Data is important to any organization, in any industry. Data is at the core of any business decision, and implementing analytics can enable informed, data-driven decisions across a business. Big data enables companies to discover insights that would normally remain hidden, creating new growth opportunities and significant cost advantages. It enables businesses to efficiently utilize the data they have and use it to recognize opportunities and challenges both within the organization as well as externally. However, big data comes with issues of its own. Data must be tracked, managed, secured, and enhanced to be truly valuable, and this process often runs into challenges. Here are some of the most common challenges associated with big data:
Data Security
Challenge
- Data security is often sacrificed when working with big data. The more data you collect, the likely a security breach is. Fake data can be an issue, especially if you collect data from external sources. This can make any analysis invalid and remove any benefits associated with data analytics. In addition, it’s important to make sure that you aren’t pulling from unsecured data sources. Unsecured data sources can make you more vulnerable to infiltration and malware. Unprotected stored data is another pain point – it’s vulnerable to leaks, malware and data harvesting, which can affect both your business and your customers negatively.
Solution
- A multifaceted data security approach can protect you and your data. There should be security protocols in place that address data sources, data storage, and data integrity. There should be an understanding of the data itself, audits of data manipulations, and control over privileged users. By covering this security with a comprehensive system of processes and controls, you can prevent security breaches and protect your organization.
Data Hygiene
Challenge
- Most organizations today collect far too much data to manually go through and validate. This means that there’s probably inaccurate, outdated data mixed in there that can affect insight. This issue starts with data collection – if it isn’t standardized across the business, it can negatively affect analysis. Poor data collection can affect the bottom line with its low standards of quality and accuracy.
Solution
- Again, an organized approach is the answer. By standardizing data collection processes and validating data as it is collected, you can greatly improve your data analysis results. Making sure that all teams that interact with the data are also interacting with each other can ensure that the entire business is working on the same assumptions and facts. By improving the quality of your data, you can improve your business.
Overwhelming amounts of data
Challenge
- Companies are often collecting vast amounts of data. Especially today, the number of data sources and the amount of data is constantly growing. Most of this data is very useful, but it is difficult to extract what you need from huge, unstructured datasets. It’s tricky to know where to start with big data, especially when you look at the big picture.
Solution
- Breaking big down into smaller projects can bring clarity. Working on issues one by one can uncover issues and speed up the process. By simplifying projects, you can now work with smaller datasets at a time, making it easier to traverse and analyze data.
Siloed Data
Challenge
- Every business is collecting data today, but many often stop the process there. The data they collect often sits in a data lake, collecting virtual dust and providing no value to the organization. And even if there are analytics being performed, they are often also siloed within the department or the data source. This prevents the organization from truly extracting all the value possible from the data they collect.
Solution
- A comprehensive, holistic data collector and analytics platform can pull various sources together, resulting in new insights and more value from the same data. This should be done in a timely matter, so the organization can act on these insights and enhance their business.
Big data is a necessary part of business now, regardless of industry. It’s important to view it as an opportunity and be proactive about any challenges that arise. This will enable you and your business to grow and adapt to the constantly changing business landscape, just by using your data. With data and analytics, your organization with advance with the world.
