southern tech 100 roundtable 15
the ability to analyse it. Yet there appears to be a clear opportunity to turn this massive data stream from a liability into strength. Does the businessworld simply need to creatively ask the right questions?
Taylor revealed some statistics on Big Data: “We have a population of 7.3 billion on the planet, and it’s increasing at 80 million per year, that’s an additional ‘Germany’ being added annually. Apparently, we create about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and we have created more data in two years than has been created in the entire duration of civilisation. That’s our start point on our challenge of how to make Big Data relevant today.”
The Big Data challenges for businesses
“Everyone is wrestling with huge amounts of data; we all understand that if we can make it pertinent there will be commercial value, but a lot of businesses are still struggling with how to monetise their data. We are shifting in that direction but I think it will be five years before we will be able to see enough Big Data case studies to say that it has become properly successful,” Taylor predicted.
With regard to commercialising intellectual property assets including Big Data, Duncan White referenced the popular quote from Dr Geoff Nicholson, ambassador for 3M: “Research is the translation of money into knowledge. Innovation is the translation of knowledge into money.”
David Murray said he understood Starbucks had so much useful customer information from its Big Data, that when a new outlet opened they could forecast the number of coffees that would be sold per week at the location.
Andrew Sharman noted that banks were “awash with data” but agreed the key was how to use it advantageously. Barclaycard was keenly focused on Big Data development of its existing cardholder data, which could reveal useful demographic and financial pattern information. This, in turn, could be used to assist consumer investments or savings. Loyalty cards, easy-pay contactless technology, and interactive marketing were all helping to gather relevant data. “Certainly, there is a huge amount of data becoming available that can be used for our customers’ benefit.”
Tim Walker, whose company’s business is focused on the B2B space, within the SME to mid-market segment, highlighted that the value of Big Data was not the same for all businesses. “Big Data usage is relative. It will be an enormous challenge for the average SME, but not for someone like Starbucks. It will also have very different priority levels and degrees of focus within different sized and different types of business.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – DECEMBER 15/JANUARY 16 Andrew Sharman
“Those that are doing it successfully are pulling it off because they have recruited software development resource into their business, people who really understand what the business is trying to achieve with its data for the benefit of its customers, supply chain or stakeholders. Clearly that sort of expertise being in a business is not necessarily appropriate to all SMEs”
Accessing appropriate data and its secure storage, plus whether additional internal or external assistance would be required to produce commercial advantage, were all ongoing issues.
Taylor said another was that Big Data had the power to change traditional business models, which might impact on provider networks and supply chains in future.
David Bloxham highlighted that business intelligence and database recruitment had grown to become a core market of his company (GCS). “Within the past few years, Big Data and the resource platform that runs its technologies have become a lot more ingrained in the culture of the end-user companies that we work with.
“The businesses that are doing it best have hired people into their teams and are developing a bespoke system for themselves.”
He noted how websites and loyalty schemes had become business norms and suggested Big Data usage could well become a standard business feature too.
Murray revealed that Gartner research indicated that 64% of businesses had now invested or planned to invest in Big Data, but only 8% had started to use it.
Hembrow: “You have to decide what you want to do with the data first, where you
Duncan White
How much Big Data progress is being made?
Walker pondered: “It’s interesting how advanced and available data intelligence and applications technology is for us
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“A lot of people are potentially being led down the path of buying multiple applications to interrogate their data and use it to drive their business. There is a real danger that unless you have a good set of development skills that can integrate the Big Data interrogation applications, and customise them to the information that you are trying to get, then a lot of SMEs could be wasting money.
or your customer aims to go with it, and then make advantage from all that Big Data out there. Otherwise it will all wash over you.”
Sharman stressed the need to define what the business user aimed to achieve from Big Data. “It’s a bit like the cloud, which is being used as a sales marketing term. A lot of businesses, who may not be in the tech space themselves, are being told they need to be doing this, but that’s about as far as the conversation goes. What does it mean for them other than, ‘I might miss the boat, because I don’t yet know what it is’.”
Daniel Henwood pointed out that Big Data had been used by large organisations for a while, take Tesco’s Clubcard as an example. The big change was that SMEs could now afford to access that data because of technological advances. Understanding their own data, and how its analysis might benefit their business through efficiency, sales growth or customer service improvements was key. But SMEs didn’t usually have those skills in-house, so they either needed to develop them or go out to a specialist organisation to assist them.
Finding and collating their own data could be an issue too, suggested Murray.
Henwood: “As businesses grow they do add new systems and technologies, and their data doesn’t always get integrated within one system, which can make retrieval difficult.”
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