Overwhelmed Executives Still Crave Big Data, Says Survey

We’ve covered recently how overwhelmed knowledge workers feel by information. A new survey reveals that c-level executives are no exception to the rule. And yet, executives are always craving more data. The survey, commissioned by Avanade (an Accenture subsidiary dedicated specifically to Microsoft technology) and conducted by Kelton Research, had 543 respondents – all c-level executives across several industries from 17 countries across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

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Here are some interesting results from the survey:

• Despite the massive inflow of data, 1/3 of respondants reported that they are regularly unable find the right people to provide information when needed.
• More than 1/4 believe they’ve lost business due to not being able to access the right information
• 46% believe they’ve made a bad business decision due to bad or outdated data.
• 1/3 believe access to even more sources of data would help them do their jobs better
• 61% want faster access to data
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Despite the obsession with data, 61% of respondents believe that the data deluge creates fundamental problems in the way their businesses operate and only 46% believe that it creates a ” strategic differentiator” for their businesses. This seems to indicate a disconnect between the desire to acquire data and the ability to manage and apply it.

One problem with the survey is that it seems to conflate data with information. The transformation of data into actionable information is the holy grail of business intelligence and business analytics.

The survey finds that and that 67% companies have invested in or are planning to invest in CRM software. That’s a strategy that’s questionable at best, but the survey doesn’t mention investment in other technologies like business intelligence, data warehousing or analytics. We’ve covered the data explosion and the demand for the tools to handle it previously here.

Currently, most of the information executives have to contend with is coming from people. As more and sensors come online, they will have more machine-generated data to contend with. CRM software won’t help manage that.

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