Businesses that genuinely focus on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) can reap a multitude of benefits, impacting various aspects of their operations and performance.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), and Bank of England (BoE) are working together to implement mandatory EDI reporting for firms in the UK financial services sector. This is in its infancy but will doubtless iteratively evolve going forward. Similar regulations are emerging in other sectors and may expand to other countries, making EDI a global imperative.

But true progress goes beyond meeting basic requirements. It’s about unlocking a competitive advantage and building a more equitable outlook. With the appropriate toolset and approach, this can be an easily assailable task.

Initial Requirements of Regulation

This initially focuses on mandatory reporting on “protected characteristics,” as defined by the Equality Act 2010. It then distinguishes between workforce data, senior management, and the Board. The initial requirement would be for annual returns on the reporting.

Where is regulation going?

As the regulation takes root, its influence and application will likely broaden in a cyclical manner as it matures. This evolution may prompt regulators to introduce:

• Targets for EDI representation: This could be a contentious point, but it could be used to drive faster progress.
• Diversity targets: Some countries, like Norway, have implemented quotas for female representation on boards, highlighting a more interventionist approach
• Linking senior leader compensation to EDI metrics would incentivise leaders to prioritise EDI initiatives.
• Considering EDI in non-financial misconduct cases: Firms with poor EDI records could face harsher penalties.
• Mandatory EDI training for employees: This could help to create a more inclusive workplace culture.

Expanding the scope of reported data

Initially, a number of additional characteristics are deemed voluntary for the purpose of regulatory reporting. These could be strong contenders for expanding the scope of reported data in the future, amongst other things.

This could include:


Enforcement and Penalties

The exact details of enforcement and penalties are still under discussion. However, the proposed framework suggests a tiered approach:

• Initial focus on transparency and accountability: Regulators will primarily use the data to monitor progress and identify areas for improvement.
• Potential escalation for non-compliance: For repeated or egregious breaches, the regulators could:
  • Issue public statements criticising the firm’s EDI performance.
  • Increase supervisory scrutiny.
  • Implement more stringent requirements, potentially including financial penalties in severe cases.

Challenges of collating & processing meaningful personal data

Collecting EDI characteristics data can be a sensitive and delicate process that needs to be updated on an ongoing basis. This data is the bedrock of all EDI analysis and processes and needs to be as accurate and complete as possible.

Communicating data ownership and control to staff

It’s crucial to be transparent and empower staff regarding their EDI data to help achieve data completeness and accuracy:

• Clear communication: Clearly explain why the data is being collected, how it will be used, and the safeguards in place to protect privacy.
• Data ownership: Emphasise that staff own their data and have the right to access, correct, or withdraw their consent at any time, following a clear and defined procedure.
• Data usage limitations: Assure staff that their data will only be used for legitimate EDI purposes and not for any discriminatory decision-making.
• Security measures: Outline the technical and organisational measures taken to protect data confidentiality and security.

By addressing these challenges and effectively communicating data ownership and control, financial services firms can create a trusting environment where staff feel comfortable sharing their EDI information, enabling the development and implementation of successful EDI initiatives.

Go beyond basic compliance and unlock the socio-economic rewards

Going deeper: Analyse multi-layered data like demographics, performance, and remuneration to uncover hidden connections and opportunities.

• Actionable insights: Leverage data-driven intelligence to inform strategic EDI initiatives, improve employee experience, and boost performance.
  
• Ethical leadership: Demonstrate a genuine commitment to EDI by fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment for all.
  
• In-depth analysis: Explore multi-layered EDI data, including demographics, performance, and remuneration.
  
• Correlational insights: Discover hidden connections between diverse characteristics, revealing valuable patterns and opportunities.
  
• Actionable intelligence: Gain data-driven insights to inform strategic EDI initiatives, improve employee experience, and boost performance.

Stay Ahead of the Curve: Uncover Deep EDI Insights

Correlating Characteristics

While the initial focus is on individual characteristics, the regulators are likely interested in understanding the intersections between these characteristics. For example, they might be interested in:

• The gender pay gap for different ethnicities.
• The representation of disabled employees from different racial backgrounds.

This intersectional analysis can help identify areas where specific groups face multiple disadvantages and can inform targeted Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives.

Social benefits

• Financial inclusion: Reaches underserved communities and promotes equitable financial product and service access.
• Community engagement: Builds trust and strengthens relationships with diverse communities.
• Positive societal impact: Contributes to a more inclusive and equitable financial system.

