Julie Spiller, VP, Vertical Solutions & Proposition Management for Logicalis US, points out that without effective monetisation, Big Data is just an expensively stored mountain of ones and zeros – and sets out the five key elements of the kind of successful Big Data management plan that must precede efforts at monetisation.
When it comes to Big Data, the key perspective to consider is how businesses can monetise all the data they have to work with - so they can capitalise on revenue-generation opportunities, identify areas where operational costs can be reduced, and drive customer satisfaction.
The question is where to start. With data volumes growing at an exponential rate it is very hard for most CIOs to see beyond the day to day – yet a clear plan is vital to the successful monetisation of Big Data.
As a starting point, CIOs should consider these five keys to successfully monetising Big Data:
- Strategies: What can you do now with the data you already have to drive revenue and cost savings? Then consider what the leaders in your industry are doing and determine which new data sources you need to tap into.
- Capture: Much of the information you need may already exist on internal systems. There could also be social media data to mine or other external sources. You will need technologies that can capture both unstructured (social media) and structured data (databases).
- Store: Big Data must remain secure to protect sensitive data while also offering high availability and a well-designed disaster recovery strategy. Storage management can also get quite complex due to the amount of data (some companies store hundreds of terabytes or even petabytes), so you need a strategy that makes the subsequent analysis process more efficient.
- Analyse: It’s important to not just deploy technologies that perform historical analysis. You also need to develop the means to perform predictive analytics so you can proactively address anticipated market trends.
- Present: In addition to generating dashboard views that give managers easy views into what has happened and what will take place, you also need event-driven alerts when critical thresholds are breached. This allows the company to respond to urgent developments in real time.