Half of businesses don't know what big data is

Almost half of businesses are still unfamiliar with big data technologies, according to the findings of a Teradata survey.

Researching the current adoption and use rates of big data and social business software, analytics giant Teradata found that 42 per cent of businesses are not au fait with big data.

Of those that are, respondents largely expressed an interest in gaining real-time insight from social interactions but most could not identify when they would implement tools to do so.

When they do hunt for a solution, businesses will be looking for something that provides insight into customer feedback and preferences as well as user, behavioural and content trend analysis. The guarantee of a decent return on investment will also be pivotal in their choice.

On the social technologies side, overall adoption is high, with four out of five businesses using them across one or more disciplines from marketing, employee collaboration, customer service, and support and sales.

However, these tools do not appear to be being used to any great effect thus far – only 12 per cent say social technologies have had aided them in their daily operations, although half (49 per cent) admit they are not currently using their full potential.

In an analytical context, businesses are particularly baffled, the research found. Almost half (44 per cent) do not have any analytics attached to their social solutions, while a third (31 per cent) don’t even know if their solution vendor provides analytics or not. A handful (14 per cent) does not have any option for analytics with the vendor they have chosen.

The survey, which drew together 500 respondents across all industry sectors, was conducted in conjunction with social intelligence specialist Mzinga and the Center for Complexity in Business (CCB) at the University of Maryland, USA.

William Rand, assistant professor and director at the latter, said: “The survey results indicate that a wide variety of industries are interested in analytics and the power that analytics can provide them in making business decisions.

“However, there seems to be a lack of knowledge of how to best implement analytics, and a lack of consistent support for analytics across different platforms. This indicates a strong market need for education and consistent implementation of world-class analytic systems.”

The full survey results are available here.