A new study by CapGemini and EMC, Big & Fast Data: The Rise of Insight-Driven Business, is based on around 1,000 interviews with senior executives and decision-makers from across nine industries and 10 countries. The study’s methodology is based on a quantitative online survey and supplementary in-depth qualitative interviews providing insights into how senior executives are responding to how quickly big data is reshaping entire industries.

Here are some key information from the study:

• 64% of senior executives said that big data is changing traditional business boundaries and enabling non-traditional providers to move into their industry. Companies report a significant level of disruption from new competitors moving into their industry from adjacent industries (27%), and over half (53%) expect to face increased competition from start-ups enabled by data.

Big Data changing traditional business boundaries

• 56% believe their investment in big data over the next three years will outstrip past investment in information management. Of these, 15% expect investments in big data will significantly outstrip past investment in information management.  The following graphic provides insights into enterprise investment in big data over the next 3 years.

Future of Big Data Investment

• 65% of senior executives agree that they risk becoming irrelevant and/or uncompetitive if they do not embrace big data. In fact, well over half (59%) say that the data their organizations hold is becoming a core component of their market value. Data is already becoming as important as their traditional products and services for these enterprises. The pressure is on for results already. Only 27% of executives surveyed in a related Cap/gemini study describes their big data initiatives as successful however.

Big Data versus becoming irrelevant / uncompetitive

• Nearly half (47%) of senior executives agree that their organizations’ IT systems are not optimized to enable business decision makers to effectively do their jobs. Of these, 16% strongly agree with that assessment, with just 26% disagreeing. Senior executives see the need for increasing the cadence of their IT systems’ improvements to keep pace with the many customer, supplier and key stakeholder requirements outside their organizations.

I.T. systems becoming optimized with big data to enable business decision makers in all departments to effectively do their jobs

• 45% view their current internal IT development cycles for new analytics to be too long and not matching their business requirements. Over half (52%) consider the speed of their organization’s insight generation based on successful analytics application development and implementation to be constrained by its existing IT development processes. This is why C-level executives are beginning to redefine senior management roles to include analytics and big data. Many are focused on getting ahead of the quickening pace of insights that big data analytics has the potential to deliver.

Big Data development cycle for new analytic insights / Constraints to developing insights

• 43% of organizations are restructuring and reorganizing their organizations to exploit big data opportunities. 33% have appointed C-level roles in order to exploit data opportunities, with an additional 30% planning to introduce C-level roles this year. The majority of senior executives interviewed are making significant structural changes to their businesses to gain greater insights from big data analytics.  With so many senior executives seeing mastery of analytics critical to their survival and relevancy, these strategic shifts in enterprises will most likely accelerate in the next three years.

Restructure organization to exploit big data opportunities

• Capgemini sees enterprises going through four distinct opportunity models as they transition investments into big data.  These are efficiency and cost focus; growth of existing business streams; growth through market disruption from new revenue streams; and monetization of data itself, with the creation of new lines of business.
• 63% see the monetization of data potentially becoming as valuable as existing products and services. The study found that this expectation varied across sectors (from 55% in healthcare to 83% in telecommunications), with all industries predicting potential new revenue streams based on monetizing data.

Check out the entire study, for free, here