In the quest for competitive advantage, organisations are turning to large repositories of corporate and external data to uncover trends, statistics, and other actionable information to help make better decisions. Those data sets, along with their associated tools, platforms, and analytics, are often referred to as ‘big data’.
This is a confusing and fast moving time for anyone involved. So, to help organisations with their plans, we have launched the Big Data Insight Group. This community will cut through the hype surrounding big data and deliver expert insight, advice and guidance for your organisation to harness these valuable technologies.
Our aim is enable members to build long-term relationships with key practitioners and suppliers in the marketplace enabling them to accelerate learning, to network with their peers and source the best solutions available for their organisation.
Members already signed up include:
BBC, Home Office, John Lewis, Endsleigh Insurance, Hays, PepsiCo, GSK, Flight Centre, TNT, Vodafone, Nokia, Telefonica, Institute of Cancer Research, Tesco, Holiday Extras… and many more.
Whether you are only just hearing about ‘big data’ or have been realising the benefits for some time, we’d love to welcome you to the community. Membership is free for practitioners following qualification.
Defining Big Data; big confusion
The term ‘Big Data’ has many definitions and as such is open to wide interpretation and misunderstanding.
The big data label is commonly applied to describe the ‘voluminous amount of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data a company creates, and data sets that are beyond the ability of commonly used software to capture, manage and analyse.’ Experts and analysts also tend to refer to the characteristics of volume, velocity and variety when seeking to define big data.
At the Big Data Insight Group, we like to describe big data simply as, an entirely new way to look at information, to improve whatever it is that a company does. The key to big data for our community of end users, is the ability to uncover and extract the valuable insight from their data to achieve actionable results.
Understanding the potential value in your data, and envisioning how big data can solve your business problems will take strategic thinking. Extracting that value will require some heavy lifting. But those who do so will succeed in the elusive quest for competitive advantage.
Big problems call for joined up thinking; getting to grips with the opportunities and implications of big data together through the Big Data Insight Group.
Our aim at the Big Data Insight Group is to provide a forum for our members, from across the business and IT spectrum, to come together and exchange ideas, expertise and best practice on big data. Our aim is to get beyond the technology and the hype, to understand the business value of big data and help our members answer the following questions;
- What is big data and do I have it?
- How can big data unlock insight and value in my organisation?
- What are the types of business problems that big data analytics can solve?
- How do you isolate the data that is business critical and will add to your business knowledge?
- What is the compelling business opportunity as defined by a use case?
- What are the common challenges and pitfalls that must be considered?
- How does the underlying technology relate to business issues?
How we do this?
On the events side of the business, our community comes together regularly at our round-table brainstorming gatherings, interactive networking forums and training sessions. With a focus on providing practical case studies and real-life examples, members and invited experts converge to share insights, ideas and perspectives ‘from the coal face’ – in a professional but friendly, open, responsive and relaxed environment. Members ask questions, search for solutions and benchmark their current working practices against their peers, ahead-of-the-curve business practitioners, and some of the most innovative solution suppliers on the market.
On the publishing side, our in-house editorial team produces a range of materials that contain the very latest insights from the industry, our members and the network of experts we engage with.
These services include community websites that are updated daily with news, blogs, features, interviews and case studies; quarterly Industry Trends Reports that feature surveys of our members and expert analysis from academics and practitioners; social media channels through which we discuss the current big data analytics issues with our members; and our fortnightly eNewsletter, used to deliver all of our latest content to over 60,000 professionals engaged in big data analytics.