Big data: here’s how you can future-proof your business

Big data is predicted to have a profound impact on most industry sectors in the near future. It underpins competition, productivity, innovation and growth, and businesses are recognising the need to manage their data to help them make quality decisions. However, the value of data to an organisation must be measured against the insights that can be drawn from it. This can only be achieved by asking the right questions and ensuring the integrity of the data being used. Karin Kruger, managing executive of BCX Data Science, says progressive companies are more digitally focused and positioned to make decisions based on their data findings. “When people [initially] did big data or machine learning or artificial intelligence, they wanted to have the bragging rights and felt the need to say, ‘I’ve also got a big data team,’ often without having a clear business problem. That’s where a lot of companies burned their fingers. There wasn’t a clear business need to have big data or analytics, or to even source external data, whatever it might be.”