Would you like to know the secret behind Big Data?  It is analytics.  Analytics drive Big Data to find patterns and trends that lead to new revenue streams and customer intelligence.  Spotfire’s article, “Big Data Analytics: Becoming a Data-Driven Organization” advices companies to initiate a data analytics plan.  The best way to start is:

• Identifying the information that must be analyzed.
• Establishing where that data lives and who’s responsible for it.
• Understanding how this information can be captured effectively.
• Designing a plan to turn the insight gained from analytics into action for the business that will boost the bottom line.
• Ensuring that analytics isn’t a siloed function but is integrated into the broader business.

Problems, of course, will arise with any the any change, but implementing analytics will be the start of something good.  After the analytics plan has been in place awhile, step back and examine how it affecting the company.  You will need to ask how the business is doing with the analytics plan, if it helps drive it, and how you can use analytics to satisfy your customers and their needs.  All good ideas take time, but in order to take advantage of Big Data you need to take advantage of analytics.  Analytical data still needs to be searched, though, so try LucidWorks a powerful enterprise and Cloud search application.

Whitney Grace, October 5, 2012

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