Big Data Begs Us to Ask Bigger Questions of It

  • By Theo Priestley

Organizations are collecting more and more data every single minute of every day. It’s no secret that Facebook, for example, processes 2.5 billion pieces of content and over 500 terabytes of data each day, pulling in 2.7 billion Likes and 300 million photos per diem. Facebook also scans a whopping 105 terabytes of data each half hour.

Of course Big Data is nothing new. It was relatively enormous all the way back to the 1960′s when NASA took a shot at the moon. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when Google gave everyone the proverbial heart attack when they revealed they churn almost the entire Internet every couple of days to meet our search needs.

Despite the hype, Big Data didn’t happen all at once…data just got bigger.

So we know that companies manage, manipulate and extrapolate information from ever larger amounts of data. But what we don’t know is whether they are asking anything bigger from it all. They should be.

Limitless information, limited imagination

A customer-focused business with Big Data in its grasp has an unparalleled source of knowledge from an increasing number of sources now; mobile data, social data, transactional data, locational data, financial data, family data, medical data, carbon footprint and consumption data. We even have data about data in the form of log data, as Tesla showed us in rebutting the NY Times.

What’s more, a similar increase of that information is being collected in real-time with lots of integration challenges. (But often stored very traditionally and processed in batch. What use is that for operational decisions?)

But with all this information at hand I’m seeing a worrying trend of organizations still asking the same questions of it and receiving the same answers as before, just with a little bit more data support behind it. When you combine social + mobile + medical + financial + family you get quite a bit more than just demographic segmentation. Too often, that’s the apparent limit to where current thinking goes in customer service and marketing.

Limitless information, limited processing

There is another angle I want to work on here, and something I’ve mentioned aplenty elsewhere. This amount of data requires a modicum of processing power. Whilst you can move it all to the Cloud and leave it to another provider to churn the numbers for you there’s nothing to stop you from applying a little distributed magic yourself and using the idle processors sitting on every desk in the organization. In fact, what if AT&T managed to work out how to use idle clock time in every one of its smartphone to process its own data from its customers ?

SETI@Home famously did this by allowing 3 million users to assign their PCs and PlayStations to solve computational data from radio telescopes. It’s not such a far fetched notion for a business such as mobile provider or a bank to do exactly that via an app.

Limitless information, unlimited possibilities

Big Data actually demands of us big questions. It demands us to think bigger than what we’re currently doing. TIBCO CTO Matt Quinn put it well when he said we should be asking ourselves,

What’s the No. 1 question that you’ve wanted to have answered but you were always told it was impossible? Start from there. Don’t start with what data you have, start with the important question.

The term Big Data may just be part of the industrial hype cycle since it’s all about the Data, but the Big part should be a reminder to dream big.

Theo Priestley is a consultant, industry analyst, startup advisor and writer.

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Top 10 Excuses for Not Considering Document Management This Year (#9 & #10)

Developed by Steve Weissman – ‘Senior Sage’ / Insight Forums

sweissman@insightforums.com

 

Excuse #9:

Change is expensive.

When I need to get an invoice approved, I just put it in the right department’s mailbox at the front desk. They usually pick it up in a few days and sign it. We file it and then every few years pack up the old files and send them to off-site storage. Why spend money to automate something this simple?

 

Reality:

Because it’s not really that simple. There are business rules and document policies embodied in this seemingly straightforward process, but they’re invisible and thus impossible to document, improve, replicate, teach, or defend if queried by a litigator or disgruntled shareholder seeking better governance.

Who’s authorized to grant the approvals? Up to how much money does that authority extend? Who decides when the old files get packed and moved off-site? What are the criteria for moving them, and how long do they stay there? Every one of these questions must have an answer – and if you take the time to pursue that answer, you may find that not changing your processes is far more expensive than doing so.

 

The story is told of a city attorney’s office that was so overloaded with work that it had to farm out 75% of its cases, and paid some $300 per hour for that outside help. Then it started scanning legal documents directly into its case management system, and it began working so much more efficiently that it could handle more of the work itself – at a cost of just $75 per hour. So while there was nothing wrong about the way the old process worked, the new one is a whole lot less expensive, and generates savings each and every time it is used.

 

Only a true Luddite could object to that!

 

Excuse #10:

This information management stuff is just too squishy.

Managing our financial assets is important to us, so we invested in a top-notch financial system. Managing our people is important, too, so we invested in HR systems. But information is just not as critical. And managing it seems so complicated.

