Data Quality, Security and Training seen as key challenges

NORWALK, Conn. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — May 14, 2015 — While companies are racing toward implementing Big Data initiatives, a recent Xerox study says there are significant issues slowing the capture of value. Business executives said there are a wide range of challenges in implementing Big Data strategies, including data security, privacy and data quality.

The commissioned study¹ conducted in Europe by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Xerox (NYSE: XRX), also found that the lack of user training and inadequate change management are hindering the business transformation that big data solutions offer.

“Executives see the potential of data-driven intelligence taking root, but the soil is still quite rocky in spots,” said Craig Saunders, director, Analytics Resource Center, Xerox Consulting and Analytics Services. “The ecosystem is full of challenges.”

The study, based on a survey of 330 top-level executives from across Western Europe paints a portrait of the Big Data business journey, describing in detail how factors such as “big data maturity” and poor data quality impact the enterprise.

It cites three key trends underlining the state of big data in the enterprise today:

• Big data is key decision-driver for 2015: Three fifths (61%) of organizations said decisions made during the next year are likely to be based more on data-driven intelligence than factors such as gut feeling, opinion or experience.
• Inaccurate data proving costly: But 70% of organizations are still encountering inaccurate data in their systems and 46% believe it’s impacting negatively on their business, requiring re-calculation or totally unusable data sets.
• Data security and privacy: 37% of respondents rated data security and privacy as one of their biggest challenges when implementing big data strategies.

“Despite the challenges, the large majority of companies are moving forward with big data technology across a wide range of different use cases,” said Saunders. “But there’s also a wide range of issues that keep executives up at night.”

Challenges affecting the potential future success of big data strategies varied from country to country:

• 48% of German firms are challenged by data quality issues –more than the European average (34%)
• Germans are also more likely to experience data security and privacy issues (47% versus the average of 37%)
• Belgium is particularly concerned about a lack of user training (39%) and C-level support (36%)
• France’s primary concern is the lack of access to client / third-party data (39%)
• 36% of UK respondents feel lack of user training will impact their ability to implement their big data strategy
• In the Netherlands, lack of access to internal data (due to technical bottlenecks) is the top challenge (36%)

“Datarati” Pull Ahead

The study found only 20% of respondents show high competence in dealing with big data, defined as ‘Datarati’, while 31% are shown to be clearly lagging behind in their approaches (‘Data-laggards’). Most, (49%), were categorized in between these two groups, and defined as ‘Data-explorers.’