I have noticed a trend recently where suddenly Big Data is the Big Answer to everything. My issue is that while Big Data is real, and could be a great business tool, much of the conversation is chatter – and not very informed chatter either.

Big Data, or the phenomenon of trying to get useful data out of what were previously intractably large datasets, is increasingly being discussed in business circles as the mechanism by which to gain greater knowledge and insight into customer and business needs. If you’re not yet familiar, all you really need to know is that Big Data breaks into two main categories –

• How to store that massive amount of data (Vast sums are being spent here on infrastructure)

• How to access, visualise, analyse that data in a timely fashion, (which begs the question what exactly are we analysing here? Again, vast sums being spent on software and consultant fees)

Let us remember the origins of big data. Coming out mainly of the scientific realm, it started as all about huge amounts of data needing to be gathered and analysed according to a proper scientific method to be used to validate or disprove a hypothesis. In other words it had a direction.

In contrast, business seems to have gone on a Big Data gathering spree, because they’ve been told they need to do something similar and like those compulsive hoarders – ‘you never know when you might need it’.

The idea that collating and analysing vast and disparate amounts of data will automatically lead to business insight isn’t necessarily wrong – but it’s perhaps a little misguided if the basics aren’t addresses first. As in what’s the point in understanding that your customer XYZ has recently travelled to America on a family holiday, bought a TV in 2011, regularly coordinates their social life over Facebook, and is likely to have a friend who wants a popcorn making machine, and other such minutiae, when you can’t even provide a delivery time to them with a granularity finer that half a day, and after all that you still have their postcode wrong.

We seem to be trying to solve the difficult problems when the simple processes get overlooked. We can’t get to Big Data until we have got the basics of data and analytics right first and are answering and acting on those findings first.

Or have you fallen prey to the industry hype and also believe Big Data is always The Big Answer, too?

Graham Brierton, CTO VoiceSage, Guest Blog – Big Data Republic

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