 

Reality:

Who says information isn’t as critical? Success is all about information – not only having it, but making sure it’s accurate, timely, and available to the people who need it to make good business decisions. If you think about it, it’s information that gives your financial assets their value, for without it, there’d be no up-to-date price lists to show to prospective customers, no order forms to capture new business, no signature pages to trigger the billing cycle, etc.

 

 

While all this may sound complicated, the fact is that information management today is more accessible than ever. Most of the core capabilities can be gotten off the shelf, and little user training is required because most of the interfaces are either Web-based or designed to work as such, and at this point anyone who uses a computer is fairly used to browsers and Google-style search boxes. “Squishy,” therefore, would seem to be in the eye of the beholder.

 

How to overcome them

The aforementioned excuses are frustrating for many reasons, not the least of which is

because document and content technology already has well established itself as a means to further your most critical business objectives. Those who offer them up individually or en masse really are only forestalling the inevitable, for sooner or later, someone in a position of authority is going to start asking “why aren’t we doing this?”

 

But then, you already know this, or you wouldn’t still be reading these words! So your

challenge is to turn these excuse-makers into fellow agents of change, whether they live above or below you in the organizational hierarchy, or are peers in other departments.

 

Identify the major points of pain

The trick to overcoming their objections is to identify what’s causing them the most operational pain, and then to explain how information management technology can alleviate that pain and make them managerial heroes at the same time. You can usually capture their attention by talking about one or more of the following issues:

* Cost reduction

* Efficiency improvement

* Compliance/risk mitigation

* Environmental stewardship

* Security

* Disaster recovery

* Decision support

* Collaboration

* Get educated

 

Measure everything / measure anything

 

To make your argument maximally compelling, you must quantify the problems to the greatest degree possible, and drown your would-be allies in data. This means measuring everything about the documents that are central to their activities and interpreting the results in the context of their day-to-day lives. At the very least, you want to be sure to capture essential information like:

 

* How many documents there are

* How many types of documents there are

* How many pages they contain

* How many sides they are printed on

* How they get introduced into the organization

* Who handles them, for what purpose, in what order, and for how long

* Where they are stored, for what reasons, and for how long

 

If you can’t measure everything, then at least be sure to measure anything. The idea is to illuminate with the harsh light of reality that your current naysayers are spending a lot more time and money than they think dealing with either poor or non-existent document processes – and as they do, they’re exposing themselves to lots of avoidable risk (e.g., from natural disaster, lawsuits, even termination).

 

Find out how things actually work

 

Besides the document accounting, you also want to chart the way your organization actually works – not how people think it works! – as well as the technology infrastructure that supports you. In most cases, this is a Stage Two activity since it really can’t happen until enough of the right kind of fundamental buy-in (read: from top management) has been obtained. But whether it happens sooner or later, it must happen sooner or later, and eventually will follow three core lines of inquiry:

 

* Functional: examine your process flows, communications webs, and technology stack(s) for the organization as a whole and by department, current and desired

 

* Technical: inventory your current environment and list your system requirements, performance specs, and future considerations

 

* Administrative: record your expectations for rollout schedule, testing, training, documentation, support, and maintenance

 

But first: Get help!

 

By now it probably has become apparent that you can’t do all this by yourself. So the first thing you have to do is find yourself a friend, preferably one in a high place because a senior executive automatically commands attention when he or she wants to get something done. But don’t despair if you are unable to reach that far, for plenty of good work can be done at the grassroots level to start.

 

It may surprise you to know that many information management initiatives begin as populist movements, for it is the people who actually push the paper who feel the greatest operational pain and are most immediately invested in finding a cure. Whether you are one of these people or are in charge of a team of them, you have a familiarity with the issues that positions you perfectly to begin affecting change in your organization – whether or not it currently wants to change.

 

This won’t be easy, and it probably won’t be fast, but you can make it obvious for all to see that the Top 10 Excuses – plus the dozens more you will run into as you go – are nothing but weak justifications for leaving well enough alone. You know this is not an acceptable answer, and organizations like ours and like AIIM can help you make your case if you need us to. So don’t wait another minute: tune in, turn on, and get going!

 

 

About AIIM:  AIIM (www.aiim.org) is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control and optimize their information. For more than 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused on helping users understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records and business processes. Today, AIIM is international in scope, independent and implementation-focused, acting as the intermediary between ECM (Enterprise Content Management) users, vendors, and the channel.

 

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