Bpifrance seizes growth for Small-Medium Enterprises with Big Data

Despite the numerous benefits of Big Data, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise have yet to reap the values that most of larger organizations get out of the implementation of data analysis technology. To turn this situation around, Bpifrance is organizing an entire day (November 3rd) dedicated to big data for SMEs.
We can all agree that data will be the currency of the future.
Only in France by 2020, big data will amount to a turnover of € 9 billion, corresponding to a 40% growth rate and the creation of 130, 000 jobs. The EU, on its side, plans to invest up to € 500 million between 2016-2020.
Contrary to popular belief, big data is a lever of growth in many sectors, not only Finance & Insurance, Health and E-commerce but also Manufacturing, Agriculture, Distribution, Transportation and Culture.
Monsanto, the agricultural business giant, just reaped $ 20 billion in benefits through big data, but again, we are talking about a huge company.
Today in the Hexagon, 10,000 farmers use BD to optimize their business, which may sound great but it actually represents only 1% of France’s farmers population. Overall, big data covers only 20% of the French Economy, for a total of only 15000 companies.
Indeed, the biggest challenge faced nowadays is how to scale big data and incentivize SMEs to adopt its tools.
Among the small and medium enterprises surveyed by Aremus & Associates on the subject, 63% of them were not yet using data modeling but 70%  admitted to be very interested in big data technologies.
Models, algorithms and data are at the heart of the current competitive war because they offer the ability to transform the customer experience while optimizing business productivity.
France has all the ingredients needed to unlock the potential of data modeling and predictive algorithms in SMEs, provided the they know how to implement it quickly and create maximum value.
In fact, when it comes to big data there is always a huge appetite, the real issue stems out the lack of in-house capability. It’s indeed very hard for any company to capitalize on big data when internal skills are missing and there is a shortage of data scientists in the market.
Bringing in big data specialists will for sure require a big investment, I would say this is one of the biggest cause of slow adoption, but it’s a necessary move a company needs to make if it wishes not only to scale up but to survive in the market.
On November 3rd, Bpifrance aims to democratize big data and to show SMEs how to implement data solutions in their company, providing insights from professionals and testimonies from fellow entrepreneurs. Definitely a topic worth discussing if you want your company to stay ahead of the competition

The conference will be held in French, find the program for the event here. If you wish to participate, don’t forget to register! This article was written in conjunction with a paid partnership with BPIFrance.