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A survey just released by the Harvard Business Review suggests that there are high hopes amongst senior executives that Big Data will help transform their businesses. 85% of senior managers questioned believe that significant benefits can be derived from harnessing Big Data.
The two top improvements envisaged were "fact-based decision making" and "customer experience". Patrick Rohrbasser, CEO of Customer Insight consultancy emnos: “In businesses Big Data is taking on an increasingly important role. Expectations are high, although many are still hesitant – as the optimal way of implementing data in your own business is not yet determined.”
In fact: Only 17% of the managers questioned felt that their ability to use data analytics to transform their business was adequate. This is also reflected in a survey earlier in the year from IBM that again stated that only 30% of CMO’s felt they were adequately prepared to benefit from the growing quantity of data.
The benefits of Big Data are perfectly clear – but what is the approach?
While it isn't hard to argue with the value of using data and insight to support better decision making the cavernous gap that exists between desired outcomes and ability to deliver is creating a wall of anxiety right across the retail world. There are so many unknowns when working with Big Data, much of which is very new to data analysts, such as the masses of unstructured information from the web and social media. Where should we start? What data provides the best value? What measures can we use to assess value? What are the quality challenges?
As a consequence of these and many more unknowns it can be extremely difficult to create a sound business case before attempting to start.
Moreover, we have been here before. In the mid-1990’s retailers were facing a similar challenge with the launch of loyalty cards when there wasn't the IT capability to usefully analyze the millions of transactions per day that were generated. Then, as now, the challenge was analogous to "attempting to drink from a fire hose without drowning".
When adressing 'Big Data' retailers should focus on their specific needs
However, some retailers did manage to harness aspects of the data to transform elements of their business by looking at solving specific issues. The answer then, as it is now with Big Data, is not to start with trying to integrate and analyze all the data available, just because it’s there.
“Businesses should visualize their concrete retail challenges and then determine the data insight that is required to solve them. From this position it is much easier to create cost justified and measurable programs with specific goals.” says Patrick Rohrbasser.
This requires special skills within an integrated team; understanding the retail challenges and then being able to isolate those data sources that can most cost effectively be brought to bear on the problem. It requires retail knowledge, data management best practice, technology, analysis capability and transformational consultancy to ensure the whole business benefits.
Using Data Insight in order to make better business decisions!
Patrick Rohrbasser confirms this: "There will always be a new data source that promises to revolutionize business performance. Customer insight has enormous commercial power, but only when transformed into company-wide knowledge that is used to drive better business decisions, focused on specific retail issues."