The effects of big data are being felt by individuals throughout their respective organizations, from the highest executives to entry-level end users. The former, however, are experiencing the biggest impact because their pertinent business decisions are being fueled by the information their company processes on a daily basis.
This is the subject of the upcoming MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, taking place on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus later this month. Recently, Erik Brynjolfsson, an MIT professor and moderator of the upcoming event, spoke with the online publication Tech Target and shared his thoughts on big data and how it's affecting business executives in 2013.
"In particular, the availability of data is making it possible for managers to make much more data-driven decisions, instead of relying on instinct and gut feel," Brynjolfsson said. "Now we are finally beginning to have really good measures of what's going on with our customers, with our employees, with our suppliers, with our business processes, with the products and services we sell. With really good data comes the opportunity to make more data-driven decision making – and it is already delivering results."
He went on to say that according to their research, companies that use data to drive their processes are 5 percent more productive than their competitors and 6 percent more profitable. In short, decisions backed by data tend to be smarter and lead to better results.
Of course, obtaining data is only the start. It has to be processed and viewed in a way that allows for smart decisions to be made in a timely manner. FileMaker helps with this process because it allows organizations to build effective custom database software systems, which will give them a clear view of their information and help them understand how to use it.