Big Data: Big problem for business executives?

For all this talk about Thanksgiving’s Big Meal, we weren’t surprised to see another “Big” making headlines: Big Data. Maybe the tryptophan eased into our lives a little earlier than late-November when it comes to tackling the issue of Big Data in business.

We discovered a nifty slideshow on Baselinemag.com that describes the dilemma of Big Data for businesses today. Here are some of the key points:

1. 62% of executives feel that big data will be very important to business in 2014

2. Nearly 80% agree that, “If we could harness all our data, we’d be a much stronger business

3. Less than 1/5 say they’re exactly where that want to be in using data

4. 74% say they need to get much better at analyzing incoming data in real time

5. 73% struggle to convert big data into actionable intelligence

6. 53% say they have more data than they know what to do with

7. Only 20% say they have “little to no” data silos within their organizations

8. Only 26% say their companies do a good job of analyzing social media monitoring

9. Just 24% say they effectively use data analytics to do customer profiling and segmentation

10. 66% plan to train employees and 43% plan to hire new staff to improve data management/analytics

We’re interested in your strategies for big data heading into the new year.  Some consider big data to be an impediment to progress; other consider it to be a differentiator moving forward.  An investigation into the best practices is really what is needed right now.

Let us know what you think in the comments section!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s a summary of the Baseline Magazine survey:

Organizations believe that big data will be “very important” to business in 2014, but they acknowledge that they’re struggling to take command of this technology, according to a recently released survey from CompTIA. The volume of data doubles about every two years, according to industry research, and worldwide IT spending for data-related needs will amount to $34 billion this year. Unfortunately, enterprise executives say they’re simply not getting enough value for their investments in big data because it’s difficult to analyze all the information in real time, much less convert findings into actionable intelligence, according to survey results. In addition, there’s so much data out there that the business-benefiting potential of far too much of that data remains unfulfilled. The good news: This presents opportunities for IT professionals, as data architects now command an average salary of nearly $114,500, and business intelligence specialists are making close to $102,000. CompTIA is a nonprofit trade, education, certification and advocacy association serving the IT community. An estimated 500 U.S. IT and business executives took part in the research.

Read more.