BDA Drives Business-Level Benefits for Future Creators

Big Data and analytics (BDA) is critical for business innovation and transformation. It allows organizations to capture insights from, and better monetize, their data by getting the right information to the right individuals at the right time.

BDA benefits go beyond data democratization, with benefits including better ability to predict events (47% cite as a benefit), faster reaction time (45%), and better performance (44%). (See Figure 7.)

Fig 7

Big Data Benefits

% of respondents

Better information sharing throughout the organization

49 %

Faster access to relevant information

49 %

Better ability to predict events or outcomes

47 %

Faster reaction time to external events

45 %

Faster data preparation and data cleansing processes

45 %

Better performance due to availability of fit-for-purpose, optimized technology

44 %

Organizations are using BDA in myriad ways to obtain business benefits. Most companies (77%) are using BDA for real-time operational intelligence, enabling frontline employees or systems to make real-time operational decisions. 72% of organizations use BDA for performance management via reporting and dashboards, and 41% use it for exploration by analysts to uncover insights from large volumes of diverse data.

Future-Ready Organizations Get the Most Benefit from BDA

While many organizations use BDA in some way, the most future-ready organizations are seeing the biggest business benefits. 62% of Future Creators cite better ability to predict events or outcomes as a significant benefit of Big Data and analytics compared with 34% of Current Focused, and 52% of Future Creators cite faster reaction time to external events versus 38% of Current Focused.

Future Creators have made strategic decisions about BDA that enable them to realize these benefits. For example, 57% of Future Creators have a single BDA strategy across the entire enterprise, while only 38% of Current Focused have a single BDA strategy.

Access to BDA is another area that sets Future Creators apart. They are providing access to BDA across all levels of the organization from executives to operational staff (see Figure 8). By providing high levels of BDA access to operational staff (90%), Future Creators are democratizing data and making it available for decision making across the enterprise. This is the biggest difference between Future Creators and Current Focused; only 21% of Current Focused provide access to BDA to operational staff to a significant extent.

Fig 8

Future Creators Providing More Access to BDA at All Levels

Have Access to BDA at the Right Time to a Significant Extent
(% of respondents)

Executives

LOB Operational Staff

49 %

21 %

63 %

46 %

84 %

77 %

94 %

90 %

Current Focused
(n = 208)

Future Aware
(n = 527)

Future Focused
(n = 523)

Future Creators
(n = 198)

Future Creators are also most likely to provide access to BDA directly to executives to a significant extent, with 94% providing access compared with only 49% of Current Focused. This implies that Future Creators have trust in the data. Staff don’t have to spend time cleaning and checking data and making data actionable before “sending it upstairs” for decisions.

It’s no surprise that with higher levels of access across the board, Future Creators are using BDA for more types of decisions than organizations in other future-readiness categories. 95% of Future Creators say BDA influences strategic decisions by executives versus only 53% of Current Focused. Again, this indicates higher trust and confidence in their data, is a sign of a data-driven culture, and allows Future Creator executives to react to the market and make decisions in real time.

Further, 96% of Future Creators cite BDA as influencing operational decisions by mangers versus only 47% of Current Focused. This is further testimony to their greater level of confidence in the data to make decisions across all levels of the organization.