Imagine driving a car without a dashboard. You would not know if you are running out of fuel, driving at a high speed or worse, if your engine is overheating. This is the same situation businesses that operate without having proper systems in place to analyse their operations data face in this day and age of big data and analytics. Despite this hurdle, today’s business leaders are gaining more in-depth knowledge of their business operations. They have started to realise the importance of making data-driven decisions to meet their specific business needs.

Working with raw data commonly referred to as data analytics simply helps today’s leaders analyse raw data to come up with conclusive decisions. By visualising such data, management teams take positive steps towards making wise, well-informed decisions that have led to the growth of their organisations through increasing customer retention, managing risk and making their operations more agile. Making good use of available data is becoming an indispensable factor for any organisation.

Initially, the financial industry had the advantage of holding their customers’ data which they could easily use to tailor-make innovative products that suited them. This has since changed with the proliferation of devices and the fact that consumers are able to react to different products and services on the internet and especially social media. Today, PR professionals have tapped into these cloud-native business environments. They are investing in automated data analysis and AI systems that help them effortlessly analyse by listening to their client’s audience behaviours then target them with more personalised, unique and accurate content pertaining to specific products and services.

Listening therefore becomes the key element, it provides a wealth of information to a particular target audience especially since they use several conversational channels to easily communicate with the organisation, thanks to digitisation. This digitally savvy audience, therefore, forces PR professionals and agencies to learn and understand how to detect good information sources then clearly explain actionable communication strategies to their clients using big data analytic reports. On the other hand, clients expect to offer products and services that match their customers’ ideas out of this intel provided by their agencies.

After a deep understanding of using Data-as-a-Service by PR professionals and agencies to provide valuable insights to their clients, we start to see a lot of departmental collaboration to harness the most out of big data technologies within these organisations. These forward-thinking business leaders start using virtualised data to develop lean, qualitative and quantitative insight pitches powered by Fast Data systems, whose primary goal is to make data available very quickly, in real-time for research and developing innovative new company models and strategies.

Data analytics and AI will shape the future of public relations by creating new media relations models; agencies will be better equipped to increase efficiency, exploit the upselling potential and boost their revenue by generating marketing collaterals like thought leadership leads, for instance, white papers, blog posts, industry reports, etc. Understanding what is feasible with data analytics can also assist leaders in planning their organisation’s future using predictive analysis where they can prioritise their investments and secure resources for future uncertainties like pandemics or expansion moves.

Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team [email protected]