Published on the 22/05/2017 | Written by Newsdesk
Data management software vendor Talend reckons there is a surge in Australian businesses ‘betting’ on big data projects this year…
Whether these projects are gambles or sure things wasn’t made clear, however.
In a statement, Talend said it polled 273 IT decision-makers on the sidelines of the recent AWS Summit which took place in Sydney. Of the attendees at what was an IT infrastructure conference, 76 percent said they are planning a big data project this year – although the company extrapolated that to say this is the number of Australian organisations involved in the big data crap shoot.
The numbers are up, because when it did a similar poll last year, the company said it found that 41 percent of companies were carrying out big data projects in 2016.
Talend said analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are top of the list in terms of data projects planned in 2017, and added that the survey also showed that Australian businesses are failing to use the new rich information at hand to better understand customers.
The poll reveals data migration to the cloud, real-time analytics, AI/Machine Learning and metadata management access make up nearly 70 percent of IT departments’ data-related execution priorities. Customer-360 initiatives are the lowest priority, with just five percent of organisations focused in this area.
These figures are in contrast to a recent global survey which found that 63 percent of organisations in the US and Western Europe (UK, France, and Germany) view using data to better understand customers as a top business priority for 2017.
In a statement, Talend ANZ country manager Steve Singer said the findings show that more companies are recognising that they must begin a journey to become more data-driven. “Data should be seen as the new priority for all organisations, but many companies have a long way to go before they are leveraging data effectively to gain not only operational efficiencies but also customer insight.”
Of note from the survey is that the greatest hurdles to organisations becoming more data-driven are evenly split between a lack of skills (23 percent), alignment between internal IT and business strategies (22 percent) and restricted budgets (20 percent).
Nevertheless, when asked what was the most valuable type of insight and return on investment that had been obtained through data, the survey found that improved customer service and retention along with reduced operating costs rated highest at 21 percent each, closely followed by creating new revenue (18 percent).
“The results demonstrate that the majority of companies are still only just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding the impact which customer 360 initiatives can have on increasing share of wallet and driving lasting customer loyalty,” said Singer.
