BIG DATA ANALYTICS Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

BIG DATA ANALYTICS Case Study Solution

Problem Identification

Even with a shift towards big data analytics and its ability to transform the decision making process in terms of offering greater accuracy and control, organizations are still apprehensive about relying on a sole data driven culture and rely more on expert opinion or intuition . A shift towards a data driven culture for enhanced decision making needs to be instilled in organisation that have the desire to thrive in today’s competitive environment along with an organizational culture infused with managerial insight and effective leadership.

Situational Analysis

For understanding the dynamics of big data analytics, it is important to study the internal and external environments of businesses. In this analysis, the strengths of businesses that use big data analytics would be highlighted and the potential weaknesses of this new inclination would be discussed. Moreover the opportunities presented in the external environment will be discussed in addition to the current threats which are limiting these organizations from achieving their optimal potential.

Strengths:The managers of organizations with a data driven culture have a greater opportunity to translate their business knowledge into improved decision making techniques and performance. These organizations have a greater insight into their customer’s decision making process and perceptions and so can transform their marketing plans and strategies to suit the needs and wants of the customer. This makes these organizations more customer or market orientated in the competitive environment.

A data driven culture based on big data analysis provides accuracy in measurement of results in outcomes. This leads to better predictions and smarter decisions. Organizations which are opting for this source of competitive edge can have access to data even before an event has taken place and can make proactive decisions.

The current global environment shows that transitioning from an old approach to a new data management technique is not difficult anymore. This is evident by Sear Holdings’ transition towards big data analytics and this process was easily managed by the IT teams and analytics in terms of getting comfortable with the new tools and technologies of big data analytics.

BIG DATA ANALYTICS Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Weaknesses:A data driven culture based on big data analytics still has some weaknesses especially as the sources of big data are mostly new. This brings several challenges since huge amounts of data collected before the arrival of applications to handle big data are not present in the new databases.For instance, information collected through social media applications such as Twitter or Facebook would only be a decade old and information before that would not be part of big data databases. This suggests that structured databases containing information about periods before the arrival of big data would actually be ill-suited for storing and processing the new information. This would mean a transformation of not just the organizational culture but also its technological aspects.

One major weakness of big data analytics is that big data does not completely erase the need for human insight. This limitation will further help in choosing the best alternative for strategic decision making in an organisation in the following section on ‘evaluation of alternatives’.

Opportunities: The external environment presents opportunities since big data can now even be implemented in areas which have been previously dominated by gut and intuition. Smart leaders see big data as the ultimate innovation in management practices. The external environment is rather welcoming in terms of accepting big data especially as it has enhanced the efficiency levels of organizations in the form of declining costs of computing. Traditionally a data intensive approach was expensive but big data analytics has brought about an economical edge to this way of doing business.

Big data presents a great opportunity to organizations as it has brought about greater ease to the once difficult techniques of decision making used for analytics. Big data being simpler and more powerful than the traditional unstructured data shows that there is greater potential for reliance on this new approach to data handling.

The global economy can be seen as taking a shift towards big data analytics especially as major industry such as aviation has also moved away from traditional methods of data analysis. This has proved to be an effective move in terms of making the pilots more attentive towards their prime responsibilities rather than focusing on imparting information about landing.

Threats: There are various threats or challenges of drifting towards big data analytics completely. As per research conducted on data driven companies, even those which are currently embracing this culture still value decision making via data analytics below 3 on a scale of 1 to 5 for 32% of the companies considered.This means that there is reluctance in terms of accepting the results generated by big data analytics. The global economy is still relying too much on intuition despite the availability of big data analytics. In addition to this, big data analytics still requires the expertise of technological experts who can understand the dynamics of the tools and technologies used in this method and there is scarcity of such scientists. This could translate into high demand and higher costs of hiring these professionals when there is further orientation towards big data analytics in the economy.................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.