Big Data Unlocks Business Value
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The typical enterprise is awash in data. Virtually every
industry sector—from health care and financial services to retail and
manufacturing—is witnessing a growth in data volume at exponential rates.
Tucked away in these vast repositories is a gold mine of
business secrets, opportunities and potential success. But putting all this
information to work—including legacy data as well as unstructured data
generated by social media and video—is a daunting task.
“In many cases, organizations have transactional data
extending back 30 years or more, but they’re also coping with enormous volumes
of multimedia data,” says Gary Curtis, chief technology strategist and managing
director at Accenture. “Combining everything and making sense out of it is the
challenge of the digital age. Currently, few organizations are tapping into the
full potential of their data.”
Admittedly, this is a major challenge. A study of 5,000
organizations by research and advisory firm Corporate Executive Board (CEB)
found that the ability to analyze and glean insights from data is a priority
for global organizations—though few succeed in any significant way.
Only 38 percent of employees and 50 percent of senior
managers have the ability to make good decisions based on data, according to
CEB research. In many organizations, the greatest risk comes from too much
analysis. More than 40 percent of employees trust analysis over judgment, while
nearly 20 percent go with their gut.
Employees best equipped to make good decisions—“informed
skeptics”—effectively balance judgment and analysis, according to the CEB.
These individuals possess strong analytic skills and listen to others’ opinions
about analysis—but they are willing to dissent.
The ability to develop a well-defined strategy and implement
a viable solution to manage big data isn’t an option in today's data-driven
environment. “There’s no escaping it—it’s touching every industry sector,” says
Kalyan Viswanathan, director for Global Consulting Practices Information
Management with Tata Consultancy Services. “Big data is changing business and
creating new risks and opportunities. Savvy organizations are looking for ways
to put it to work effectively.”
Managing Data in a New Era
Since the dawn of computing, companies have looked for ways
to manage and exploit ever-growing volumes of data. Big data—which spans
greater volumes of data and more touch points—is at the center of this trend.
Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that the typical large enterprise
today holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 terabytes of stored data.
Companies must also cope with rapidly escalating volumes of
unstructured data that doesn’t fit easily into a conventional database or data
warehouse. Over the last few years, “There’s been an extreme broadening of the types
of data that become part of corporate data resources,” Accenture’s Curtis
says.
Big data can unlock value. It can make data more transparent
and usable on a regular basis; provide insights through richer and broader data
sets; create more narrow segmentation so that companies can fashion more
targeted marketing campaigns and sales techniques; and help connect the dots to
discover new products and services that might otherwise fly under the corporate
radar. Organizations that use big data effectively are likely to realize a
significant competitive advantage and open up new business opportunities.
But tackling big data isn’t as simple as putting a single
system in place and automatically reaping results. It’s necessary to combine
the right technologies and tools, build the right workflows and policies, find
talent that can tap into analytics and predictive-analytics software, and build
products and services that meet the needs of the rapidly changing marketplace.
“It requires extensive investments in data warehousing, data
integration, business intelligence, data visualization tools, business analytics
and predictive modeling,” Tata Consultancy’s Viswanathan notes. “There’s also a
need to apply algorithms that uncover patterns, connections
and relationships.”
Business Intelligence 
