The report provides insight on their use of Big Data today and in the future, and highlights the advantages seen and the specific challenges Big Data has on decision making for business leaders.
Key Findings:
75% of respondents believe their organizations to be data-driven
9 out of 10 say decisions made in the past 3 years would have been better if they’d had all the relevant information
42% say that unstructured content is too difficult to interpret
85% say the issue is not about volume but the ability to analyze and act on the data in real time
More than half (54 percent) of respondents cite access to talent as a key impediment to making the most of Big Data, followed by the barrier of organizational silos (51 percent)
Other impediments to effective decision-making are lack of time to interpret data sets (46 percent), and difficulty managing unstructured data (39 percent)
71 percent say they struggle with data inaccuracies on a daily basis
62 percent say there is an issue with data automation, and not all operational decisions have been automated yet
Half will increase their investments in Big Data analysis over the next three years
The report reveals that nine out of ten business leaders believe data is now the fourth factor of production, as fundamental to business as land, labor, and capital. The study, which surveyed more than 600 C-level executives and senior management and IT leaders worldwide, indicates that the use of Big Data has improved businesses' performance, on average, by 26 percent and that the impact will grow to 41 percent over the next three years. The majority of companies (58 percent) claim they will make a bigger investment in Big Data over the next three years.
Approximately two-thirds of 168 North American (NA) executives surveyed believe Big Data will be a significant issue over the next five years, and one that needs to be addressed so the organization can make informed decisions. They consider their companies as 'data-driven,' reportingthat the collection and analysis of data underpins their firm's business strategy and day-to-day decision-making.
Fifty-five percent are already making management decisions based on "hard analytic information." Additionally, 44 percent indicated that the increasing volume of data collected by their organization (from both internal and external sources) has slowed down decision-making, but the vast majority (84 percent) feel the larger issue is being able to analyze and act on it in real-time.
The exploitation of Big Data is fueling a major change in the quality of business decision-making, requiring organizations to adopt new and more effective methods to obtain the most meaningful results from their data that generate value. Organizations that do so will be able to monitor customer behaviors and market conditions with greater certainty, and react with speed and effectiveness to differentiate from their competition.

the_deciding_factor__big_data___decision_making.pdf |