Business benefits

• Enhanced Innovation and Creativity: Diverse teams bring fresh perspectives and foster creativity, leading to new ideas and solutions.
• Improved talent acquisition and retention: Attracts and retains top talent from a wider pool of qualified candidates.
• Enhanced Brand Reputation and Customer Satisfaction: This demonstrates a commitment to diversity and inclusion, building brand trust and loyalty.
• Enhanced decision-making: Diverse viewpoints lead to more comprehensive and informed decision-making.
• Increased customer base: Opens doors to new market segments with diverse needs and preferences.
• Increased profitability: Studies have shown that companies with diverse workforces outperform their less diverse counterparts financially.

The way ahead …

EDI goes beyond just meeting regulations. It’s a smart business move that strengthens your brand, unlocks opportunities, and contributes to a better society.

Don’t just comply; thrive with strategic EDI practices. 4Front can help you rapidly and effectively implement EDI reporting and analytic tools.

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Harnessing The Power Of HR Analytics

Complete Transparency. Increased Performance. Total Control.

AQUILA is a fully integrated universal toolset. It embraces change and adapts as necessary, providing assurance, transparency, and insight. These are critical traits when regulatory changes are becoming the norm. Its ease of use helps to ensure it reaches the widest possible audience, making it a strong collaborative tool and maximising the scope of your investment.

“Automation is cost cutting by tightening the corners and not cutting them.”

-HARESH SIPPY-

AQUILA ADAPTS TO YOU

AQUILA Common Functional Areas

It can interface with various elements of your business in different ways, adapting to your specific requirements. There’s a wide array of additional functionality that can be incorporated to tailor AQUILA to you, including cross business function.

‘The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency’

BILL GATES

• Its fundamental nature is flexible, so it easily adapts to everything, whether a global enterprise-wide installation or a handful of users.
• Users can create their own user experience, dashboards, reports, report packs, filters, views, alerts, and then share them with colleagues or use them to create their own standards.
• • Using common, appropriate, and accessible technologies increases functionality and cross-device access, while keeping infrastructure and running costs to a minimum.

AQUILA offers many architectural options in order to ensure you do not invest in unnecessary expensive infrastructure, licencing, and hardware. Whether you’re a smaller organisation that requires cloud hosting with a relatively modest amount of data, or a global organisation to which speed and managing vast amounts of data is your emphasis, AQUILA can deliver. AQUILA offers many architectural options in order to ensure you do not invest in unnecessary expensive infrastructure, licencing, and hardware. Whether you’re a smaller organisation that requires cloud hosting with a relatively modest amount of data, through to a global organisation to which speed and managing vast amounts of data is your emphasis, AQUILA can deliver.

A STEP-CHANGE INTO THE FUTURE

AQUILA can deliver a real step-change and take the functions to the next level, all while delivering a more cost efficient, timely, and dependable service.

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Harnessing The Power Of HR Analytics

Addressing Multidimensional Characteristics

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• Enterprise reputational risk
• False external submissions
• Failing to be compliant with regulations
• Failing in responsibility to shareholders
• Enterprise risk management failure
• Misleading data leading to bad decision-making
• Lack of evidence, or indecipherable data, for compliance & audit

The above list creates a plethora of negatives for your business, both internally and legally, but this does not have to be the case.

Part of the problem stems from the high levels of familiarity your employees have with Excel. After more than two and a half decades, it’s a staple of the office workers toolbox. In that time, there is inevitably a significant turnover in all levels of the team, rendering a lot of legacy and knowledge gaps in what is residing on the organisation’s network. Excel’s incredible functionality is both its main strength and vulnerability. Many employees create their own proprietary tools specific to their needs, which commonly lead to errors, duplication and a proliferation of redundant spreadsheets. While most organisations employ strategic systems for key processes, many are slow to evolve and react to change, making the importance of proper spreadsheet management even more critical.

As we become more reliant on data for decision-making and regulatory compliance, gaining comprehensive visibility, control, and transparency is more crucial than ever, and can be achieved more cost effectively than most organisations realise. There are numerous examples of Excel errors negatively impacting organizations and countries in the millions and some cases billions of dollars. It’s a risky strategy not to be in control of Excel assets.

