Leveraging Big Data Analytics to Adapt to Disruption

Big Data analytics’ contribution to identifying hidden patterns, relationships, and client inclinations is long-established. There is no lack of examples anymore on how it has positively impacted well-informed business choices.

In many cases, extracting valuable insights from the collected data in a timely fashion has stopped being an option. Many drastic changes have taken place on a global scale that affects organizations’ strategic plans. Organizations have recently found a particularly important new goal for collecting a large amount of data. Regardless of whether changes such as the rising number of remote workers and the cancellation of key events have had an inherently positive or negative impact, there’s a need to assess their practical implications. McKinsey & Company summarizes very well some of the major consequences of the 2020 pandemic on this page.

It is no wonder that numerous organizations are feeling more hard-pressed to digitally transform than ever before. Using digital technologies to create new or modify existing business procedures, culture, and customer experiences to meet the changing environment of the business and market requirements has arguably never been so important.

Why Adaptation is Crucial

Even contextual disruption of small scale and magnitude can have enormous consequences on an organization’s activities or a process. Sometimes it’s the ups and downs of the economic cycle. Often, it’s the social and technological demands of the people that take a dramatic shift. The relevance in the marketplace is strongly intertwined with the organization’s understanding of how to better cope with unexpected and unpredictable situations. Laura LaBerge, a McKinsey senior knowledge expert, states that “We see (…) adaptability ingrained in the design of successful transformations”. Taking the example of many successful leading organizations, regardless of their dimension, can help you better understand how this adaption can take place. Dropping years’ old ways of traditionally operating comes at a cost but the cost of irrelevancy is even higher. According to Deloitte’s 2019-2020 Global Cost Survey, cost reduction is an absolute priority to embrace major disruptions in what they call a save-to-transform mindset. Defending one’s organization from disruption while simultaneously investing in growth is not only possible, it is desirable.

How Big Data Analytics Help with the Process of Adaptation

To appropriately assess how to streamline cost structures and generate strategic cost savings that are both significant and sustainable, data is needed. Only then can actions be made based on the delimitation of what can stay and what should go. Big Data analytics can help to identify how other digital technologies such as AI and Machine Learning can be leveraged. Sure, these are tricky implementations but there are also low-hanging fruits to be reached. Big Data can show, for instance, how a dramatic impact on the efficiency of team dynamics can be reached from simple actions such as, say, the incorporation of a specific Cloud software for video collaboration.

Alternative strategies, tactics, or routes to overcome issues can no longer be thought of based on mere instinct or our personal biased understanding of things. Unexpected side effects may very well come out of making such rash decisions. That’s why leveraging Big Data analytics has the potential to save big losses and to stay ahead of the curve. Laggards are sure to face the consequences of dismissing the need to make well-informed decisions. To disrupt, not to be disrupted, is the motto to be followed.

Key Outcomes of Big Data Analytics Applications To Build Resilience

• Cost Reduction
• Improved Data Security & Business Control
• Increased Revenue
• Reevaluation of Services and Products

Read more CCC articles on Big Data and explore exactly how this can be achieved.