You would have had to be running your business from a cave in the middle of nowhere to miss the regular news about big data in the business world these days. It’s a huge deal, and everyone is trying to find ways of using all this incredibly valuable data in ways that can improve their businesses and learn more about their customers. But is big data all it is cracked up to be? While it might be stealing all the headlines, there are many different problems with big data, which we are going to look at today.
Putting theory into practice
While the vast majority of modern companies are putting a lot of their eggs into the big data basket, is it working? The truth is that few businesses are experiencing positive success stories with big data. And there’s a simple reason why – they theory of big data and its ability to learn more about customers and improve businesses sound great, but it is hard to put into practice. The simple truth is that it is much harder to put into practice. Not even a third of companies are reporting success in managing and learning from big data because we are still far from being able to look at it properly.
Ineffective for small businesses
Studying big data could help you understand more about your customers, but small businesses will struggle to cut through the chaff and find the wheat that will bring success. Resources are one of the issues, of course, but ultimately it boils down to too much irrelevant information being present, and there are other, more simple methods of gleaning that data – from customer surveys through to face-to-face chats. It’s also important to realize that big data needs to be big enough to draw statistically relevant information about it. And the simple truth is that the numbers won’t add up for small businesses as they don’t have the volume.
Security
Of course, to keep bg data and sift through it, you need to hold a lot of information on your customers. And that means that your business will be at risk from hackers and data thieves, who will all find a lot of value from the data you keep. And what happens if your systems fail and get wiped, in the event of a natural disaster or power failure? It’s possible to find solutions for database and system recovery for any data disaster, of course. But it’s important to be proactive in this, not reactive. The longer you take to recover your business critical information, the more money you lose – it’s as simple as that.
Still a new industry
Big data is still very much in its nascent years, and there is a long way to go before we can fully understand it. But it’s also relevant to point out that because it is new, the tech behind it is moving on at an astonishing rate. That means that buying into a big data system or practice today could easily end up being irrelevant tomorrow. Finally, there is a lot of competition in this particular space right now, and if you want to make big data work for you, it’s vital to be aware of new developments.