Privacy a key concern among consumers, companies: ForbesInsights study

Big Data is an essential part of every media company's repertoire, but how far can companies go with collecting personal data without infringing on privacy? ForbesInsight explored privacy practices in business enterprises around the world with their 2013 study, "The Promise of Privacy: Respecting Consumers Limits While Realizing the Market Benefits of Big Data". Of the hundreds of executives interviewed from businesses around the world, 85 percent agree that privacy breaches are bad for customer relationships, reputations and the bottom line. The larger the company, the more likely they were to strongly agree.

Companies are collecting personal data from a variety of customer touchpoints. Sixty-five percent of the executives surveyed said their companies collect website log data, while 60 percent collect from their call center, 53 percent in person, 50 percent from mobile, 49 percent from loyalty cards, 46 percent from social media, and 44 percent from both direct mail and from affinity programs. The majority of the respondents said their companies track consumers on digital media using cookies, 61 percent; website "pathing", 58 percent; loyalty and affinity programs, 53 percent; unique coupon codes, 43 percent; digital conversion of call center activity, 38 percent; and video cameras, 36 percent. The main goal for collecting these data are to create a single view of the customer, according to more than three-quarters of the respondents.

The responding companies are finding the most benefit from collection of data by applying it to product development, 64 percent; followed by pricing, 63 percent; website and design function, 58 percent; call center operations, 53 percent; and fulfillment, 48 percent, according to the survey.

Actionable insights is the name of the Big Data game

Developing “actionable” insights about how to organize and derrive insights into the reams of Big Data generated at companies is a resounding theme in the many Big Data studies published in 2013 and 2014. It’s the logical next step to blindly gathering stockpiles of data across business enterprises. 

The No. 1 strategy made in response to Big Data collection is to increase the capacity of hardware or personnel in order to analyse Big Data (47 percent), according to KPMG’s “Going Beyond the Data: Achieving Actionable Insights with Data and Analytics.” 

The survey of CFOs and CIOs also found that attaining management buy-in for Big Data collection (39 percent) and honing the parameters of data collection (27 percent) were top Big Data strategies.

Only one month to Big Data for Media conference in London

There's only one more month before the second annual Big Data for Media conference in London on 8 May. Participants from media companies and universities around the world, from every continent, are set to learn about the latest trends in Big Data strategies, best practices, technological breakthroughs and advancements in the media industry. 

The Big Data for Media conference is a collaboration between World Newsmedia Network, the publisher of this blog, and the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute. To see the full programme, speaker list and biographies, and registration details, go to the "Harnessing the Power of Big Data" site at: http://bit.ly/1inK31z . The event will be held Microsoft's headquarters in Victoria, London.
Speakers include:

* Huffington Post CEO Jimmy Maymann, USA* Tesco/Dunnhumby data guru Matt Keylock
* Buzzfeed director of data research Ky Harlin, USA
* LBi global director of strategic insight Jonathan Lyon
* BBC head of visual journalism unit Amanda Farnsworth
* Univ of Sheffield data guru Dr. Farida Vis
* Circa 1605, CTO and co-founder, Arsenio Santos, USA

* FT.com's head of data analytics, Tom Betts
* CNN.com managing director Peter Bale
* Global Web Index, head of trends, Jason Mander
* Database marketing guru Pegg Nadler, USA
* Archant Media's digital media director, Paul Hood
* Sacramento Bee's director of market analysis, Darrel Kunken, USA
* Global Editors Network Data Journalism Award winners

For more information, contact Martha Stone at mstone@wnmn.org

Budget constraints are top barrier to Big Data success: Study

According to some of the most forward-thinking experts specialising in Big Data structure, such as Gartner and IBM, a data governance plan must be put into place in order for Big Data strategies to be successful. Data governance plans comprise the technical and security policies and procedures that become the foundation of the Big Data strategy at any company.  InformationWeek in 2014 reported on their Big Data survey that reflected trends in the development of data governance plans at companies around the world.

According to InformationWeek’s 2013 survey on Big Data, budget constraints are the top barrier to the successful use of Big Data (38 percent), followed by lack of business interest (13 percent), and more important priorities for the IT department, tied with lack of Big Data management tools (11 percent).  More than 40 percent of the respondents called their data analysis practices either “limited” or “abacus-like”.

One of the key tools for assessing and leveraging Big Data is a data dashboard that could display data trends from a variety of company sectors, such as CRM, finance, online audience, sales and social media sentiment. The most popular application of a data dashboard is an audience usage dashboard.  According to an InformationWeek survey, 90 percent of executive respondents said they plan to use dashboards for key metrics by more than 20 percent of the employees. Particularly useful additions to the dashboard are sales team metrics, including outbound calls, sales rep site visits and proposals generated, activity levels from your business’ CRM system, and online usage patterns such as social media, paid content subscription trends, story engagement, content popularity trends, e-commerce trends and more.