Big data is much maligned, misused and misunderstood or at least this is what a raft of the industry's best and brightest from the DataIQ100 index believe. There is hope though. While Facebook's position is clear not everyone has the luxury of billions of users (or dollars) to interrogate. What are businesses that deal with the likes of you and me doing with the data we give them and where is it all heading? Here are what the leaders of the industry are saying:
NEW TOOLS, DEEPER INSIGHTS (HOPEFULLY): Mark Chapman, Director of Insight and Analytics, Virgin Media; "Many organisations have fast-tracked through...early stumbling blocks. [We're going to see]...unparalleled personalisation with their consumers across all media. Technology has continuously improved and is now built with deep insight discovery in mind rather than a ‘cheap big yellow’ storage. New data and new intelligent tools are enabling forensic analysis of customer signals (in data such as digital, network, or payments), leading to speedy payback and opening the door to exponential investment."
PREPARE FOR 'BEAUTIFUL CHAOS': Gareth Powell, Head of Customer Data and Analytics, JD Williams: "The next three years will be a period of beautiful chaos in the data space. I anticipate a significant step-change in the types of data that organisations will harness whether this be open-source datasets that can compliment internal data or expansive and unstructured datasets from things like Social Media."
GDPR WILL MAKE YOU RETHINK YOUR STRATEGY: Andrew Day, Chief Data Officer, Sainsbury’s; "...bigger volumes of data from increasingly disparate sources, leads to even more opportunity to create applications from these data. The introduction of GDPR will have significant impacts on the way we manage and use customer data. Importantly, as data leaders we need to make sure we fulfil the obligations of GDPR and, as importantly, put ourselves in our customer shoes when we think about how we use data for their benefit." (James de Souza, Head of Customer Analytics, Post Office, Helen Mannion, Head of BI, giffgaff, Telefónica Digital and also echoed this sentiment)
FOCUS ON THE SIMPLE: Vince Darley, VP growth, Deliveroo: "Almost all of the biggest business impacts I’ve seen over the last 20 years have come from really quite simple solutions and simple ideas. So, precisely because of all the puff out there about data and machine learning, it’s more important than ever to make sure you have a fantastic understanding of the customer, the business, the product to make sure you focus on the right stuff, and avoid diverting huge effort into complex systems with limited benefit." (Joe Nathan, Director of Information Management, News UK also echoed this sentiment)
WATCH OUT FOR NON-DATA BRAIN DRAIN & TALENT RAIDS: Ryan Quirjin den Rooijen, Head of Analytics, Dyson (prev. Google): "Finding people who do not only understand the data but can use it to make an impact is critical. Simultaneously increased competition for talent means companies need to keep investing in their employees to foster improved retention." (Catherine Brien, Data Science Director, The Co-Operative also echoed this sentiment)
JOINING UP DATA WILL BE KEY TO WINNING BIG: Kjersten Moody, VP Information and Analytics, Unilever: "[Unilever] is focussing much more on blending or joining up disparate data sources and redefining the user experience of data to create a much more interactive connection with data. In turn, this helps our users drive information to insights and actions." (Mike Bugembe, Chief Analytics Officer, JustGiving echoed this sentiment).
Find out more about Facebook's approach to data here and the full DataIQ100 here.
