Big Data: Dirty Little Secrets - Part 2 of 2
Michael Berger
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in Continuous Improvement, Business Excellence, & Program Management
A New Management Philosophy
Big Data is so much more than just another IT project. The integration of Big Data within a company's business process foundation can alter management practices, decision making, and strategic direction.
Big Data is technology-led disruption and requires commitment from every employee in the company – from executive ownership on down.
Why?
The integration of Big Data provides transparency and accountability conventional business processes can never achieve. Big Data measures and tracks the performance of every decision, every employee, every product or project.
For those executives bold enough to say, “Yes,” Big Data opens a world of possibility, moving decision making away from storytelling to decisions based on cold hard facts. Big Data looks at the world as it is today and not the world according to “how it’s always been done.” Big Data finds actual correlations between cause and effects previously un-communicated by silo’d departments. Big Data makes things easier.
All new companies intuitively build themselves to take advantage of Big Data, because:
- Why would you keep any employee file in paper copy?
- Why would your point of sale software not incorporate every characteristic of your products and as much data on your customers as possible?
- Why would you start a medical practice without an interactive patient-facing web portal?
- Why wouldn't you base all marketing efforts around a digital strategy and mobile interactions?
- Why wouldn't your financials be linked to all other elements of your business?
If you wouldn't start a new company without a Big Data technology backbone, why wouldn't you make it a part of your existing company?
How to Make the Transition
It’s easy to write about a Big Data transition, but I have no delusions; this represents an incredible amount of time and effort. Incorporating Big Data in such a way overhauls every single one of your business processes and represents a re-invention of the business similar to launching a new product or service.
The work required may not be worth the investment, and if you are satisfied with the maturity of your company and accept profitability en-route to a different exit strategy, then do not concern yourself with Big Data.
However, the list of now defunct business outmoded by new technologies, and the companies that wield them, grows by the day.
Big Data Evaluation
A Big Data transition starts with the evaluation of your company’s current capabilities, the written declaration of where your company should be relative to your competition, and the creation of a roadmap between the two.
There are six (6) categories that describe Big Data readiness:
- Big Data Strategy
- Goals
- Organizational Structure
- Governance
- Infrastructure
- Data Readiness
Six Big Data Building Blocks
Big Data Strategy
How will Big Data affect the strength and success of your company for the following years to come? What is the roadmap to Big Data best practice? How does your company balance positive financial gain with the privacy and security of employees and customers?
Goals
What are the immediate applications of Big Data? What are the goals and metrics that define success? What are the business justifications of the time and effort required to find measurable outcomes?
Organizational Structure
How does your company value and incorporate data scientists/Big Data analytics? Which department oversees the administration and ongoing control of Big Data’s discoveries?
Governance
What is your company's governance plan surrounding Big Data management? Governance plans should include among other specifications: formal execution and enforcement of data warehouse management, the establishment of business rules/standards for data continuity, and the adherence to those best practices through accountable auditing protocols.
Infrastructure
Does your company have the architecture and technological capabilities to accumulate, store, and protect incoming data? Do you have the servers, network bandwidth, and ability scale upwards as your company grows?
Data Readiness
Does your company have data capture capabilities to effectively leverage Big Data analytical tools? Is the data uniform and complete? Does it follow the approved governance plan?
From Data to Analysis; From Insight to Action
The building blocks I've outlined here speak to gathering, preparing, and organizing the actual data of Big Data - they are truly the building blocks of your new direction. Once this transition has integrated new technology within your business practices, your company can take advantage of Big Data analytics.
The variety of Big Data analytic companies and capabilities grows by the day. As demand grows for new analysis, companies like IBM, Microsoft, Tableau, or Oracle provide services to fit any need, budget, and business goal.
However, the most important piece of Big Data and the insight it provides are the actions that follow. Big Data is information. It is very good, robust, complete, transparent information. But, information without action is worthless.
Executive champions of these initiatives and the incorporation of Big Data specialists within the organization are imperative for Big Data success. Use Big Data to increase accountability across the organization, including the accountability of Big Data itself.
Additional Thoughts and Resources
Please find more articles below that expound upon #bigdata and how the industry continues to grow as a management philosophy.
- Big Data Trend Now Being Applied to Managing Human Resources
- Dianne Buckner - Big Data: The Eye-Opening Facts Everyone Should Know,
- Bernard Marr
The author, Michael Berger, is a University of Miami MBA and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt specializing in process optimization within the healthcare industry: How Your Healthcare Company Can Use Big Data. Michael has experience creating and evaluating predictive algorithms as they apply to patient stratification.