Here at Dasheroo HQ, we love, love, love data. It might be our favorite 4-letter word! Well, ‘wine’ might also be a big contender! Anyhoo, as we all know, there’s no shortage of data out there. The phrase ‘Big Data’ gets tossed around all the time, and business analytics – tools and apps and services to help make sense of it all – is a ‘Big Market’ at $38BB and growing quickly.
And really, more than we love data (or even wine), we love making sense out of data. Otherwise, what good is it? And what we often encounter when we speak to biz folks is the challenge of all the data. Here’s the top challenges of big data we are hearing:
1. Not easily accessible: Between the various internal reports and dozens of external applications – Facebook, Google Analytics, Adwords, Twitter – most businesses have, it’s hard to hunt all that info down. Different people ‘own’ these sources of data, so just figuring out the apps and log-ins is a pain.
2. Human error: When several people are bringing in their data, cutting and pasting, manually entering into a standard form human error is always a risk.
3. Timeliness: By the time you actually get the reports you need, they are out of date! What good is that? It’s like telling someone what time it was…yesterday.
4. Lack of correlation: Since all this big data is coming from disparate sources, it’s difficult to determine if one action is affecting (good or bad) another. For instance, are your email marketing campaigns also driving increased engagement on social networks? Is your new website driving higher customer support requests?
5. Lack of action: Because of all the above, most people feel they aren’t able to take action on the data they know is available to them. Frustrating!
How about you, what are your biggest challenges of big data and all the opportunities it holds? We’re working our butts off to help you easily access, understand and take action on all your internal and external apps and reports. If you are already kicking our tires, let us know how we can improve! If not (shameless self promotion), sign up for a free account!