Pros And Cons Of Big Data Analysis

Starting back in the 90’s computer systems have become more of a focal point in many, if not most, businesses and they have allowed companies both big and small to collect data and keep it organized. As time has gone on, computers have become more sophisticated and capable which has allowed many businesses to collect years and years of data, but now many of those businesses are faced with the challenge of finding value in the collection. Analysts are faced with the challenge of sorting, filtering, and presenting the data in a way that is meaningful for the leaders of a business to make informed and educated decisions that will point the company in the right direction. This means it is very important to understand the pros and cons of collecting …show more content…
It is very important to be able to take the numbers that are presented to us, in addition to all of our outside knowledge, and piece together the best decision overall. Part of this process may be deciding what data to collect and what information is valuable to your particular business. For example, I work for a growing manufacturer of tools for electrical contractors, and we at times have lengthy discussions of what information we should or shouldn’t be collecting. We are a small operation right now so many times resources are not available to dedicate to finding a way to collect and analyze information that may or may not be valuable to us. However, we do see the value in collecting the right data and using that to help make better decisions, provided it is the relevant data. If we do not spend time collecting the right data and we waste resources collecting irrelevant data, we are left with wasted time and nothing valuable to show for …show more content…
So in a sense, nothing has changed except the way we are able to store, sort and filter through the data. However, it can also be a hindrance if we do not think the whole process through before we begin collecting information that is not valuable within the business. Just because we can collect all of this data does not mean that we should do it. This process can be an incredible waste of time and resources if we collect data that has no meaning to our goals in a business. In addition, if we spend time analyzing the wrong data it can cause us to make uninformed decisions that may not be beneficial to the ultimate business