Big Data continues to be big missed opportunity among businesses, with many organisations citing cost, security and uncertainty as the key barriers of adoption in the industry.
In a bid to understand what keeps customers up at night, the recent Dell Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI), which uncovers how organisations are truly using disruptive technology, reveals that when it comes to Big Data, there is considerable room to room.
According to respondents, representing companies across 11 regions worldwide, big data is less of a pressing issue than security, Cloud and mobility.
“While most organisations collect some form of big data, many are not leveraging it because they have yet to identify an effective approach,” the report states.
“Those that do effectively leverage big data experience higher revenue growth rates.”
While 61 per cent of respondents believe they have big data that can be analysed, only 39 per cent understand how to extract value from big data and are pursuing it.
“This type of uncertainty stunts potential growth, and there’s nothing worse than striking out when you don’t even swing,” Bryan Jones, Executive Director Public Large Enterprise Marketing EMEA, Dell.
Echoing the overriding message of the report, Jones believes big data presents a major competitive opportunity, as those organisations that are the most effective in deriving business insights from big data are seeing much higher growth rates than those that are not.
Findings claim the average three-year growth rate (14 percent) for those most effective in leveraging big data is almost twice as high as that of organisations least effective in using big data (8 percent).
Big data barriers…
While big data has proven marketing benefits, infrastructure costs (35 per cent) and security (35 per cent) tend to be the primary obstacles for implementing big data initiatives.
Delving deeper, respondents believe analytics/operational costs (34 per cent), lack of management support (22 per cent) and lack of technical skills (21 per cent) are additional barriers in big data strategies.
“So where do the troubles with big data stem from?” asks Jones, citing cost (e.g. price of talent, storage, etc.), security concerns, uncertainty in how to leverage data and a lack of in-house expertise.
“In fact, only 36 percent of organisations globally have in-house big data expertise. Yet, the proven benefits of big data analytics should justify the investment - businesses just have to get started.
In response to security concerns, most organisations are leveraging private Clouds (43 per cent) or traditional servers (24 per cent) instead of public Clouds (11 per cent) to store big data.
Meanwhile, organisations on average feel they are getting only 53 per cent of the potential insights from their available data with industries such as financial (57 per cent) and healthcare and telecom (both at 56 per cent) more apt at taking advantage of their big data than others.
“At its core, Big Data analytics provides organisations with the background and intelligence to make educated strategic decisions,” Jones adds.
“Personally, I want to know that my organisation is equipped with the right set of insights so they can invest their time and resources into activities that matter most to our customers.”
By analysing the behaviour of potential customers through Big Data, Jones believes marketers can take a focused approach instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best.
All in all, Jones says the end result conveys what organisations need to know about investing in analytics.
“Companies that are effective at leveraging big data are growing at a higher rate than those that are not,” he adds.
