Systems, software and services behemoth Oracle announced the results of a survey of 333 C-level executives, saying that executives do not believe they are ready to handle the increased amounts of data coming into the organisation. Furthermore, firms may be losing up to 14% of incremental revenue by not fully unlocking the value of their corporate data, according to the study.
The report is called "From Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges". It surveyed 333 decision-makers in US and Canadian companies in 11 different industries.
Oracle found unsurprisingly that 94% of executives said data has increased by an average of 86% in the last two years. Respondents said they see the biggest data growth areas coming from customer information (48%), operations (34%) and sales and marketing (33%).
But respondents also said they do not feel their organisation is prepared to handle the increasing amount of data they face. 29% of executives gave their organisation a "D" or "F" in preparedness to manage the data deluge, and 93% believe their organisation is losing revenue opportunities – representing on average, 14% of revenue – by not being able to fully leverage the information they collect.
"This study shows that up to 14 percent of a company’s revenue is lost because enterprises are challenged to manage and analyze data, which grows exponentially as we speak," said Rod Johnson, vice president, industry strategy, Oracle. "Right now, enterprises have the unique opportunity to get ahead of the game by using these challenges as catalysts for company-wide strategic change. Through industry-specific applications and other software and systems, enterprises can transform data into measurable business benefits."
On average, private-sector organisations with revenues of $1bn or more say they are losing approximately 13% of their annual revenue as a result of not being able to fully leverage their information. That translates to $130m each year for a $1bn organisation. Only 8% of executives give their organisation an "A" in preparedness.
Big data isn’t simply an issue of ever-expanding data volumes. Rather, it’s the fact that big data means a change across three dimensions or ‘V’s, as Gartner (and formerly) META Group analyst Doug Laney outlined – volume, velocity, and variety. In fact, data volumes have been growing fast as long as anyone can remember. It’s the velocity and variety that has been changing more rapidly in recent times. Don’t you think?
