What Businesses Can Do to Reign in and Leverage Information
It’s a wonderful thing: with the advent of big data, companies can now access, analyze, and leverage a flood of knowledge and use it to improve decision making, performance, and ideal revenues. Take the success story of online bookseller Amazon; its information gurus successfully tracked, gathered, and analyzed the data not only of what their customers bought but how they shopped. With this, they created a sophisticated method to predict what books would sell most, putting many of their competitors out of business.
Big data is not just for e-business; it’s set to transform the offline business world just as profoundly. We can now measure, and therefore, manage more precisely than ever before through the information we capture. We can make better predictions and smarter decisions. We can conduct better business, led by data and analysis rather than by old-fashioned gut instincts and guess work.
Yet harnessing big data is easier said than done. Extracting, storing, and using that data to serve your customers and your business can be costly and challenging, especially when your legacy systems no longer have the capacity or functionality.
What are the key steps to conquering this avalanche of information—and realizing the benefits? Here are three recommendations to get you started:
- Develop a sound strategy
Big data’s power does not negate the need for vision or human insight. The best application of this insight would certainly be in the development of a data strategy for your organization based on your core business goals. Think of it as a simple plan for how data, analytics, frontline tools, and people will come together to create business value. The power of a plan is that it provides a common language, allowing your senior executives, technology professionals, data scientists, and managers to discuss where the greatest returns will come from—as well as pinpoint priorities and establish a starting point for your efforts. The development of a data governance strategy addressing privacy issues may also serve you well. - Assemble a strong team
Data scientists are one important part—but not all you need. Equally integral on your big data team will be subject matter specialists from your different business units who understand your goals, customers, and data objectives, as well as developers and “data jockeys” from IT who know how to model and manipulate data using a mix of traditional SQL and newer big data tool sets. Ideally, your team members will have one of four essential skills: business analysis, solid analytical/statistical experience, data technology expertise, and visualization skills, which bring the data to life. - Invest in the right solution
The other key piece of the puzzle is settling on a strong solution that will help you retire outdated applications, reduce costs, and leverage your data to its maximum value. HPE, a trailblazer in this new world of data, has recently introduced its Structured Data Manager. It takes a unique approach to storing, managing, and extracting value from data based on a robust selection of pre-built integrations to cloud storage, comprehensive information management systems, and high-performance analytics platform. The selection of a data management solution of this kind, offering excellent flexibility and quick return-on-investment, should be a priority for your organization.
For more information and guidance on managing big data, visit Orasi Software.
About Orasi: Orasi provides quality engineering integration to our partners and customers, acting as the customer’s single point of contact throughout the full software lifecycle. Our team examines each customer’s needs and selects the best mix of software quality engineering tools and processes to fit those needs.