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Maximising the value of big data analytics

BIG data technology has impacted our lives in multiple ways in recent years. By analysing large amount of data, scientists, governments and businesses have been able to make important discoveries that have improved our standards of living and changed the way we live and work. Companies today use big data analytics as a way to discover trends to improve the way they conduct business and bring value to stakeholders. Big data sets can go up to several terabytes in size. It can be challenging to analyse massive amounts of data, especially when organisations are under pressure to deliver.

The need for insights is often time-sensitive too, which means that data needs to be interpreted quickly and accurately to enable better decision-making. Without the appropriate tools, managing and analysing big data becomes a frustrating and time- consuming process. Here are a few ways how organisations can maximise the value of their big data analytics.
1) Blend data
2) Help leaders help themselves
3) Visualisation is key
4) Plan for the future

Using Analytics to Discover the Business in Your Data 

Every year, the amount of data being created continues to grow at a tremendous pace. According to IDC, by the end 2015, the global annual rate of data production is expected to reach a staggering 5.6 zettabytes. Businesses can either use this ocean of information to grow faster or miss the opportunity.

Businesses looking to put their data to use, need to bring together their Big Data and Enterprise Data Streams so that all the data can be seamlessly accessed and analyzed.

It’s also prudent to adopt a 2-way approach to gain most from your data – use data to seek operational insights that will help you achieve business goals, and explore your data to uncover hidden trends and patterns.

To maximize the impact of your data analytics efforts, it’s essential to put a strong foundation in place. It involves 3 steps:

Align functional areas around business goals
Create a data supply chain
Use a data discovery platform

Why Data Visualization Is Becoming An Important Legal Trend

The amount of data that we create, store, and distribute is growing at a crazy rate. Anyone who has done document review for more than an hour knows the effect this has on litigation – the contract drafts, the calendar requests, the group e-mails, the reply alls to the group e-mails, the interoffice memos, etc. Every time someone hits Reply All to a large group e-mail to say “Thanks!” or “Ok! Got it!”, some doc reviewer gets 15 more minutes of billable time. It all adds up and creates a bunch of data that needs to be reviewed.

For most people on the doc review team, the focus is just sorting and organizing – putting everything into little piles until the case settles or the next project comes along or the documents run out. But for the people who actually need to use the data, sometimes having 50,000 documents tagged “knowledge of danger” is of little use because it still leaves you with a big pile to sort through. So, as more data gets accumulated, the legal community needs to look at more creative ways to sort and organize it so that it can actually be used.
That’s where data visualization comes in. Data visualization is kind of a nerdy term for the awesome concept of adding art, creativity, and math together to visually digest huge chunks of data.

5 Tips for Using Data Analytics to Grow Your Small Business

1) Goals: This is a necessary first step that provides you the ability to track and maximize your progress and success. Ensure everyone is pursuing the same goal and clearly communicate next steps and deliverables to the team.
2) KPIs: Key Performance Indicators are a group of important metrics that you’ll be monitoring the closest. Choose to evaluate metrics that contribute to company change and growth.
3) Start small: Begin to monitor your KPIs and measure that progress over time. There is no need to introduce all of the data at once which can be cumbersome and overwhelming.
4) Tools: With endless third-party analytical tools available on the marketplace, make sure you find the one that works best for your organization. Your decision will ultimately depend on the goals and KPIs that you’ve established earlier in the process.
5) Manage change: Based on what the data shows, some changes may be needed in order to continue to grow your small business. This may require you to streamline current processes, create new systems and communicate this change with the team – all of which requires you to manage.