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viewpoints
DOI:10.1145/2602326
Charles K. Davis
Viewpoint
Beyond Data
and Analysis
turn these
days, someone expounds the merits of
business analytics, or
some derivative of business analytics
like supply chain analytics or marketing analytics or human resources analytics, or even predictive or Web or visual or data or streaming analytics, or
any number of others.5,8 The academic
community is also promoting this
emerging view of analytics.6 There has
recently been a call for a new professional role, that of the data scientist,
to implement and diffuse analytics
methodologies into and across organizations.3 There is even concern there
will not be enough of these new professionals to meet the growing demand
for this analytics specialty even in the
immediate future. So, what does all of
this really mean?
Today, businesses are awash in
data.10 In wave after disruptive wave
of technological and organizational
change, business leaders face a host of
powerful forces. For example, information processing has become increasingly more powerful and flexible, with
faster and higher-capacity storage and
networks. Simultaneously, globalization and other competitive factors have
exerted strong pressures to improve
efficiencies and effectiveness, and to
strengthen business and customer relationships. Each successive stage of
this competition requires more data
and more analysis to support strategic,
ECUTIVES
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viewpoints
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What dependence
upon analytics implies
about the ways
businesses must
now compete is
what is truly profound.
viewpoints
cially data warehousing, data mining,
dashboards, and associated technologies. These are hardly new constructs
in the realm of managing data. Neither
are the concepts, for example, of data
ambiguity, data filtering, data context,
data interpretation, data conversion,
or data redundancy. Again, aside from
a few progressive data management refinements, it can hardly be argued that
any of this is particularly new either.
In theory, big data is different because of the three Vsvolume, velocity,
and variety.10 That is, big data consists
of expansive collections of data (large
volumes) that are updated quickly
and frequently (high velocity) and
that exhibit a huge range of different
formats and content (wide variety).
These factors force organizations to
pursue increasingly innovative and
cost-effective approaches to organizing, processing, and delivering timely
information. It is argued that big data
represents a real departure from the
past. Fair enough; still, this argument
is essentially evolutionary. Companies
have been experiencing incremental
expansions of volumes, velocities, and
varieties of data for decades, more
recently accelerated by the growth of
the Web. Except perhaps for its sheer
volume, this does not appear to be
anything particularly unusual or unexpected. Nonetheless, cumulative
change is only one aspect of this question. The real thrust here involves how
this accumulation interacts with and
impacts organizational strategies,
operations, and controls beyond the
technology.
Basic Drivers for Change
So, why is business analytics suddenly
drawing so much attention? One point
is becoming clear. This is not likely to
be just another buzzword that is hyped
for a while and then recedes from the
limelight quietly. Companies are really
concerned about this issue, and there
is traction for real change here. Why?
Businesses are experiencing everexpanding cycles of change caused by
the interaction of competitive forces
and the harnessing of analytics and big
data technologies as essential competitive weaponry. Technologies for collecting, manipulating, transmitting,
and analyzing data have been improving for a long time. What is new and dif-
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