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Each year technology advances making life easier for businesses and consumers. As technology continues to grow, it becomes an inseparable part of life. Changing the way people live their life, even undertaking mundane, routine tasks like going into a bank or purchasing a coffee relies on a complex web of interconnected transactions taking place on a multitude of devices and points of presence. In the old days, the cumbersome paper trail was the only way to keep records and interact with customers. Even basic tasks like queuing for your bank teller would entail signing your name on paper, waiting to be called up to the desk, explaining the purpose of your visit and then being able to receive the service. This paper trail has been uploaded, where these manual processes took manual intervention and time, it all now happens in the cloud, on your device on some other device or is automated in many ways. Still, this data needs to be collected for optimization and improvement. Allowing a customer to get to the point of service of quicker, and hopefully, with greater satisfaction. Some areas of technology like mobile data collection helps to alleviate wait times.
The ubiquity and access that consumers have to mobile devices is a small example of how huge amounts of data can be collected. This fact of our modern age has catalyzed data collection has significantly changed the way consumers and businesses store information; how much is stored; for what purposes and how the public perceive the importance of their digital footprint. It is of utmost importance to choose wisely in trusted providers when it comes to web hosting services that store, manage and serve applications, digital environments and data.
With the ability to mass store and recall information on-demand, it becomes easier to use the data to inform key business decisions. That is, as long as it’s efficiently stored and organized at the point of ingest. Nowadays, when walking into some stores, customers can type their name out into a tablet and this helps to directly send the information to store associates. When it comes to rewards cards, retailers can just type in a phone number, and customer information is pulled so they associated can input necessary rewards or update any changed information.
Instead of writing information down, now it can be inputted and stored on your smartphone. Often this data if handed off to data organization tools like that is synced across a multitude of devices. The always-on device also send out location, logs your times at a location and types of activity. Big data companies use this information to calculate store footfall, waiting times, sift through data on commonly asked questions about the place of business. This is all to ensure that the customer has access to the right service, at the right time without interruption.
In the back-office, data collection helps to save time and the environment. Many offices now run paperless. Instead of putting paper in employee mailboxes, or recording unshakeable notes or insights, employees from management to salesclerk can access a stream of constantly updated information regarding their operational practices and any important incentives. Reducing the need of paper, ink and office supplies has a significant impact on an organization’s carbon footprint and opens up the gates to unfettered collaboration and total transparency: inviting colleagues to work together and have oversight of shared folders, documents and processes. In most agile organizations, all this information is stored in the cloud and now links have replaced post-it notes. We share ideas through messages using embedded links to our complete thoughts and works.
A large concern used to be space to hold paper files. Now filing cabinets have turned into digital documents filed in folders within folders. All of these files may still be stored and organized in a similar manner as filing cabinets, it just takes up hard drive and cloud space rather than a room full of gray and beige metal cabinets.
Our treatment of data has not changed. The method we utilize to store and organize it has. The fact that this can be served up on-demand and at lightning speeds has now enabled businesses, small and large to act on this information very quickly. Utilizing this data collection at, for example, retail locations, users can answer questions to provide feedback to the retailer about their service experience or reason for stopping by. It allows businesses to maintain customer care information. By asking for location information (as many apps and online services now do), retail marketers can see where customers are located and from there develop marketing campaigns targeted in certain regions or demographics.
Mobile apps have the strength to reach large global audiences bringing the human experience to an interactive global communication process. By requesting survey information from app users, it again allows marketers to further understand their audience. Marketing used to be something as simple as telling consumers about a product and making it seem appealing. However, as advanced as marketing technology has become with data collection and interpretation, it now becomes something that is more of social science than anything else. By reviewing the scientific data collected in what audiences want, marketers can determine appropriate, targeted, messaging and content backed up by unarguable data in application interaction, surveyed content and explicit feedback.
Data collection is a mutually beneficial relationship between the user and the creators. By learning more about the application users, marketing managers, creative teams, and app creators are able to provide a more efficient and user-friendly product. This is an effective communication process between the app sender and user receiver.
A growing concern and awareness apparent in the zeitgeist of our time is how much data is collected, is that data sensitive information and how is that used. This seems to be especially pertinent to those against profiting off of sharing this information especially when consent has not been explicitly granted. In addition to this, with the rise of ever more sophisticated public security breaches, tech users (which is not effectively everyone) are becoming increasingly aware that harmful hackers may potentially gain access to their data information and use it against them for identity theft or something similarly harmful. To eliminate this worry, it’s important for companies that want to utilize data collection to maintain continual heightened security. As technology advances, the security embedded in it should be equally advanced. By providing and promising customer protection, it allows consumers to become trustworthy and reliant on the businesses who collect their data. The effort of the app creators to maintain heightened security will enhance their credibility and positive brand awareness.
Before data collection, it is crucial that companies are transparent in providing a consent agreement. Some companies are not so transparent in their terms and agreements and this could cause an upset later on when consumers did not initially want their data to be collected. It’s also important to be transparent in what data is actually collected. By being fully transparent, customers and application managers are able to have a professional understanding of what is expected and collected from both parties.
Data collection is meant to be helpful, not harmful. If done properly, data insights can benefit service users and service providers. It’s important to maintain updated communication between the creators and platform users. As data collection becomes the major way companies collect customer information, learning how to benefit all stakeholders will be key to the success of the creator and enhanced experience of the user.
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This content is brought to you by Terra Wilder.
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