The big data technology and services market will reach $16.9 billion by 2015, up from $3.2 billion in 2010, research firm IDC has forecast.

This represents a 40 per cent annual growth rate, seven times the rate for the overall ICT business. This trend is affecting all regions. Over 40 per cent of chief information officers in the Middle East, according to IDC, were considering big data technology investment in 2013.

Big data can potentially enable companies to increase top-line revenues by providing better and timelier insights on target consumers, said a study conducted by Strategy&.

To tap the potential of big data, organizations must reshape their decision-making culture to allow senior executives to make more judgments based on clear data insights, the study further said.

The firm pointed out key factors in assessing maturity levels which included environment readiness, the extent of legal and regulatory frameworks and ICT infrastructure; internal capabilities; and the many methods for using big data.

Companies need to understand their maturity level in managing and leveraging big data in order to undertake initiatives to exploit its transformative potential, it said.

There are multiple stages of maturity that a company needs to consider

• Performance management - This stage typically relies on internal data, with an organization establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate its success at achieving stated goals.
• Functional area excellence - organizations start to experiment with internal and external data to improve selected facets of their business. This may involve sales and marketing techniques such as customer segmentation and targeting, or entry-stage analytical methods for product recommendations.
• Value proposition enhancement - organizations start to monetize big data. This involves obtaining data from external sources and deriving related insights. This may include innovations such as customized, real-time recommendations or the personalization of services to augment the customer experience.
• Business model transformation - big data permeates the whole organization. It becomes deeply embedded within the operation, determining the nature of the business and the mode of executive decision-making.

Key Challenges

Despite widespread interest in data-driven decision-making in one form or another, companies face many potential pitfalls in extracting the maximum commercial benefit from big data usage. Some of these relate to their own internal systems and culture; others are tied to the external environment

Many organizations also suffer from poor-quality data that is fragmented across various systems, geographies, and functional silos, a statement said.

“The most prominent obstacle is the shortage of available talent specializing in data analytics — data scientists with an advanced education in mathematics or statistics who are also able to translate raw data material into exploitable commercial insights,” said Bahjat El-Darwiche, a Partner with Strategy&.

Big data is poised to have significant impact in public and business spaces alike. Large-scale investment is flowing into establishing big data capabilities in many organizations, despite the limited number of cases in which the big data phenomenon has been successfully used in completed projects and initiatives, it said. – TradeArabia News Service