Brands developing Capabilities in ‘‘Big Data’’ [Report]

Having polled 497 data scientists and business intelligence professionals in countries like China, France, Germany, India, the UK and US, the consultancy EMC, partnering with Toluna Research and Kaggle, found out that organizations such as Unilever, General Electric and AstraZeneca are greatly having a difficult time getting the maximum use out of ‘‘big data’’, and are now significantly developing their capabilities in this area.

Having perceived as effectively leveraging the range of information that is available across the digital platforms to better implement decisions and actions were just one third of the organizations represented.

Recently, the FMCG giant Unilever made a tie-up with Capgemini, the consultancy, to cover global business intelligence that includes creating an “Enterprise Data Warehouse” which gives out real-time data on its customers, markets and operations.

Commenting on the above, Unilever’s global Chief Information Officer, Willem Eelman, said “This programme is one of our top strategic initiatives. It will transform the way our businesses around the world access and use information, bringing enhanced insight and consistency.”

Having ‘strongly agreed’’ that their organizations draws on big data to learn about consumers were only about 38% of EMC’s interviewees, and further 17% concurred that all employees could run experiments on the material accrued.

“Part of the duty of a data scientist is to promote the data-driven culture. The way to do that is by exposing the data and making it relevant to everyone in the company, and showing them what you can do with it,” said Monica Rogati, a Senior Data Scientist at LinkedIn, the world’s biggest professional network.

Having “very frequently” working alongside business management were 37% of the panel surveyed, surpassing falling to 31% for marketing teams, 29% concerning sales departments and 28% for strategic planners.

Also understanding the potential risks, General Electric, has been building company-wide tools providing staff with greater capabilities. Commenting on this, Greg Simpson, GE’s Chief Technology Officer, said “Security has become more important. We’re attacked every day, as is everybody. We do use external services – for example, we use external chat services from Cisco. But there is a certain type of data we’re not comfortable putting in the cloud.”

Shortage of skills and training recorded 32% among the EMC’s panel when the consultancy discussed the barriers and limitations to progress. The same score was recorded as a lack of resources; whilst14% blamed sub-optimal organizational structures.

AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical firm, with a motive of expanding its strength in this area, has tied up with HealthCore, part of Wellpoint, with an approach to yield mutual benefits. Commenting on this, Mark Lelinski, AstraZeneca’s Vice President of Global Marketing, said “By working together, we all get access to a broader, richer data environment, and we can work together on creating state-of-the-art access tools and real-world methodologies.”

Data sourced from EMC, Forbes, McKinsey, Capgemini; additional content by MP Staff