Communication Excellence by Ralph Tench Dejan Verčič Ansgar Zerfass Ángeles Moreno & Piet Verhoeven

Author:Ralph Tench, Dejan Verčič, Ansgar Zerfass, Ángeles Moreno & Piet Verhoeven
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Organisations have access to a diverse range of data, which provide different levels or grades of control and includes: internal, shared and external data streams. All of these sources produce a great amount of data in diverse areas and functions that provide opportunities for data collection and analysis. Shared data streams are produced by third parties like retailers and are accessible to other organisations. External data is harvested from outside sources like social media conversations, news, omnibus surveys, and academic studies, as well as public sector and demographic data.

Big data has come into action in business because of the need to create real-time intelligence from the high volume of available data that continues to increase every minute given the exponential use of mobile devices all over the world. But big data is about the ‘what’, not the ‘why’.32 Obviously the importance of big data is the value that can be created to improve an organisation’s performance. The availability of large volumes of data improves decision-making processes by basing decisions on data that is collected at an unparalleled rate and can therefore increment the variables that are considered for making predictions. By using big data organisations try to improve strategies and tactics with the explicit aim of helping to achieve their objectives.

More than ever communication functions have access to an amazing quantity of information from stakeholders that are willing to express themselves. They also produce and have access to a great range of data from social media, news releases, etc., but much of the data generated for them comes through research based on the measurement of output, outcome or outflow. This means that big data today has helped with the previously discussed ‘problem child’ for communication of measurement, but it has still not managed to fill in the cracks. Why? Because the data provided ends up strengthening the same areas of output and outcomes where evaluation practices in strategic communication have already been applied. On the other hand some believe that big data might allow practitioners to improve their traditional functions but also to improve the whole process of strategic planning and also the opportunities for measurement and evaluation in order to demonstrate the contribution of communication to the business bottom line. In fact, one of the key benefits of analysing with big data is prediction in the form of probabilities.

Big data is here to stay and its application cannot be slowed down let alone reversed. ‘The more an institution or industry relies on information as its core product, the greater and more complete the change will be’.33

Connecting with the beginning of this section focused on the departmental level of communication, we stated that the value of the company today was more and more based on intangibles. What does datafication mean in this context? Facebook’s flotation valuation was US$104 billion in 2011, yet in pure financial/accounting terms, the company was worth just US$6.3 billion. This massive discrepancy is due to the perceived value of its information. Facebook has over 2.1 trillion pieces of ‘monetisable’ content.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.