UK Businesses Confess They Are Overwhelmed By Volume Of Data

More than half (51%) of senior decision-makers among UK businesses feel overwhelmed by the data generated within their organisation, a number that rises to 61% among those working in larger companies with over 1,000 employees, according to new research from InterSystems, a global leader in database management platforms.

As well as the issue of data volume, the survey revealed that organisations are also experiencing significant challenges when it comes to analysing their data in order to make business decisions, with the process typically taking a week or two (41%) or a couple of days (35%). However, 16% of respondents disclosed that it takes them a month.

Saurav Gupta, technical engineer, InterSystems, commented, “A lot of these challenges arise from large enterprises finding it difficult to determine which of their applications have customer data. More often than not, the data exists in siloes and the systems don’t operate in a cohesive manner. To overcome this, organisations must rid themselves of siloes and simplify things by taking one business outcome at a time. From here, they can see how they can solve that outcome with data, as opposed to trying build the best data strategy without looking at how the outcomes are going to be achieved. This will also help when it comes to analysing data.”

While analysing data presents businesses with difficulties, positively the validity of that data isn’t in question, with most respondents on average (7.8 out of 10) saying they trust the data to inform business decisions. 

The research also found that three-quarters (75%) of the organisations surveyed manage their data centrally. When asked how they are using this data, 90% of senior decision-makers cited identifying business challenges and needs, while 89% are using data for the decision-making process. However, more than two-thirds (67%) find accessing the data required for this purpose challenging. Further uses of data were found to be getting to know customers better (86%) and trend prediction (81%). 

“Previously to analyse data, businesses needed to move it all into a centralised database, however, because of the speed and scale available from data management platforms, businesses can keep their data where it is but still access it in real-time. This will enable them to speed up the decision-making process and derive more value from their data, use the insights to reduce risk or even to implement cost-savings,” added Gupta.