brightsolid has launched its Business Insights Model – making it the first Scottish data centre and cloud operator to launch its own in-house data analytics consultancy. With the Insights Model brightsolid aims to empower businesses with knowledge from their data, providing a better understanding of their customers and processes at a fraction of the cost of traditional data analytics. The Business Insights Model is now available to all businesses who want to extract greater value out of their data. The Digital Economy Business Survey 2014, released by the office of the chief economic adviser for Scotland, suggested only 34 percent of businesses in Scotland use data analytics. Only one out of four of these organisations felt data had a large role in the operation of their business. After speaking to over 50 Scottish SMEs, brightsolid found that the majority were yet to unlock the real value in their data or actionable knowledge due to data science being a niche skill and unrealistic pricing models used by analytics consultancies.
By developing a small in-house team and using open source tools, brightsolid has combined its knowledge of data storage and security with data science to deliver affordable analytics to organisations of all sizes. brightsolid’s Business Insights philosophy provides long term value and dispels the scary jargon around data so businesses can easily understand what their data means and how to act on it.
“As a data centre and cloud hosting provider we love data and understand its potential to drive business growth. Now we want to help other organisations see the value of the data they are holding,” said Inez Hogarth, head of analytics at brightsolid. “Too often companies shy away from analytics because they think it is too complicated, when the truth is that there are tools available to conduct comprehensive analysis in a simple and inexpensive way – they just need to be shown how. The ability to analyse large quantities of data results in actionable intelligence and ultimately, better business decisions. It is extremely empowering.”
Katie Dawn Armstrong, head of marketing for brightsolid adds, “I was very excited when Inez joined the brightsolid family because I, like lots of marketers I know, collect a ton of information over different platforms and were in a ‘must capture every piece of data!’ mind-set. We had no shortage of data, our challenge was piecing the entries together and taking meaning from our data in a format other than a massive ugly spread sheet. After working with Inez we found we had gaps in our data – and that wasn’t a bad thing because now we can fill those gaps. We learned more about our customers and what they liked – and there were a few surprises in there! We now understand what we are actually looking for, how to find it and what to do once we have. Interestingly, we also learned what ‘good data’ is to us and what can be discarded or archived. This makes analysing our data so much easier”.
