Increasingly important: Big Data
A survey shows that a large majority (74%) expect knowledge gained from big data to have a positive impact on their return on investment within twelve months of implementation. More than half of the participating companies (56%) are already seeing business benefits from Big Data.
Forrester Consulting conducted a survey on behalf of Xerox among 330 top-level business leaders in five Western European countries. This survey revealed that it is mostly poor data quality and a lack of competence in handling data that stand in the way of potential business transformation using Big Data.
"Business leaders understand that rooting data-driven knowledge holds great potential for the business, however, the ground is still quite rocky," says Craig Saunders, Director, Analytics Resource Center, Xerox Consulting and Analytics Services.
The study highlights the current state of Big Data in today's enterprises based on three key trends:
- Big Data is key to many decisions in 2015: three-fifths (61%) of companies surveyed say decisions made during the next year will be based on data-driven knowledge rather than factors such as gut feeling, opinion and experience.
- Inaccurate data can be costly: 70% of organizations are still dealing with inaccurate data sets in their systems. 46% believe that these data sets, some of which are unusable, negatively impact their business and are in urgent need of revision.
- Data security and privacy: 37% of respondents indicated that data security and privacy is one of the biggest challenges when implementing Big Data strategies.
"While there are still challenges, the vast majority of organizations are driving technology to better leverage Big Data in many different use cases," Saunders says. "Of course, though, there is still a wide range of issues that keep leaders up late at night."
Challenges affecting potential future success of Big Data strategies vary from country to country:
- 48% of German companies have data quality problems - more than the European average of 34%
- In Germany, there is also much more focus on data security and privacy than in other European countries (47% compared to the average of 37%)
- In Belgium, the main concerns are lack of user training (39%) and lack of support from management (36%)
- In France, lack of access to customer data and third-party data is a major issue (39%)
- 36% of respondents from the UK believe that a lack of user training stands in the way of successful implementation of a Big Data strategy
- In the Netherlands, 36%, lack of access to internal data due to technical barriers is the biggest challenge
