Over half of businesses have missed opportunities they didn’t see coming because they lacked accurate information at a time when they really needed it, costing them up to ?20 million per year. That’s according to the European Big Data – Big Failure report, released by Pure Storage.
Delinquent Data
European businesses face a dilemma: 78% of them believe they could boost their performance by at least 21% if they could access insights faster. But over half (51%) said they’d lost an opportunity that they’d not seen until it had already gone. Nearly a third (31%) had it happen more than once a year, and almost a fifth (19%) saw it happen a few times a week. The report shows also that this equates to a significant loss – up to ?2 million a year in lost revenue per company for those with sales between ?100 million and ?500 million, and considerably more for those earning more than ?1 billion: an estimated ?20 million per company, per year.
James Petter, VP EMEA, Pure Storage said: “The reason we’re seeing these trends emerge is because it is now cheaper for businesses to retain the data they are collecting, than to destroy it – so the volume of data a business holds is growing rapidly. But at the same time, it is complicated and costly to access usable information fast enough to make a difference.”
Almost three-quarters (72%) of companies have admitted that they collect data but never use it. Half (48%) say this is because data processing is too time consuming, and one in five (19%) because it is too expensive to process.
Petter said: “Companies often have access to the same information. It’s the speed and simplicity of tools with which they can harness it into actionable insights that disrupts their competitors. As companies gather more and more granular data on what they do, the potential to gain understanding and plan accordingly is not just a profitable undertaking, it is a necessity. Transformation is being forced on organisations at an ever-increasing pace. They must adapt to new ways of doing business, new markets and new practices – or die.”
Obstacles to Productivity
Over half (56%) of companies surveyed said bureaucratic red tape was the most serious obstacle for business productivity. “Bureaucratic red tape around access to information is preventing companies from using their data to find those unique pieces of insight that lead to great ideas. Data ownership is no longer just the remit of the CIO, the democratisation of insight across businesses enables them to disrupt the competition,” said Petter.
Regulation: Hindrance or Help?
One in ten of the companies Pure spoke to cited data protection concerns as holding up their dissemination of information and data throughout their business. With the EU General Data Protection Regulation[1]being implemented soon, this will affect every single company that stores data.
Regulations have had the largest negative effect in the UK with over a third (39%) of UK businesses saying that recent well-meaning regulations have had unforeseen, negative consequences for their business or industry. France has been most assisted by changes in regulations with 42% saying these have helped their ability to do business. Germany is the most positive about regulators with 40% of businesses saying that there were no new regulations in their industry to affect their performance, and over a quarter (26%) saying that regulations of a different industry has had a positive impact on their business.
