Webinar Big Data In The Age Of The Customer Brian Hopkins, Vice President, Principal Analyst May 27, 2014. Call in at 12:55 p.m. Eastern time

We are gaining a deeper view of the world by digitizing everything . . . DATA SCIENTISTS PARTICIPATED IN A DATA DIVE TO HELP THE NYC PARKS DEPARTMENT BETTER MANAGE STORM RISK AND OPTIMIZE PRUNING SCHEDULES OF THE CITY’S TREES Image source: Github (http://seeread.github.com/canopy/)

. . . and by using data to predict everything Image source: Digits (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/17/amazon-wants-to-ship-your-package-before-you-buy-it/)

Big data — emerging business practices and technologies that close the gap between the amount of data available and your ability to use it for business insight

You need a big data reset Less than 15% of data used for business intelligence (BI) Source: Upcoming “Reset On Big Data” Forrester report

It’s about understanding your customers Age of the customer — a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers Source: October 10, 2013, “Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer” Forrester report

Big data challenges the status quo Ethics and regulatory Perception of privacy Use of data for innovation and growth Data hoarding

You need to know where to look. Exploding data + inefficient allocation of resources = opportunity for insight

Big data starts with the way your business thinks Image source: The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/home-page)

Then you need to know the value Netflix bought two seasons without seeing a single episode.

But you need more than the right culture Source: Upcoming “Reset On Big Data” Forrester report

Big data competency starts with turning curiosity into testing Trips per neighborhood Crimes per neighborhood Business metric Got curious Got data Found correlation Source: “How Prostitution And Alcohol Make Uber Better,” Uberdata blog, September 13, 2011

It also means navigating new risks Approximately 500K records + IMDb = 99% Lawsuit Source: Ryan Singel, “Netflix Spilled Your Brokeback Mountain Secret, Lawsuit Claims,” Wired, December 17, 2009 (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/netflix-privacy-lawsuit/)

The US government realizes that privacy in the era of big data needs to change REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT “BIG DATA AND PRIVACY: A TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE” “In light of the continuing proliferation of ways to collect and use information about people, PCAST recommends that policy focus primarily on whether specific uses of information about people affect privacy adversely. It also recommends that policy should focus on outcomes, on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘how,’ to avoid becoming obsolete as technology advances.” Source: “Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective,” President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, May 2014 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy_-_may_2014.pdf)

Your technical platform is much more than Hadoop Source: Upcoming “Reset On Big Data” Forrester report

Recommendation — reset Big data is: The practices and technology that close the gap between the data available and the ability to turn that data into business insight. Start preparing for the future that big data makes possible.

Your business is more confused . . . “Which view of big data is most aligned to yours?” Hype Technology BI New Confusing Base: 701 North American data and analytics decision-makers; Source: Business Technographics Global Data And Analytics Survey, 2014; Image source: Blogger (http://blogger.com/)

. . . and it isn’t being as aggressive “Based on our definition of big data, what best describes your firm’s current usage/plans to adopt big data technologies and solutions?” Expanding/ upgrading implementation Implemented, not expanding Planning to implement in the next 12 months Planning to implement in more than 1 year IT 15% 6% 16% 24% Business 13% 7% 9% 18% Base: 701 North American data and analytics decision-makers; Source: Business Technographics Global Data And Analytics Survey, 2014; Image source: Blogger (http://blogger.com/)

Recommendations Stop calling your Hadoop pilots your “big data projects.” Reset your thinking on big data, and get the bigger changes. Stop asking if you need big data. Engage your front office by discovering links to metrics they care about. Rethink technical investments in light of cultural and competency maturity.

“When the cost of collecting information on virtually every interaction falls to zero, the insights that we gain from our activity . . . will fundamentally change the way we relate to one another, to institutions, and with the future itself.” Patrick Tucker The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move?

Without big data, you won’t thrive in the age of the customer . . . Turn big data into business insights. . . . and you may not survive it.

Brian Hopkins bhopkins@forrester.com Twitter: @practicingea