A worrying proportion -- 40 percent -- of the Global 9,000 (the 9,000 public companies reporting $1 billion or more in revenue per year) are doing nothing, big data-wise.
Neglecting big data
We recently commissioned an independent survey (registration required) to find out what the Global 9,000 companies are doing with big data, the challenges they are dealing with, and what opportunities they see for generating value. We found just 26 percent of large corporations are working on big data projects, while another 34 percent are in the evaluating and planning phase. However, 40 percent say they have not evaluated their big data needs or have evaluated but do not plan to proceed.
If that weren't worrying enough, the research also spotlighted the systemic problems at the root of these numbers. Respondents who have decided against a big data project or are still hesitant say the major inhibitors are "not enough staff with expertise" and the "expected cost of big data initiatives."
What's so worrying is that the wide range of benefits -- the kind of exponential leap in understanding promised by customers' big data, thus bringing an end to wasted marketing efforts -- makes such inaction from these large companies shortsighted.
Focus on customer experience
For the majority of the Global 9,000 companies starting down the big data path, the biggest motivation is to gain better customer experience analysis. Customer insights, fraud prevention and analysis, market targeting, behavioral analysis, customer lifecycle analysis, and operations improvement were commonly cited project aims. Likewise, the big data apps companies are utilizing today include customer experience analysis, customer insights, market targeting/decision making, capacity forecasting, customer lifecycle management, fraud prevention and analysis, and network monitoring.
All in all, it's clear that understanding customers is the major motivation for these first adopters. And this underlines the point we have made in previous columns about starting with the problems that big data analysis might solve, rather than building big data architecture for architecture's sake before deciding what to do with it.
Survey respondents say they see or anticipate seeing benefits such as increased competitive advantage, superior customer targeting, improved efficiency, and the ability to make better decisions faster. In short, they are or will be able to speed by competitors.
Early adopters understand their customers
Organizations farsighted enough to become early adopters for big data clearly recognize the enormous business opportunity attached to understanding their customers better.
Of course, they are not going to be in a position to read customers' minds. But the intelligence to be gleaned about specific individuals from their purchasing behavior, likes, interests; the ability to match a profile to similar ones from social networking sites, search engines, or interest-specific social sites; and the ability to mine sentiments gleaned from Facebook Likes, positive tweets, Yelp reviews, and so on could result in knowledge that will be deep, targeted, and useful.
As a result, businesses will be able to be truly smart in predicting customers' needs and making more appealing offers for products or services we really want to buy. This is a huge and welcome leap, and it's why big data is a big deal.
Our shaky global economy makes big corporate budget commitments difficult for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, business leaders and senior managers need to grasp the nettle. The skills gap -- if there is one -- will be short-lived, and many useful tools could help with any big data mission, easily offsetting the costs of development. Where there’s a will, if backed up by enough management support and leadership, there's surely a way.
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— Jeff Morris, Vice President of Product Marketing, Acturate
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