New research by TCS finds sales and marketing lead big data spending activities in a company
For manufacturing and production managers, detecting product defects and boosting quality, along with improving supply planning, represent the greatest potential benefits of big data.
"A $2 billion industrial manufacturer told us that analysing sales trends to keep its manufacturing efficient was the main focus of its big data investments," TCS writes. "The company's products are largely engineered to order. Understanding the behaviour of repeat customers is critical to delivering in a timely and profitable manner. Most of its profitability analysis is to make sure that the company has good contracts in place. The company says its adoption of analytics has facilitated its shift to lean manufacturing, and has helped it determine which products and processes should be scrapped."
TCS says manufacturing and production managers see building strong levels of trust between data scientists and themselves to be the greatest challenge.
"Perhaps the quants have a harder time relating to managers on the factory floor than they do with other, more 'white-collar' functions," TCS says.
Using Big Data for R& D
R&D, product development and product engineering managers point to monitoring product quality as the biggest potential benefit from big data.
"That indicates they may be more interested in using big data to protect established products than in inventing new ones," TCS writes. "However, identifying customer needs for new products and enhancements to current products featured next on the list."
Netflix is an example of a company that has used its data to do the latter. "The company collects enormous volumes and varieties of data: 30 million 'plays' daily [what customers are watching]; million consumer ratings of its content per day; billions of hours of streamed video, device and device location data, social media data and other digital information, according to one technology publication's summary of a Netflix data scientist's conference presentation in June 2012," TCS writes. "Such data told Netflix there was a large market for a remake of the 1990 British Broadcasting Corporation miniseries called House of Cards."
Since its release, Netflix's House of Cards remake has become the most streamed Web content in the US and 40 other nations, according to TCS.
TCS says R&D managers rate finding data scientists as their biggest challenge, followed by getting managers in other functions to share data.
Using Big Data in Logistics/Distribution
Logistics managers rated monitoring product shipments as the most valuable benefit of big data, though it also rated highly the capability to determine locations of inventory shrinkage and the ability to identify spikes in costs.
TCS points to Deere &Co, the global manufacturer of agricultural and construction equipment, which is experimenting with technology to help it assess its inventory of parts and other components in real time.
Logistics managers see securing the data as their greatest big data challenge, especially keeping it secure from internal parties. They consider figuring out how to use their data to make decisions as their second biggest challenge.
Using Big Data for Accounting/Finance
Finance and accounting managers see a great deal of big data value in two areas, according to TCS: measuring risk and improving budgeting and forecasting. TCS says they are less interested in using big data to reduce internal or external theft.
Finance managers identified determining what data to use for different business decisions as their primary challenge in generating value from big data. They also point to getting other functions to share information.
Using Big Data for Human Resources
HR managers are most interested in using big data for employee retention. They want to figure out which employees are most likely to leave so they can discourage them from doing so. They also want to use big data to understand the effectiveness of recruiting campaigns and to gauge employee morale.
HR managers said their biggest big data challenge is understanding where to focus investments. They also struggle with finding data scientists.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia or take part in the CMO Australia conversation on LinkedIn: CMO Australia.
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?
As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
