The majority of South African businesses know that there are organisational benefits to analysing big data, but there is a need for cohesion in the way this is budgeted for, monitored and stored.
This is according to a survey conducted by business analytics software provider SAS, during a recent executive forum.
According to SAS, crucial to the marketplace's understanding of big data and what to do with it is a definition of the concept.
Of the executive forum attendees who participated in the survey, 67% defined big data as "data with high volume, variety and velocity".
"We even take this a step further, stating that big data also exceeds an organisation's storage or compute capacity for timely decision-making," says Andoret Venter, senior solutions manager for information management at SAS.
Some 86% of participants stated that analysing big data fast will allow them to achieve benefits like deciding to discontinue or launch a product sooner, helping more clients faster and enabling risk management to demonstrate the effects of big decisions to senior managers.
"There's very little disagreement about the benefits that the effective analysis of big data can bring to any organisation," says Venter. "However, it's also clear that, despite being aware of these benefits, South African companies haven't yet created an overall strategy or budget for making sure that business analytics solutions are properly utilised across the organisation."
While 56% of participants said they were using business intelligence (BI) extensively, 17% to a limited extent, 19% moderately, and 8% not at all, 68% said they were unable to monitor the performance of the entire enterprise.
Echoing this, 47% said their BI funding came from the enterprise budget, 25% from departmental budgets, and 22% from special projects.
Also, 33% of respondents said different departments in their organisations manage their own development for business analytics and analytic models, while 27% said everything is managed centrally. Another 25% said that while the departments manage their own development, the productisation was handled centrally.
In response to the question on whether business information is stored in one central repository or by separate departments, 41% said it is managed centrally in an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), but that the business units have their own stores as well.
Some 29% said information is stored in an EDW with departmental data marts. A further 18% said it is managed in disparate data stores across the organisation, and the remaining 12% said there were no centralised repositories at any level in their companies.
"The findings of our survey show that while South African organisations certainly see the benefits of business intelligence solutions, many have yet to form a cohesive strategy for recording, storing and analysing big data," says Venter.
"Future-thinking organisations will embrace business analytics solutions that span the entire organisation so that the true benefits of analytics that take into account every variable in every aspect of the business can be realised."
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