“Am I ready for big data”?This indeed is an impor-tant question in every-one’s mind. Businessesare overloaded with the

sheer volume of data, churned out daily byoperational/ transactional systems, weblogs, industrial sensors, customer data, so-cial media information etc. The informationfrom these data is critical to businesses andfuture businesses decisions as it can uncov-er hidden patterns, unknown correlationsand other useful information. Businesses

can make sense of these data as a whole (byapplying aggregation) and can also com-prehend individual constitutes.

The next question that comes to mind is,as business are capturing and analysing da-ta from a long time, what is new here? Yes,data analytics is old and a significant topic,but there are two things making shift at themoment and are leading to the occurrenceof ‘big data’. First is data rate – the speed atwhich we are generating new data is stag-gering. Second, our ability to analyse largeand complex forms of data.

We can say that big data solutions cantrack and aggregate large volume of data in-cluding personal information from yoursearched histories, emails, loyalty pro-grams, mobile app downloads and similarthings. Businesses can derive significantvalue from these data to gain insight into itsconsumers and the market, making themmore reactive and approachable. Business-es can combine these valuable data withthat of third parties or publically availabledata and add more flavour to data analyticsand visualisation. By collecting, examining,linking and correlating the data along withrunning certain algorithms, businesses cangain new insights.

This creates many new opportunities forbusinesses, and is changing the way wework. It’s not just for business only: Big da-ta is discovering its cases in academia, gov-ernment and pretty much any stride ofeveryday life. Here are some areas wherebig data is already making a real difference.

Big data in healthcare can analyse hugevolume of data from many disparatesources to determine patterns that couldbe valuable in solving and curing diseases.For example, researchers are using it tostudy genomic and environmental factorsin multiple sclerosis to search for a per-sonalised cure. Also, many hospitals havestarted analysing medical data and patientrecords to predict those patients that arelikely to seek readmission within a fewmonths of discharge.

In marketing, one such familiar case ofbig data – recommendation engines, whichare already used by well-known companiessuch as Netflix and Amazon to make pur-chase propositions based on the prior in-terests of one customer as compared to mil-lions of others. They are analysing customerclick-stream data and historical purchasedata of their customers. Similarly market-ing companies are assembling data from

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Insight

ASIAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW APRIL - JUNE 2014 31

BYBADALBORDIABig data —impact and concern

Big data is like a two-edged sword:It can bring many newopportunities for business, but itcan also harm individuals andbusinesses in unanticipated ways

PHOTOS: THINKSTOCK; IMAGING: BS DESIGN

various users’ locations and combine themwith other data to help deliver location-spe-cific services, and promotional activity.

Big data is also getting momentum fromhuman resource (HR) perceptive. Business-es are gaining an understanding of theworkplace behaviour using big data analyt-ics. Sensors attached with the furniture canprovide insights like how employee are us-ing the office meeting rooms, number of em-ployees used meeting room for how long andwhen. Bringing together this data and com-bining it with other relevant data sourceslike reporting structure, mailing conversa-tions, skill information, can enhance collab-

oration and increase productivity amongemployees. It can help in designing officesand making sitting arrangements for thoseemployees who interact regularly.

Some well-known travel sites are alreadycollecting and analysing data of old flight-prices and customer service records fromairlines, to predict whether an assumed fareis a worthy one, or if the fare price is likely toincrease or decrease. Manufacturers are ob-serving each and every vibration data fromtheir equipment, which changes marginallyas it wears down, to forecast the ideal timeto replace or maintain. They are also moni-toring social data, but with an altered goal

Insight

ASIAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW APRIL - JUNE 2014 33

than marketers: They are using it to senseaftermarket support issues before a war-ranty failure becomes publicly negative.

Telecom service providers are using thegeo-location data created by millions ofmobile devices and use the resulting in-sights, along with offerings from businesspartners, to deliver tailored services and of-fers. BFSI sector is in the phase of redefin-ing their services with big data. Gatheringand analysing their customer data is lead-ing to benefits from either cross-selling orup-selling. Financial Services and organi-sations are using data mined from cus-tomer interactions to segregate their usersinto finely tuned segments.

All this proves that various organisa-tions are successfully using big data to theiradvantage. Undeniably, big data is revolu-tionising our life style and businesses. Yet there are many questions which needto be answered.

An important aspect is data privacy. Aspersonal and business data are universallycollected and shared across boundaries, in-consistent data protection laws pose in-creasing threats to people and society. Ad-ditionally a new problem emerges, which isinclination — reprimanding people basedon what they are predicted to do. Perhapsthe most exaggerated example of the use ofbig data, where marketing analysis of bigdata worked out that a girl was pregnantbefore her father knew, but did not realisethat she was a teen, and sent her directmarketing for baby and maternity products.Examples such as these make it clear thatthere is a gap between what can beachieved with big data and how it can becontrolled to yield desired results.

Big data means more information butsometimes it can also lead to false informa-tion. This is because in large data sets, hugedeviations are vastly inferable to variancethan to information. The data sets whichare available for analysis may not be theideal sets of variables for the analysis pur-pose. This can lead to ‘spurious correla-tions’, a serious interpretation inaccuracy.In many cases, snowballing of underlyingdata coincides with possibility of spurious-

ness. Similarly some data may not be reli-able for aggregation.

Privacy is difficult to safeguard here be-cause the old-style legal frameworks don’twork well with big data. Solutions to thesepointed problems include a fundamentalrethinking of privacy frameworks and apolicy to protect and safeguard personal in-formation. For example, if any big data solution uses any personal information,there should be a framework or a policythat requires relevant individual to be noti-fied about the purpose of the data collectionand its usage.

Also, if any of the information to be col-lected is sensitive such as health records,criminal acts, etc, then a prior consent ofthe individual should be sought. The inter-nal audit team of an organisation can alsoplay a big role in this by providing infor-mation that the organisation has identifiedprivacy and risks and established appro-priate controls. All the stakeholders in-volved in the process need to be aware andresponsible of the compliance require-ment, reputation risks and ethical consid-erations surrounding privacy and manipu-lation of sensitive personal data.

Big data is like two-edged sword as itbrings many new opportunities for businessbut at the same time it can harm the indi-vidual and businesses in unanticipatedways. However, businesses must ensurethey don’t cross over the line of personalisa-tion and business improvement into privacyassault, or worse, over-reliance can lead tocostly errors. The legal frameworks andbusiness policies should somehow managethe delicate balance between privacy risksand big data opportunities. When consider-ing the use of big data at business, one mustclearly define the ownership in the data withdata collectors and individuals, establishtransparency to the individual with regardto the purpose and use of data, and avoid‘creeping out’ your customers.

ABOUT THE AUTHORBadal Bordia is principal, technology consulting (Big Data andBI) at Advaiya (www.advaiya.in)

32 ASIAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW APRIL - JUNE 2014

BIG DATA IN HEALTHCARE CANANALYSE HUGEVOLUME OF

DATA FROM DISPARATE SOURCESTO DETERMINE PATTERNS

THAT COULD BEVALUABLE IN SOLVINGAND CURING DISEASES[ ]

BIG DATA CANALSO LEADTO FALSE INFORMATION.THIS ISBECAUSE IN LARGE DATA SETS, HUGE DEVIATIONS AREVASTLY INFERABLETOVARIANCETHANTO INFORMATION[ ]

THINKSTOCK