Palo Alto, California, USA – Organisations cannot gather business insights from Big Data fast enough, according to a survey carried out by Kapow Software, a leading Big Data solution provider, in partnership with IDG Research Services.
The results, which represent the views of over 200 business and IT leaders at large organisations, reveal that there is a perception that Big Data projects require significant time and resources to deliver value and a new enterprise trend emerging: the consumerisation of Big Data so workers can act on key insights more quickly.
More than 85% of business and IT leaders agree that Big Data offers substantial value in its ability to make more informed business decisions and foster a data-driven organisation. Top-ranking business outcomes include staying ahead of market trends, competitive advantage, improved customer satisfaction, increased employee productivity and improved information security or compliance.
Despite the perceived business benefits, more than half of respondents (52%) rate Big Data project success so far as lukewarm (somewhat successful), and only 23% of them perceive Big Data projects to be a success. The inability to automate structured and unstructured data quickly and effectively is among the biggest challenges with 60% of respondents noting that Big Data projects typically take at least 18 months to complete. More than half say these projects typically require consultants and other third-party experts to complete.
In an effort to mine business insights from Big Data now, and not in 18 months, employees are taking matters into their own hands. Manual data aggregation remains a fact of life for 81% of the workforce. While 91% of the workforce asks IT to enable information aggregation, there is a significant resource and talent gap to meet the demand.
To address time-to-value and real-time access pain points, 85% of respondents believe Big Data strategies will be (or should be) user-centric. The majority say their organisations are likely to adopt solutions that are easily consumable and empower end users. IT respondents, in particular, do not believe they will dictate the Big Data solutions used.
“A clear strategic imperative has emerged: making Big Data insights easily consumable across the workforce,” says Karl Ederle, Chief Product Officer at Kapow Software. “It’s become critical for organisations of all kinds to deliver the right information rapidly enough to the right employee so it can be acted upon quickly to make a business impact.”
Additional key findings from the survey show:
- 32% of companies polled have implemented Big Data initiatives to date. The number of Big Data implementations is expected to double during the next 12 months.
- Only one in ten business leaders believe Big Data solutions on the market today are effective at getting valuable data to their workforce in a timely manner.
- By making Big Data easily consumable, IT leaders anticipate improved productivity and better business/IT partnerships.
- Big Data’s user-centric evolution is expected to be a boon to the business regardless of respondent’s function.
Kapow Software is a leading innovator in the market for Big Data solutions with its intuitive Big Data integration platform that harnesses the power of legacy, cloud, social and Big Data. Kapow Software helps modernise the workplace, increase agility and improve business results.
