The Corvus | August 2018
companies with varying degrees of success , but increasingly one thing is clear , the business model of today , and tomorrow would be data driven , and this poses both incredibly exciting and troubling news for firm executives . To put things in perspective , International Data Corporation ( IDC ), a global research firm , forecasts that $ 187 billion will be spent by firms on big data and analytics by 2019 , a 53 % increase from the $ 122 billion invested in 2015 . Executives all over the world are wary of the risk of disruption from companies who have built big data advantages into their business model , but it also presents immense opportunities for them as well .
Big data analytics holds significant potential for the future , offering opportunities to improve decision making across several industries – allowing service providers and consumer industries to leverage data and analytics to unlock customer insights , and provide real time , contextual , personalized and improved services to customers . In the energy industry , techniques such as advanced data analytics employed by the likes of Google , Facebook , Amazon and others mainly to disrupt consumer facing businesses , are now being applied to enhance operations and increase efficiency . Under pressure from renewable energy projects , there has been a flurry of alliance
between IT firms and oil companies to improve exploration activities . Last year , Microsoft signed strategic partnership with Halliburton and Chevron . Nvidia , makers of high performance chips for video games , has been working with Schlumberger , Halliburton and others to adapt its technology for viewing and interpreting seismic information .
Locally , Delivery Science - a Lagos-based distribution operations firm - provides large organizations with mobile driven platforms to manage and monitor their distribution assets and logistics smarter . The company was accepted into the fourth Google Launchpad Accelerator program . FieldInsight , an innovative solution firm , that helps manufacturers collect and process data in the field using mobile devices handled by the manufacturer ’ s field workers are helping FMCG companies get visibility into their supply chain functions through the automation of manual processes , gathering of data , and real time analysis & insight on the data collected . The company boasts of giants such as Flour Mills and Unilever as clients .
In the Banking industry , regulators and financial services providers are increasingly embracing the power of data to transform service delivery . For a market leading organization , it is important that the data and analytics operation be run as a profit center of sorts .
The Value and Potential Danger
It is agreed that the benefits of big data are enormous , especially as technological advancements make for increasing capacities for data generation , capturing and analysis . There are also increasing fears about how much data is too much data – where does the line between data transparency and privacy invasion lie ? Would it be an invasion of privacy if a person ’ s medical status is deduced from data garnered from a health tracking app ? Would a company be in its right to deny such persons employment on the basis of such information ? Or could information of personal habits and activities be used to discriminate on access to services through a credit score or some other measure ? Is there a limit on how much data is too much or whom such data can be shared with ? Or what purposes they can be put to ? The ongoing debate in the United States about how data from Facebook users were utilized by political consulting firm , Cambridge Analytica to influence electoral processes during the 2016 Presidential elections highlights the grey areas around the unregulated use of big data . For instance , during the election campaign , if there was a spike in clicks on an article about immigration in a
19 Data is the New Black Gold