The Power of V

One of the greatest things about the letter ‘V’ is that turned to either side, it either means greater than or less than. This might be why ‘The 3 V’s’ (volume, variety and velocity) have become so important when discussing Big Data – because managing your data can truly determine whether or not your company is greater or less than the competition.

Let’s start with what big data is; a white paper by McKinsey Global Institute calls big data, “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze.” We chose this definition (there are many) because it illustrates that there is no true size of “big data”. The one thing that’s certain is that corporate data is growing at a rapid clip. The report above estimates that global data is growing at more than 40% per year. 

If you’re not getting ahead of the game and coming up with a plan to manage your data, you’re missing out on a huge revenue opportunity. Would your company change the way they did business if they could see all of the data available – volume? How could your company grow if it had the ability to see into buyer trends, demographics and product performance - variety?  How quickly would you grow if you were able to make quick - or even automated decisions – velocity?

Decision making is best done with a holistic view of what’s happening today. A major problem that nearly every organization faces is that today’s data, if gathered, generally becomes a closely guarded secret within various departments and therefore decisions are then made departmentally – and become departmentally dependant, which doesn’t allow for management to measure performance across the entire organization.

Fear not, there is help and you can read more about that here, but keep one thing in mind, exposure helps with accountability and ultimately, an efficient increase in revenue opportunity.