As the world is become more connected than ever before, users generate more and more unstructured data. These massive amounts of data are expected to grow 40 percent per year, and 50 times by 2020.  From a Product manager perspective, all this data is just waiting to be analyzed to provide insights about the customers and the product.

If you are still not familiar with why big data is relevant for your business, Forbes magazine published an article with 20 mind boggling facts about big data. One interesting fact is “For a typical Fortune 1000 company, just a 10% increase in data accessibility will result in more than $65 million additional net income.”  If you feel like you are lagging behind with big data and analytics, don’t worry. This blog series will provide you with all the steps you need to take.

Product Managers today are expected to have basic data analysis skills in order to analyze the behavior of their users, and come up with insights as to how to design their product.  Data analysis can provide more insights than getting feedback from a minority of customers. This was put down nicely In a post on the UserVoice blog

“While unsolicited customer feedback helps product managers understand only the vocal minority (the customers who voluntarily share their thoughts and ideas), data provides an objective look at every customer, making it an excellent way to learn more about who your customers actually are and how they’re using your product.”

I’d like to think of Product analytics using a connotation from the world of economics. Customer feedback sessions provide the customers’  “willingness to buy” while data analytics provides what the customer actually buys.