Using Big Data and Predictive Analytics For Strategic Advantage

Big data is in many of the articles in the business section of most newspapers today. The emphasis is on the growth in non-numeric data. Non-numeric data is growing at a much more rapid rate than numeric data. In fact some say the rate of growth is 10 times the numeric data. This explosion of data of all types (text, video, audio, pictures etc.) poses a challenge to managers to effectively make sense of and use the data. Understanding, organizing, integrating and delivering this data is a key issue today. Business must be clear about the use of such data to avoid storing and managing an excess of data.

Big data carries with it many implications. The data is much more time sensitive than the traditional numeric operational data most organizations maintain. Big data may vary in time value from minutes to years especially when considering media or streaming data, data that represents a quick transaction burst or data that represents complicated real world items such as emails, x-rays, prints, diagrams, photos and sound bites.

Predictive analytics is a method of taking advantage of the promise of big data. It is more than projecting past performance or assessing likelihood of some action in the future. Today predictive analytics includes the methods that relate variables to a particular success initiative such as understanding what data drives percentages of sales, what factors predict success or failure of a credit risk, what products or services are customers buying together and to what degree can a business meet their goals by looking at impact factors.

Finding out the variables that are important to a result requires techniques of data analysis and problem solving. Analyzing and understanding enterprise the data environment that the organization has access to is key to predicting the prospects of various business alternatives.