Capturing the most out of Big Data – 5 Tips
Advanced Business Analytics are no more confined to the Fortune 500 organization alone. With Big Data, SME segment has plunged at the opportunity and harnessed the best from multiple data sources. However, they commit mistakes and ponder if something else could have been done. While expectations from technology tend to grow, here’s what you need to follow for an effective Big Data strategy.
Tip #1 – Don’t hunt for all the data
Fetching everything and anything you can; followed by unclear objectives brings in more complications. Thus, always start with a set business case. Is it about capturing customer response or improving operational performances? Whether you are developing search algorithms or applications for run time risk management; leaner the inputs, relevant are the outputs. Make it easier for the algorithms to crawl to the targeted data sets.
Tip #2 – Clean the hunted data
Cleaning simply means removing any redundancies or erroneous inputs. More important is to understand that prevention is better than cleaning. Make sure the information captured is correct and falls in at the right data sets. Recheck the relationships, hierarchies and the mapping algorithms.
Tip #3 – Bring on board the Data Analyst
Set right expectations from the beginning. Analysts can predict potential data questions from a targeted business case. Working on selective data objects will help pitch for more relative information querying. This experience can help with accurate predefining and results into more valuable data analytics. Data Analysis (derived out of your Big Data processing) should impact and hint at solutions.
Tip #4 – Conduct performance tuning
Standardization of data objects such as tables, structures, fields, etc. across reports help negate potential instabilities in the code. Lesser debugging effort means faster report development. Also, monitoring the disk drives frequently is needed for steady task execution. Degraded disks can affect overall performance of MapReduce jobs.
Tip #5 – Leave some room for experimenting and innovating
Just like the end user doesn’t actually know what exactly Big Data could deliver, it is the developing stage where innovation could conceive. Let the developers play with the data, try different relationships and challenge the usual approach. Just one cool discovery will change the game for the better. However, the realization has to progress as committed and thus a balance is needed.
Bonus Tip – Let it cost a little more!
Be flexible with costing. Don’t enforce fixed budgets as reporting can get unpredictable. Let more reports be generated without having the need for additional agreements and cost defining approvals. Investment in developing a reliable solution that extracts reports as and when needed by the business could be a great idea.
Aiming for High performing Analytics functions? Big Data is the key!
