We have the privilege of witnessing a new economic revolution that will notably transform our lives and the way value is generated in production processes. The origin of this revolution lies in the development of the so-called data economy (data economy). Data—that new commodity which, like oil in the past, is the object of desire for many companies—is today the currency with which we pay for services we naively believe are free, such as Google searches, news on Facebook, or agile Amazon deliveries. We generate data continuously, whether we are driving, running, or sitting watching television. Furthermore, the objects around us also generate it. A self-driving car will generate between 2 petabytes and 100 gigabytes per second in the future. Yes, a huge amount. In the world of the Internet of Things, buildings, appliances, mobile phones, and countless connected technological devices continuously generate data about our behavior, preferences, and potential needs.
Many may wonder if this is really a major novelty, as we already knew about the abundance of data and information. But it is, because until recently, the available information had hardly been processed to extract value and knowledge. The new technological wave of big data is changing this. What characterizes the new environment are the well-known four Vs: volume, velocity, variety, and value. We are talking about technologies or tools capable of handling enormous volumes of data, from different sources and natures, at high speed, to extract the maximum possible value from them. All this is aimed at better adapting the product or service to the experience customers have with it. This type of process was not within the reach of traditional data exploitation technologies. To date, the data was there, but its full potential was not being utilized.
Contrary to what some may think, the digital user goes far beyond millennials, and the sector knows it.
Spanish banks and the associations that represent them are participating in this new technological wave with the enthusiasm of knowing that embracing the digital revolution opens a universe of possibilities, many of them still unexplored and others yet to be defined.
The utilization of big data offers four levers of change in the banking business. Firstly, new technologies applied to data processing will allow for a better understanding of the banking customer’s needs and their experience when interacting with financial institutions. This will enable banks to offer services better adapted to the customer and the way they wish to receive them. Banking products themselves will evolve, either toward standard products, where entities will differentiate themselves from one another in the way they interact with the customer, or toward products tailored to the customer’s needs.
