The growth of data has disrupted the business landscape as organizations have realized the importance of utilizing all the data available to them to make informed decisions. Regardless of the industry an organization plays in, big data has gone beyond acting as a value added during decision making to become a critical feature that is utilized by decision makers to obtain competitive advantage.

In Nigeria, large telcos have begun utilizing big data to become more strategic in decision making through understanding customer behavior and developing solutions to address clear needs. The current internet data plan battle in the sector is fuelled by monitoring customer usage and detecting the need for plans that directly appeal to the large customer base in the country, the same can be seen in the financial and e-commerce industry.

The fact that the large organizations are utilizing big data does not mean that big data is only for big companies. So, what is big data, how does an organization begin to utilize this to become insight driven and why is it important?

Big data simply put is the creation of valuable information from the huge volume of data surrounding us. The term big data analytics was coined because of how fast data is being processed, the amount of data and the various forms of data that is available in our global age.

More often than not organizations hear this buzzword “Big Data” and begin to throw money into resources that should enable them gain all the benefits of big data analytics without creating a structure that ensures that insight from the data turns into action for growth. This usually leads to wasted investments and increased disbelief in the use of analytics.

Deloitte has proposed 5 essential building blocks to guide organizations to become insight driven organizations. This includes:

• Strategy: this focuses on creating a clear objective for the analytics and aligning this objective with the broader goals of the organization to ensure desired outcomes align.
• People: the organization would require a balance between the technical skills data scientist possess along with business skills to have people that understand how the technology available can drive insight driven benefits.
• Process: the organization must move beyond reviewing data about the past that are relevant to various Strategic Business Units (SBU)’s, to prescriptive and predictive insights that make them industry thought leaders. This can only be achieved by creating a formal structure that combines the insights from the various SBUs.
• Data: as emphasized earlier, organizations should look beyond internal data to external data from various channels, e.g. social media and government regulations.
• Technology: although I have emphasized that technology doesn’t make organizations insight driven, it enables them alongside the other building blocks. The right technology is important for driving results through analytics.

Some organizations would probably debate the need for adopting this framework to become insight driven, especially as operations might be going smooth and the investment seems rather high. However, through efficient use of big data your organization can identify potential operational efficiencies and reduce cost — enhance existing market offers and recognize new market streams through better understanding of the customer. Finally, organizations can decide to monetize data as a value added service to its customers. With the growth in available data and improvement in data analytic solutions, why don’t we all become insight driven organizations?

Author: Utinsin Ntofon