Big Data Is Now A Corporate Asset

Big Data is growing up – finally. That’s the conclusion of new research published recently by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The research details how corporate attitudes to data have changed in the past four years – with many organisations now seeing data itself as a corporate asset.

Instead of constantly seeking more data, companies are asking the right questions. They are seeking the right data that can help decision support, rather than measuring and capturing everything regardless of use.

This strategic alignment with a more intelligent approach to data often comes with the elevation of a data manager to the executive board. Either the role sits with the CIO/CTO or a new Chief Data Officer role is created to ensure that there is always a view on data value at the top table.

What is particularly interesting for managers who are asked to invest in Big Data projects is that there is a link between a well-defined data policy and financial success. Not only does a well-defined data policy correlate with business success, but also the effectiveness of being able to resolve real business problems through more effective data use.

Commenting on the EIU research in Forbes magazine, Bernard Marr, author of the book “Big Data”, said:

“As technology continues to improve, the ‘bigness’ of big data will become less and less of a factor. Companies are becoming more comfortable with the idea that they will need to scale up to allow the value of data initiatives to reach all sectors of the business, and so they are becoming more comfortable with approximation, agility and experimentation.”

I agree with Marr. We can see from this EIU research that more companies are exploring how to use Big Data, but importantly more are finding a genuine business reason or use. As more companies find these reasons to get more engaged the use of Big Data will explode in size – all over the world.