Luc Burgelman / April 21, 2014
When I am out talking with prospects, they mention that large technology vendors often refer to their big data projects as data pools, data lakes or data oceans. I found this to be a bit ironic, as these references all represent something in which you could potentially drown.
Unfortunately, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you could drown in your pool of big data, unless you properly manage and govern it. Big Data is made up of a great deal of rapidly growing and changing information. Whether structured or unstructured, that data needs to be well organized and easily accessible across the entire organization by all types of groups and people, such as data scientists, marketing analysts, CRM groups, BI teams, Customer Intelligence groups, etc.
The good news is that big data technologies give you the ability to bring all the data together – however that is not enough. To avoid drowning in your big data pool, consider the following points:
- Consistent Analytics – Make sure all of the data is available for analysis across your entire organization. This way, you can ensure that everyone is looking at the same data, as partial data creates inconsistencies and contradictions during analysis.
- Consistent KPIs – By correctly establishing and defining relevant modeling and reporting metrics and KPIs, all participants will be well equipped to make consistent and cohesive decisions and data analysis.
- Consistent Data – Your big data should be translated in a manner that ensures everyone can understand it. Overly complicated data sources and data organization can quickly become unusable.
Creating a single view of each customer’s data is a start. Stay tuned to discover more options on how you can keep from drowning in your big data pool, lake, pond or ocean.
