As Big Data Gets Bigger, Are Canadian Businesses Listening?

As part of Small Business Week, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) has released a comprehensive report outlining the digital landscape’s disruption of Canadian business.

The report, which identifies six major trends facing small businesses in 2017 as they move towards future-proof operations, goes into detail about one particularly cumbersome aspect of the digital world: The rise of big data and the data economy.

The other five trends in the study are the aging workforce, the rise of the millennial generation, a more culturally diverse population, the growth of virtual marketplaces and the automation of business activities, according to BDC’s summary of the report. Data runs through several of them. Online sales, automated systems and loyalty programs all generate information about customers, which is why the data economy matters even to businesses that don’t think of themselves as tech companies.

Big Data is Big Business

In February, Gartner predicted that approximately 8.4 billion devices would be connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) by the end of the year—a 31% increase from 2016. Using data from IHS Markit, the BDC report, on the other hand, makes it clear these numbers are set to explode, reaching 75 billion connected devices by 2025.

Are Canadian businesses leveraging this information to create growth, or are they letting this “oil of the digital era” (as The Economist put it) slip through the cracks?

What Is “Big Data”?

Big data is a loose term for collections of information too large or fast-moving to handle by hand or in a simple spreadsheet. For a small business, though, it rarely means anything exotic. It’s sales records, website visits, email open rates, loyalty card purchases, reviews and social media comments.

The IoT adds another layer. Connected devices, from smart thermostats and fitness trackers to sensors on factory equipment and delivery vehicles, send a steady stream of readings back to the companies that make or run them. That’s the flood of information the forecasts above were trying to measure.

Learning What Customers Want

With billions of devices generating data, businesses are tasked with the onerous job of sifting through the noise to retrieve valuable insights. Thankfully, data analysis is getting simpler—and the rewards for doing so include making customers happier, businesses more competitive, and operations more efficient.

To unlock the potential of the data economy, businesses need only make a few adjustments to their existing operation:

• Use data tools
• Maintain a customer relationship management (CRM) system
• Offer personalization

By implementing a CRM system, businesses can simplify—and personalize—data analysis, which can then be used to provide a stronger relationship with new and existing customers. Data tools—including email surveys, Google Analytics, and even software that monitors social media channels—can provide an edge for enterprises wanting to do better business, which is quickly becoming a game of personalizing products and offerings for customers.

A CRM system is, at heart, a shared record of every customer: who they are, what they’ve bought, and every conversation the business has had with them. Once that history is in one place, it’s much easier to spot patterns, like which customers are about to stop buying, or which products tend to be bought together.

How the Forecasts Held Up

The connected-device numbers did keep climbing, though not as steeply as the boldest 2017 forecast suggested. Research firm IoT Analytics, which tracks IoT connections, reported in October 2025 that the number of connected IoT devices reached 18.5 billion in 2024 and was expected to grow to 21.1 billion by the end of 2025. It forecast 39 billion by 2030.

That’s well short of 75 billion by 2025, but forecasters don’t always count the same things, so the gap partly reflects different definitions of what counts as a connected device. Either way, the direction the BDC report pointed to was right: the number of devices generating data has grown substantially.

The tools have changed too. Google Analytics, one of the data tools mentioned above, has changed significantly since then. Google’s older version, Universal Analytics, stopped processing data for standard properties starting July 1, 2023, and businesses had to move to Google Analytics 4. Anyone who set up analytics years ago and hasn’t checked since may be missing data.

What It Means for Small Businesses

The advice in BDC’s report still applies, and it’s still more about habits than technology. Pick a few numbers that actually matter to your business, like repeat customers, average order size or where new customers come from, and track them consistently.

Keep customer information in one place, whether that’s a full CRM or something simpler, so the whole team works from the same picture. And use what you learn to make customers’ lives easier, not just to sell to them more. Personalization only works if customers trust you with their information, so be clear about what you collect and why.

To learn more about the changing landscape of Canadian business, BDC’s full report is available here (registration required).