intuition amongst our domain experts so we can unlock the power and potential of this small data as well.