Surviving in a competitive market

It is said that "there are nearly as many pieces of digital information as there are stars in the universe". The recent explosion of big and digital data is helping people translate knowledge into improved decision making and performance.  Someone might wonder how big the data could be. 2.8 ZBs of data have been created this year alone and the digital universe will reach 40 ZBs by 2020, which exceeds prior forecasts by 14 per cent. So data is not confined into only big, the same is really huge! More precisely, 40 ZB data is the equivalent of 1.7 MBs of new information created by every single person during every second of the day. As of 2012, about 2.5 Exabyte of data are created each day and this number is doubling every 40 months.
Clearly "Big Data" is a hot topic and getting a lot of media and business attention nowadays. All of these numbers highlight one fact - organisations need people, processes and systems to turn raw data into useful information for the organisations. "Big Data" is now becoming the most challenging for any company because, the realisation and utilisation of Big Data is a very complicated part of any system. Timeliness, complexity and privacy problems of Big Data are the obstacles to analysing the data properly. Big Data has a meaning only when it has a value. And in order to grab the actual value out of it, it is wise not to spend too much time thinking about the volume but to think about the actual utility of data.
Most of the emerging companies are focusing more on digital data in order to realise the real value of data. China and India are currently accounting for 17 per cent of digital universe which is being predicted to increase up to 29 per cent by 2020. Therefore the need of digging out more data and analysing it to explore the unexploited opportunity have become an indispensable part of any organisation. Only decimal per cent of the world's data is analysed and when more of the same is added almost without a pause.
It requires creativity to analyse the data and make intelligent decisions in order to achieve business objectives. Sometimes improper planning, insufficient business tools and wrong DSS (Decision Support System) approach make the whole exercise useless. Therefore, in order to optimise the data efficiency and preserve the same for future use, it is essential to have proper infrastructure, business tools, bigger storage and tight security system. Only 19 per cent of the digital universe is now being protected and 63 per cent of data is not stored in the cloud. Most of the digital information is consumed by the Internet users, surveillance cameras, digital TV watchers, social media, and sensors and so on. So most of the information is being generated for the purpose of entertainment. Much of digital universe is a result of massive consumption on mobile devices, digital TVs and cloud connected applications. Cloud application increases exponentially within emerging markets.
With the pace of continuous increase of huge data, companies require more skilled professionals specifically data analysts or business analysts who are capable of mining data and analysing it very accurately and deliver the result in most optimised way.
Along with business analytic (BA), business intelligence (BI) is also a heavily used term. Business intelligence allows conversion of historical data into meaningful business knowledge which helps in decision-making. On the other side, using those data, the business analytic (BA) comes up with new insight to predict the future of a business. More simply, BI deals with past data whereas BA does with present and future data.
Even 4-5 years back, most of the data-driven organisations were not capable of utilising 90 per cent of their data. In a typical organisation, almost 80-90 per cent data used to remain un-extracted and unused. It used to collect data from IT department which used to deliver it in "data file (.dat). There were mainly two difficulties working with those data. One is converting it into excel file in organized way and another is to work with according to the user's need. Data storage was also a big problem since, at that time, companies were not that much familiar with data storage tools and applications. So, the consequence of not utilising those data is not getting the original picture of a company since less applications were available to 1) extract and store past data, 2) store and utilize present data and 3) reserve the space for future data.
Nowadays, working with Big Data also relates to legal restriction. Access to Big Data generated by agencies sometimes create legal problem because of its restriction of sharing and using. Therefore, the companies need to take consideration of this legal issue and maintain its confidentiality where needed.
The opportunity lies with Big Data when working with such data sources which have not been used and analysed before. Big business data should be a part of company strategy as it is the only thing which can generate the real picture if it is being utilised properly. It should be a priority to any business function and should be understandable enough to utilise. The main challenge that most of the companies face is that most of the data is initially unstructured. In order to make it structured and understandable in business language, it is important to have proper infrastructure in terms of operation and human resources. Big Data can help extract insight, identify current business trends, increase productivity and gain competitive advantage if the company make the optimum utilisation of it.
The real trend of business is making better decisions and changes to gain competitive advantage. And in order to achieve business goals, the BA is essential and business analysis means data analysis. Most organisations are aware of the importance of business analysis and they are focusing more on proper data mining and interpretation. Besides, innovative technology is also creating newer opportunity to improve business function. Statistics showed that most of the top management view the BA as the most important aspect within next few years because it will help companies to gain competitive advantage. The BA serves two purposes. It helps make better decisions and proper execution of strategic initiatives.  Business analysis is essential to make good decisions as it leads to understand customer experience and develop business strategy accordingly.
In any organisation, business analysis is not only confined into one business unit. It is being studied and analysed in different fields of top management and no single executive is responsible for data analytic. Though the concept of business analysis is being used widely by the top management, proper infrastructure is yet to be developed in most of the organisations. Total Cost Ownership (TCO) model is generally suggested to determine the actual cost of specific technology implementation. This model helps the people concerned build a strong infrastructure by analysing direct and indirect cost associated with it.
There are some major barriers to analytic use which need to be eliminated to ensure the effective use of business analytic. First of all, there is still no centralised approach of capturing or mining of data which reduces time and cost of each business unit. Most business units solely depend on business analytic unit and sometimes they cannot get desired result. If there were centralised approach, then each business unit could capture the desired data at the time of its need. Also lack of leadership to understand the business analytic is another barrier. Since business analytic is being introduced only recently, therefore, top management is yet to understand and implement it. But the good news is that most of the big companies are now focusing on this important aspect. The scarcity of business analysts is a major challenge for most of the big companies. Imparting of proper training and education to talented people to interpret and use of data is important.
Because of these barriers, companies are not being able to tie the BA with the company strategy. Nowadays, basic reporting tools have been introduced to analyse data though predictive tools are yet to be developed. Most of the organisations use basic tools whereas some other companies rely only on spreadsheet!
The BA is essential because analysts can get a clear insight of a wide range of business decisions in different parts of the organisations. Though companies are facing difficulties in proper utilisation of data, the fast moving technology will eventually make them to depend more on business analytic in order to survive in a highly competitive market.
The writer is studying MBA in Ashland University, Ohio, USA. amyfahmina@yahoo.com