Bernard Marr

Big data makes big headlines, but it’s much more than just a buzz phrase or the latest business fad. The phenomenon is very real and it’s producing concrete benefits in so many different areas – particularly in business. Here you will get to the heart of big data as a business owner or manager: You will take a look at the key terminology you need to understand the crucial big data skills for businesses, ten steps to using big data to make better decisions, and tips for communicating insights from data to your colleagues.

What are the key skills required to use big data successfully? The list here includes six key skills that all businesses should develop, either through recruiting data scientists who match these attributes, or by developing these skills in existing employees: Analytics: This involves determining which data is relevant to the question you’re hoping to answer and interpreting the data in order to derive those answers.

Big data is a fast-moving field and sometimes innovations come pretty much out of nowhere and take everyone by surprise. But sometimes it’s useful to take a peek into the crystal ball and see where things might be heading. Here are some predictions for the big moves and developments in big data in the near future: The big data market will grow by more than 25 per cent a year.

When companies start dipping into big data, a common mistake is to head straight for the data itself. The sheer array of data available, not to mention the possibilities for collecting new data in the future, is incredibly exciting. But when your first thought is, ‘Hmmm, what data can I get my hands on?’ (accompanied by evil-genius-style hand rubbing), you’re already missing the enormous potential of big data.

Big data skills are in short supply. As the amount of digital information generated by businesses has grown exponentially, a challenge (some people even call it a crisis) has arisen: there just aren’t enough people with the necessary skills to analyse and interpret all this big data. In one recent survey, more than half of business leaders questioned felt their ability to carry out big data analytics was limited by the challenge of finding the right talent.

How does the Internet of Things relate to big data? The Internet of Things describes the fact that many everyday objects, from diapers to self-driving cars, have (or soon will have) the ability to send and receive data via the Internet. You can find out more about the Internet of Things and the explosion of data in Big Data for Small Business For Dummies.

Data should be at the heart of strategic decision making in business, whether you run a huge multinational or a small family-run business. Big data can provide insights that help you answer your key business questions, such as ‘How can I improve customer satisfaction?’. Data leads to insights; business owners and managers can turn those insights into decisions and actions that improve the business.

Big data can help you gain insight. Businesses gain competitive advantage when the right information is delivered to the right people at the right time. This means extracting insights and information from data and communicating them to decision makers in a way they’ll easily understand. After all, people are less likely to act if they have to work hard to understand the information in front of them.

The technical jargon surrounding big data can seem a little daunting at first. The key phrases and terms you’re likely to come across, with easy-to-understand definitions for each, follow: Big data: Increasingly, everything you do leaves a digital trace (or data), which you (and others) can use and analyse. The phrase big data refers to that data being collected and the ability to make use of it.