As shown in the review of the literature, there are many opportunities to use big data to financially gain a competitive advantage across different industries.For the purpose of distinguishing between the two consultants, the first consultant interviewed is referred to as Vindaloo and the second consultant as Ronaldo. Please note that these names are fictitious and are only used for the purpose of reporting the results of these interviews.
When asked about how the big data phenomenon has been adopted in South Africa, the first of the two consultants, Vindaloo, responded that there were many industries using data in predictive analysis to make better business decisions in South Africa. The consultant provided an example of a retail company where data, including unstructured
data (i.e. big data), was used to solve a business problem successfully. The use of data in this manner occurs at many of the organisations where the interviewee consults.
Ronaldo, the second consultant, disagreed that the big data phenomenon had been fully adopted. His words:
I don’t think anything that has been discussed before now is really big data … that’s a big thing. I don’t think it is big data; that’s the whole point.
Ronaldo further contended that “a lot of people talk about big data; there is zero relation between the big data discussion having a tech provider and their business, because they just ask, “What is it and how do I use it?” “So for me that is a fundamental flaw and I don’t think that it is really big data.” This speaks to Ronaldo’s fervent disbelief that big data has been adopted in South Africa. He believes that he has only “come across three businesses that are big data contenders, only about 2% in South Africa”.
Vindaloo further noted the different ways big data is used in various organisations. The interviewee referred to the use of visualisation tools to help make sense of big data. In the words of Vindaloo:
In terms of visualising the data – if we consider that your big data source (which is called the data lake nowadays) is not only unstructured, it’s uncategorised (if that is the right word), so you’ve got structured data in there and you’ve got unstructured data in there – it is not categorised whatsoever, so we dumped a whole lot of stuff there, so the process of gaining insight from that is often very time consuming…
This gives an indication of the extent of the use of big data. These comments were unsolicited regarding the different types of uses of big data by the interviewee.
Vindaloo also referred to the use of big data in the insurance industries and the considerable investment in using big data to build predictive models. Furthermore, it
was mentioned that it was imperative for the insurance industry to use their data,
“because if they price their product incorrectly they lose money”.
4.9.1 Big data infrastructure
Vindaloo mentioned that certain retail organisations have been storing volumes of data (more than half a petabyte of data) in the cloud, a big data platform, successfully. There has been a trend that organisations are “definitely moving away from building it yourself to using a cloud-based service of some type or another that already has this capability”. Ronaldo believed that the problem was not related to big data technology.
This has been implemented successfully for years and many organisations store their data on big data platforms.
According to EE Publishers (2016), big data has huge potential in business, but also comes with many challenges.
4.9.2 Challenges of big data
In response to the question regarding the challenges of big data in the South African context, Vindaloo stated that big data technology was not the problem, since it has been available and successfully used. The challenges are not about acquiring big data technology, but setting up the organisation’s data and building frameworks to consume big data. Vindaloo further noted that this could be “very time consuming, and the resources are scarce to find”. Vindaloo believes that the challenge of big data centres on the business’s capability to understand the value of (big) data.
Vindaloo’s words:
The challenge is how to create a data-driven culture; how do we create that data-driven culture inside the organisation; how do we become more data literate so that we can understand the value of these things and what they can bring to the organisations.
According to EE Publishers (2016), speaking from a South African context, the volumes of data (big data) need secure and proper data management, and business applications.
Ronaldo, like Vindaloo, believes that the challenge of big data is not the technology.
Ronaldo was resolute that the challenge of big data is that the technological side and the business side of large organisations are not aligned; they are not speaking the same language. Ronaldo’s own words:
The business people don’t know what the tech is doing and the tech team does not know what the business is trying to do.
A business management consultant also interviewed, working in countries like the Congo, noted that “the USA and European countries have many venture capitalists, as well as large corporate organisations that invest in big data technology and use the insights from it to make data-driven decisions”, compared with their African counterparts. According to this consultant, “South Africa seems to sit in the middle, where some investments are made into big data platforms and cloud technologies”. In the African context, however, there is a big lag between First-World countries and continents, like the USA and Europe, and Africa in terms of big data technology, owing to the ability of businesses to invest in such technologies. A contributor to the article by EE Publishers (2016), however, believes that “as a gross generalisation, South African businesses are not ready yet to work with big data” and that “data first needs to become central to the organisation”.
To assess how well they will need work together to optimise big data in marketing strategies, the findings on how the respondents viewed analytics at their organisations are explored in the next section.