According to a recent report by Digital Realty, a real estate investment trust, British businesses are extracting only 58 percent of the potential value of the data they hold. Digital Realty’s Data Economy report suggests that if this data is fully utilized it would add £52 billion to the United Kingdom’s GDP.
On average 2.3 trillion gigabytes of data is generated around the world everyday. By the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created for each human in the world, every second. By then, the total amount of data in the world will grow tenfold from 4.4 zettabytes today to 44 zettabytes..
Reports like Digital Realty’s emphasize the power of this data and how it can help companies gain valuable insight. And no data is more important to a company then it’s own internal data which can help companies discover where they are exceling, what they need to change and how to plan for the future. Everyday there are examples around the world of companies harnessing this data to produce real results.
In 2016, Australian airline Qantas partnered with GE Aviation to learn more about its pilots’ flight data. It collected and analyzed more than 10 billion data points from more than 1,700 pilots to determine ways pilots can fly better to reduce fuel burn and emissions. As a result of data collected through the partnership, Qantas reported a 1 percent reduction in fuel spend in 2016 and predicted that savings would double in 2017.
Most businesses understand the importance of evaluating structured data–things like revenue and expenses–which can tell a business whether or not they are successful and how to cut costs. But a lot of companies have an enormous amount of unstructured data that is not contained in a database where it can be analyzed. For instance, experts suggest 80 percent of the data contained within the 1.2 billion clinical care documents that the U.S. produces annually is unstructured.
Unstructured data includes things like help desk tickets, customer feedback and other information not easily categorized. This information usually doesn’t have a pre-defined data model or isn’t organized in a pre-defined manner. This data is usually stored in a disparate system where is is not easily accessible and impossible to analyze without hours of manual labor.
And experts predict the amount of unstructured data a company possesses is only poised to increase. In the oil and gas industry for instance, experts say different data sources such as sensor data, well data, oceanographic data, geological data, environmental data, and other data sources will give companies millions of my data points to examine. By 2026, unstructured data is predicted to have more than 86 percent market share.
This makes gaining insight about this data a priority for companies. Once the data is transformed, it can provide a wealth of information. For example, companies can determine which sales processes are working for them and which are not. Similarly, in the area of retailers and consumer goods, companies can examine their sales cycles and determine how marketing dollars are affecting sales.
In light of the importance data, business CEOs and CIOs are overwhelmingly implementing data transformation initiatives. Business consultancy New Advantage Partners conducts an annual survey of Fortune 1000 companies. In the most recent survey, 97 percent of respondents said they are investing in data analytics. And of those, 73 percent said they have already seen measurable value from those initiatives.
Treehouse Technology Group takes your data and turns it into actionable intel. We’ve worked with several companies to harness the power of their data. If you’re interested in gaining valuable insight from your data and want to work with a company with a successful track record, contact TTG for a free consultation. We specialize in helping companies develop robust solutions best suited for their specific business needs.
