Big data is here and in a big way. According to IDC, big data and analytics sales are forecasted to reach $187 billion by 2019, a whopping 50 percent increase over the last forecast period. But despite those numbers, the real story is that companies are missing out on the big and analytics trend, even if most of those companies are already collecting and storing data on a daily basis, as part of their normal business operations.
It turns out that just having a data trove isn’t the same as being a big data and analytics leader. And with few exceptions, if your company wasn’t a leader in big data at the beginning of the decade, it’s probably fallen further behind in the intervening time.
Why is that? Well, the greatest gains have been distributed among companies in the same sectors. And those largely digitized sectors, location-based services and retail, have home court advantage, so to speak.
Moreover, location-based services and retail have been making the most of the latest big data trends: exponential growth in big data volumes, improving data storage capacity, decreasing data storage costs and enhanced computing power.
As the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) declares, big data is shaping up to be a “winner-take-most” proposition, where leading companies will press their advantages and laggards are at the mercy of wholesale technological shifts that promise to upend entire industries.
Not convinced? Leading companies are not only leveraging big data and analytics to improve internal processes but they’re also creating alternative business models and new revenue streams. In other words, big data tends to bolster competitive advantages in innovation, personalization and operational efficiency.
So what’s holding businesses back? Is it the notion that the big data trend is over-hyped? As noted, the numbers suggest otherwise.
