Big Data: A Golden Opportunity

Big data. You hear the term all the time these days - in meetings, within your business network, at roundtable discussions and industry conferences - but do you really understand the concept and how to leverage it for furthered business success?

Big data essentially refers to a set of traditional data - financial records, transaction details, point-of-sale interactions - and digital information - metadata, web behavior, clickstream reports, social exchanges - collected internally and externally that delivers ongoing discovery for your organization. It is the premium, synthetic motor oil to your engine of a business analytics system; without it, you will lock up trying to run on dry with flat, lifeless information. It fuels an organization's decision-making abilities by providing valuable insights into the hidden patterns and correlations that can often be overlooked by conventional business intelligence (BI) methods.

Generating business value from these multiple sources of information, however, requires powerful processing and discovery capabilities. The market today is responding with more analytics tools and functionalities than ever before, understanding that operating competitively in today's fast-paced, dynamic business environment requires up-to-the-minute, relevant and readable information. The ability to run real-time visual reports to drive decisions will not only impact your bottom line, it will aid your organization in proactively evolving in your industry rather than remaining reactionary with the rest of the market. Today's generation of business analytics solutions, powered through big data collection techniques like data and web mining, can provide a 360-degree view of your organization's current key performance indicators, live budget comparisons, and what-if predictive analysis trends, empowering your business leaders to navigate the marketplace with confidence.

The statistics on leveraging the power of big data and business analytics to make better business decisions are staggering - and growing. According to a study by IBM, from the year 2003 and working backwards to the dawn of civilization, society generated roughly 5 exabytes - or 5 billion gigabytes - of data; in 2011, the same amount of data was created every two days, and in 2012, it took less than 10 minutes.

 

It has been said that "data is the new oil," a phrase first coined by British entrepreneur Clive Humby in 2006, and it is hard to deny the similarities. The true value in big data has solidified it as an economic asset comparable only to the market strength of crude oil and gold. As such, it is in your organization's best interest to "mine for business gold" with big data analytics and gain a competitive advantage before the rest of your market cashes in on the gold rush, because the value in big data is only rising.