Precision is the key when you are using analytics, even more so nowadays when every company knows the secret to make the most of big data. You can further go on and calculate the ROI to understand if big data is worth the investment or not. So, putting it to good use is a challenge rather than a mode of experiment. However, there are things you can do to make sure that your analytics is directly impacting your business outcomes in the most positive ways. There is no point throwing big data jargons unless these jargons are not being converted into business decisions.
Define your goals and business metrics precisely
Of course, since ROI is something concrete and impacts of big data is something extremely abstract, you need to make sure you are setting the right metrics for evaluation so that you do not end up mixing up variables. It becomes extremely difficult if you do not prioritize and order them and set the kind of deliverables you expect from them. Which kind of variables had better and which had lesser impact then can be easily gauged and the ROI will be easily calculable.
Don’t start big
Often, big data projects fail because companies not only set the right metrics, but also start with extreme ambitions. For example, if you are going to apply big data over the whole network, then you may fail dismally ending in a financial disaster. Rather, you need to choose a suitable sector which has manageable number of variables to understand the process. Then, you can increase its shape in steps to make a greater impact of things. In fact, such effort lets you take care of the bugs that will appear inevitably and manage them one by one.
Setting the right expectations
Often, people portray big data in a way such that it is going to break barriers and do whatever you want it to do. While it is true that it does have the potential to do impossible things, the skills at hand may not be of the highest order to achieve it. Hence, you need to make best of what is at hand and set expectations accordingly. Of course, ROI cannot improve on a sharp curve, it has to take the longer route. However, you can be assured of its power since reports suggest a huge section of companies benefit from big data applications.
Recognizing your project’s potential
First of all, big data is not a shoe for all sizes and hence, different projects have various levels of scope when it comes to big data. So, even before you apply big data, you need to do feasibility tests to understand whether the project will have effective use of big data or the investment would be worth the result derived from it. A point to begin with in this case would be the nature of outcome. If the outcome has to do with some prediction, then big data will be extremely effective. Otherwise, it will not yield high performance.