Big Data!? When I first started hearing the term—not that long ago—I wanted to know, “How did two such common words as Big and Data became paired and morph into the latest buzz word among IT vendors and the contact center industry?“ Fortunately for me, my curiosity was satisfied by a fascinating article entitled “The Origin and Growth of Big Data,” written by Vincent McBurney. I would encourage you to read the whole thing, but I’m only going to summarize here what I thought were the most interesting facts uncovered by McBurney and some additional information from other articles.
History of the term
Apparently, it was an IBM founding company (a bit of a stretch in my opinion) that first used the term Big Data in 1890 to refer to the tabulating system used for the 1890 US Census. McBurney points out, a bit sarcastically, that it would “only take them 120 years before they started using this as a marketing slogan.”
The earliest 21st Century mention of the term that McBurney could find was in a July 2000 paper by Francis Diebold of the U. of PA. He asked for input on the date the term was first used, and a reader posted a photo from Supercomputing ’96: The signs say Big Graphics, Big Compute, Big Data. Apparently the user of the exhibit hall signs thought that passers-by would know what the term meant.
As an aside, I have to share what a Wikipedia editor said when a “Big Data” entry was posted in November of 2009 and quickly deleted: “Delete as per nom – it is simply a combination of big and data, dictionary words which have no place here. ‘Big’ is an adjective that can be combined with many words; there is nothing novel or notable about its use with ‘data’ – indeed, data is more likely to be described as ‘large.’” The page was back again in April 2010 and managed to survive. Nominated for deletion several more times, someone pointed out that it would be “like removing ‘Big Band’ or ‘Big Bang.’” “Big Data” was no longer just a combination of two words!
In 2007 and 2008, “Big Data” appeared on some emerging internet technology blog posts, and in 2009, “Big Data” was used as a marketing term in press releases and stories. But 2010 was the “break out year” for “Big Data” when, for the first time it showed up on Google search trends and it began showing up on job boards. By 2011, Gartner had added “Big Data” to the 2011 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.
Definitions of the term
So now that we’re “experts” on where the term “Big Data” came from and when, what does it mean to all the “techie” people who are using it? A succinct definition can be found in a CIO.com article: Big Data refers to very large data sets, particularly those not neatly organized to fit into a traditional data warehouse. Web crawler data, social media feeds and server logs, as well as data from supply chain, industrial, environmental and surveillance sensors all make corporate data more complex than it used to be.
Wikipedia boils it down even farther: Big Data is an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications.
Gartner puts a slightly different spin on it: Big Data is high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.
What can “Big Data” do for you?
“There’s valuable data in those contact center logs that have largely been gathering dust, and companies are using new tools to mine them to boost customer satisfaction and revenue and lower costs. There may be no corporate function that throws off more data than the corporate call center,” writes Stephanie Overby in a May 2012 article in CIO.com, titled Big Data Analytics Gold for the Call Center. “Every contact is counted, routed, measured and scored. Agent performance is actively measured,” adds Tony Filippone, executive vice president of research for sourcing analyst firm HfS Research. “Other key process owners, like finance and accounting or claims adjudication, wish their data was as rich.”
“Although not every company needs techniques and technologies for handling large, unstructured data sets,” states author David F. Carr in another CIO article, “Verisk Analytics CIO Perry Rotella thinks all CIOs should be looking at Big Data analytics tools….Technology leaders should adopt the attitude that more data is better and embrace overwhelming quantities of it.”
“Big Data is driving Voice of the Customer (VoC) initiatives,” reports Drew Robb in an article inenterpriseappstoday.com. “As companies start incorporating Big Data, they are increasingly turning to speech analytics to get a better understanding of customers. Most speech data is unstructured, and speech analytics can mine that data to help determine the sentiment of customers. Executives can then use the data to make changes to improve quality and boost customer loyalty, sales and revenue.”
As contact center agents are being asked to handle Big Data from more channels, including contacts from social media and online forums, managers are realizing that more advanced skills and better training are needed, along with new analytic tools that can dig deeper into the Big Data generated. The changes businesses make have to drive action. There needs to be timely ROI, and technology buyers have to feel confident that analytics will reduce costs and generate new sales.
Big Data is an “explosive” trend, according to Cynthia Nustad, CIO of HMS, a firm that helps contain healthcare costs for Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as private businesses. “We’re getting and tracking so much material, both structured and unstructured data, and you don’t always know what you’re looking for in it.”
Therein lies the challenge! You know you have Big Data, and you know it can be valuable, but it’s more than likely that you need help from an expert before you can efficiently and effectively mine the data, analyze it and put it to good use. VITEC can help you get started. Contact us!