Alex Depledge MBE is founder and CEO of Resi, co-founder and former CEO of Hassle.com and a member of the London Economic Action Partnership. Not only was she awarded entrepreneur of the year by TechCity in 2014, she also co-presented BBC Three’s show Girls Can Code.

Alex recently gave an insightful talk at DataFest18 in Edinburgh, in which she explained that companies need to avoid getting hung up on big data and to start making use of the data they already have at their fingertips. She explained that you do not need to invest heavily, implement large-scale AI learning systems or hire a data scientist: you just need a website and a question – what do I want to know?

Alex firmly believes that companies that ignore small data do so at their own peril.

DIGIT: How did data make a difference to your first start-up Hassle.com?

Alex: The entire business was failing until we began gathering data, we started examining what our customers were actually looking for on our website. Previously, we’d offered 23 different services, but the website traffic made it overwhelmingly clear that customers wanted one thing: to find a cleaner.

We then started to analyse the market. Using surveys on Facebook we asked 100 people if they had a cleaner and if yes how did they find them. We also asked if they didn’t have a cleaner where would they find one?

After we compared this data to our Google Analytics we identified a gap in the market for finding cleaners. So, to start with you don’t need to gather your own data or be a data analyst, you just need to be able to log into Google Analytics and see what is happening on your website. 

DIGIT: What are key mistakes people make when using Data?

Alex: Simply, people aren’t asking any questions when they look at a data set. You need to know what it is you want to find out. It’s like an English essay – you start with a question then use the text to answer your question and you use the textbook to find your answers. It is the same skill set but you are using numbers and not words.

You don’t need to integrate a database on the backend of your website, run fancy algorithms or use complex computations because so many free online platforms have a whole reporting system. You just need a username and a password to access all this data. Nail your small data before you try and tackle big data.

Collecting data and then not using is a common mistake and assuming you don’t need it because you know what the customer wants without asking them.

DIGIT: What is a key misconception about Big Data?

Alex: Terms like big data are vacuous, many people who say they are using big data aren’t. What they are really doing is dealing with small data on a large scale. I think people are more excited or fearful about the potential of big data. It could have many positive impacts such as fixing a broken NHS but we don’t know yet the possible downsides.