Eighty-five percent of the
respondents note that a big data initiative has been planned or is in progress,
with almost half using big data in an operational capacity ranging from
production reporting to 24/7 mission-critical applications, according to a
survey.
And although
they’re still tackling various technical and skills availability challenges,
all the respondents are looking for big data analysis to have a major impact on
their businesses. Although over half don’t have ROI–driven business cases, 85%
expect qualitative or quantitative benefits to business or IT performance.
In addition, 80% of
the respondents see big data initiatives as reaching across more than one line
of business or function. In all, 17 different business functions are named as
driving big data initiatives. But the biggest opportunity in big data revolves
around customer insights and customer experience.
But, companies
overwhelmingly indicate that the real benefit of big data analysis comes from
the ability to speed up the decision-making process.
“In order to achieve this goal, many
of the firms interviewed have established a new business metric for measuring
the value of their big data initiatives – time-to-answer (TTA),” according to
a post by Harvard Business Review about the study.
“TTA reflects the speed by which executives can answer critical business
questions and has become a common measure on Wall Street and among other
leading firms. The Pentagon has established an equivalent metric known as
Data-to-Decision, which is dramatized in the analyses conducted by the
intelligence community in the Academy Award–nominated film Zero Dark Thirty.”
The HBR article
goes on to note five steps companies that are represented in the survey have
taken to bolster how fast they can make decisions using data analysis and,
thus, gain value from their efforts:
1. Identify the five most critical business questions. These
questions should be manageable so executives can create and demonstrate an
initial set of quick wins that provide the business value and can be used to
justify expanding data analysis for other mission-critical questions.
2. Create an analytical sandbox. “The idea of an analytical sandbox is
that it enables a discovery process, by which executives can play with their
data and experiment in an effort to discern new patterns and detect critical
new insights. The Pentagon and intelligence communities employ discovery
environments to analyze immense volumes of sensor data, from satellites and
other telemetry, to identify national security threats,” according to HBR.
3. Ask more frequent questions and refine them quickly.
4. Validate the hypotheses. Use test-and-learn, a
set of practices used to test ideas to a small number of customer segments to
predict impact, then validate results before applying them to larger customer
segments.
5. Embed analytics into operational processes. “This enables
companies to incorporate ‘new’ patterns and discoveries with ‘known’ algorithms
that provide the background of their operational processes. As a result,
companies are realizing value from big data establishing a dynamic environment
that merges the ‘new’ and the ‘known’ to create a more intelligent and
sophisticated decision-making infrastructure,” HBR notes.
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