Published on the 26/04/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
New research is showing significant return on investment for big data projects and a growing demand for people who can turn data into useful information…
Big data became big news almost overnight. Some large companies are investing heavily in big data analytics, and seeing substantial returns, but the challenges are considerable, says Tata Consulting Services (TCS) in a new study.
TCS surveyed 1217 companies in eight countries in four regions of the world, and according to TCS CTO, K Ananth Krishnan, some are seeing substantial returns on their investments.
Krishnan said that ROIs indicated by respondents averaged out at 46 percent. “Large internet companies reported seeing specific uplift in sales of 10 to 15 percent, and reduced customer churn. Some that had tracked the metrics said churn had come down 20 to 30 basis points.”
The report quotes the analytics director of “a $2 billion internet company” saying the ROI has been “at least ten fold” and had “changed the way we do business fundamentally”.
There is no hard and fast definition of big data, but there is broad agreement that it involves the analysis of large volumes of structured and unstructured data to extract useful insights for business benefit.
According to Krishnan, companies face considerable challenges in making effective use of big data. “The organisational challenge needed to get to this structured and unstructured information is not a trivial one,” he said. “People need to recognise that this is not a conventional IT project. It needs the IT department and the business to collaborate and sometimes even to from specialist groups to do this.”
He predicted that, as the use of big data analytics grows with awareness of its potential, critical skills will be in short supply. “Big data analytics needs different kinds of roles. Some people are calling these data scientists, some people call them insight architects. They need a very diverse skill set of mathematical abilities and the abilities to understand the business problems they are trying to solve.
“To turn data into useful information and business outcomes you need people to analyse, interpret and then hopefully, provide insights. And that is going to be one of the most interesting areas. You might be getting the right data from multiple sources, you might be cutting it up with all kind of algorithms and processing them in the rapid real-time ways but unless you have someone with the insight to tell you what it means and how it can create business value the circle will not be complete.”
