How strategists use “big data” to support internal business decisions, discovery and production

Purpose – The author, an internationally known IT expert, aims to explain how big data is being used by leading corporations to promote better decision making, especially about innovation. Design/methodology/approach – Big data is the collection and interpretation of massive data sets, made possible by vast computing power that monitors a variety of digital streams – such as sensors, marketplace interactions and social information exchanges – and analyses them using “smart” algorithms. It offers a promising new way to discover new opportunities to offer customers high-value products and services. Findings – Big data […] resembles not so much a pool of statistics as an ongoing, fast-flowing stream of information about customer choices. Therefore, a more continuous approach to sampling, analyzing and acting on data is necessary. Practical implications – A number of major financial services firms are using “customer journeys” through the tangle of websites, call centers, tellers and other branch personnel to better understand the paths that customers follow through the organization, and how those paths affect attrition or the purchase of particular financial services. Originality/value – The desired outcome of data discovery is an idea – a notion of a new product, service, or feature, or a hypothesis – with supporting evidence – that an existing model can be improved. Increasingly, corporate strategists are recognizing that big data architecture and management should be designed so that discovery and analysis is the first order of business.