Big Data Analytics

What exactly is Big Data? Big Data means more than just ‘a lot of data.’ One definition is based on three V’s: the extreme volume of data being generated and gathered, a wide variety of data types, including texts, pictures, and videos from social networking, and the high velocity at which the data must be processed. Big Data is used with advanced analytic software to recognize patterns, trends, and associations not apparent in smaller data sets. In effect, analytics can support two more Vs: veracity to ensure data quality and value for businesses seeking greater productivity, lower costs, and higher revenues (Kaestner, 2016). 

How does Big Data help change businesses?

Today, companies use IT and data gathered from operations and other sources to strengthen, enhance, and generally improve the way they do business, support growth, and compete in the marketplace. For some analysts, the emergence of Big Data is more of an evolution than a revolution, simply one point on a continuum that represents the ongoing development of technology. For several industries, however, Big Data can support a critical shift from reaction to changing market demands, production issues, or other factors requiring action, to prediction — when these factors might occur — and ultimately to prescription — what should be done to address these events in the future. 

It could be said that the traditional three pillars of a modern business — people, process, and technology — should now be increased to five with the addition of data and analytics. With Big Data and the right analytic tools, many companies are developing holistic solutions that integrate silos of information from suppliers, the manufacturing and production, sales and marketing, information management systems, and third parties. By integrating data and applying advanced analytical techniques to raise productivity, manufacturers can increase efficiency and enhance product quality. In emerging markets, companies can begin to build competitive advantages by capturing market share and improving margins. In developed markets, companies can use Big Data to reduce costs and deliver greater innovation in products and services. 

Also, new technologies allow HR functions to evaluate and make evidence-based decisions that help find, train, manage, and retain the talent they need to remain competitive. Using internal data complemented by industry data from third-party sources, operational executives and front-line managers can identify trends and patterns, highlight outliers, quantify factors that influence employee job satisfaction, forecast workloads, and measure employee engagement against peer benchmark data. If problem areas are identified, managers can drill down into data to uncover root causes and develop new strategies for resource management. Big Data can also be used to quickly discern contextual insights not visible before, such as who is most likely to leave based on benefits or salary, all relative to industry benchmarking data. These insights can be used to develop new compensation packages that improve the quality of new hires and reduce turnover.

How does the Government adopt Big Data Analytics to today’s pandemic-stricken economy?

Advances in technologies, the increasing amount of information, and the pandemic-stricken economy are transforming how business is conducted in many industries, including government. Government data generation and digital archiving rates are on the rise due to the rapid growth of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals. As digital information expands and becomes more complex, information management, processing, storage, security, and disposition become more complex as well. New capture, search, discovery, and analysis tools are helping organizations gain insights from their unstructured data. The government market is at a tipping point, realizing that information is a strategic asset, and government needs to protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better serve and meet mission requirements. As government leaders strive to evolve data-driven organizations to accomplish the mission, they are laying the groundwork to correlate dependencies across events, people, processes, and information. 

Easy and timely retrieval and analysis of related and unrelated information are crucial for the government to meet and improve mission requirements that are varied across agencies. Data continues to be generated and digitally archived at increasing rates driven by Government initiatives, sensors, citizen interactions, and program transactions. Government organizations are beginning to deploy Big Data technologies to analyze massive data sets in science and research as well as mine data to prevent bad actors from committing acts of terror and/or to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

Government agencies should explore economically viable automated records management technologies and solutions to reduce the burden of records management responsibilities. Technology is continuously evolving to provide advanced solutions to support data backup, recovery, and archiving requirements. Storage infrastructure that is capable of addressing the specific demands around data volume, velocity, and variety will be critical for government agencies to successfully use and process Big Data. Greater visibility into organizational information — together with the ability to produce documentation when needed — allows agencies to enhance employee efficiency and productivity, respond to questions, make informed decisions by connecting the related and unrelated information, and provide the information needed for transparency, collaboration, and participatory government. 

Both pandemic and technology have already changed the way we work and there is no way we can go back to our pre-pandemic setups. The future of business is digital. Knowing that digital technologies are available for use, thinking ahead should be the priority for businesses.