Addressing the issues

When someone starts training for fitness, there is an initial up front effort, and then they need to ensure the practices are in place to maintain the standard. The same is true of gaining real management and governance of EUAs (End User Application).
The solution is to apply the tools and techniques to achieve clearly defined goals.

One size never fits all

There are several key areas where symptoms need to be addressed. First, you need a complete audit to give you an accurate insight of where you currently stand. Exposing the criticality, timeliness, and complexity of the assets, especially their dependencies on other resources, is key. Understanding all the key roles connected to any assets, such as business owners, developers and output audience is fundamental.

We can use this clear picture to start the simplification process in an appropriate way. This usually involves steps such as decoupling data, calculations, and presentation layers, while simplifying data flows by removing proprietary code and opening up nested formulas. This leads to implementing standardisation and consolidation. It’s important to maintain the same level of consistency throughout, which requires guidelines, training, and support for all relevant personnel. Many key guidelines are counterintuitive, so it’s essential to ensure everyone has a solid grasp of what they need to do moving forward.
Appropriate and tailored security and protection process to ensure the data is open to flow but the risks are managed.

Once everything is in place, utilising version management and reporting frameworks provides assurance to maintain governance going forwards. Your organization probably already owns licenses to suitable options, which can save you investing in expensive proprietary solutions.

A cost effective solution that works

EDGE is our solution. It provides cost savings, quality assurance, and effective governance.
It delivers on a number of different levels. It’s relatively inexpensive and quick to implement.
It’s not just a software solution that produces overwhelming output and doesn’t address the core underlying quality issues. It covers every aspect of your setup.

The benefits of EDGE

While the benefits of this approach vary according to organisational structure, these are some of the general benefits you can expect:

• Governance, control, and transparency
• Comprehensive
• Low TCO (total cost of ownership)
• Assists in mitigating unknown risks
• Assures quality
• Proactive not retrospective
• Simplification

The way ahead…

EDGE will provide you with genuine management and confidence over your Excel assets. It will greatly reduce the number of spreadsheets, so you’re left with only the relevant data. This is then organised into a much more manageable system, which includes processes to mitigate errors, save time, and help ensure all regulatory requirements are met.
When you operate in such a dynamic environment, it’s crucial your tools are agile and accurate. 4Front has consistently and successfully helped organisations to maximise what they have for the lowest cost.

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EDGE

Enterprise-wide Definitive Governance of Excel

 

The Risk: Increased Responsibility

With a growing number of businesses accumulating a formidable legacy of Excel assets, the potential for disaster is greater than ever. If the company fails in its responsibility to shareholders, fails to be compliant with regulations, or suffers irreparable damage to its reputation, where does the finger get pointed at your company?

Potential key risks to your organisation:

• Enterprise reputational risk
• False external submissions
• Failing to be compliant with regulations
• Failing in responsibility to shareholders
• Enterprise risk management failure
• Misleading data leading to bad decision making
• Lack of evidence, or indecipherable data, for compliance & audit

The above list creates a plethora of negatives for your business, both internally and legally.

The Answer:

The good news is you can mitigate the potential problems quickly and inexpensively. The benefits of our EDGE framework have always been clear and substantial. We’ve been diligently helping companies to regain ownership of their data assets for many years, and now have a comprehensive toolkit and framework that’s cost effective, quick, and produces superior results when compared to more expensive options.

While the benefits of this approach vary according to organisational structure, these are some of the general benefits you can expect:

• Governance, control and transparency
• Inexpensive
• Comprehensive
• Low TCO (total cost of ownership)
• Assists mitigating unknown risks
• Assures EUA quality
• Proactive not retrospective
• Simplification

We achieve this through our unique framework, using automated tools, education, processes, and procedures tailored to your company’s needs. The end result is secure and simple with a low total cost of ownership.

The post <strong>EDGE</strong> – <strong>E</strong>nterprise-wide <strong>D</strong>efinitive <strong>G</strong>overnance for <strong>E</strong>xcel appeared first on 4Front.

With the explosion of ‘big data’ in recent years companies are collecting and storing mind-boggling amounts of information. This can be used to provide invaluable insights, steer a company’s direction, and provide useful information to specific employees.

However, it’s important to remember not everyone is a data analyst. People are receptive to messages presented in different ways. A lot of people won’t find an endless stream of numbers very engaging. This is where data visualisation comes to the rescue.

With the growing swell of applications like Microsoft BI, QLik and Tableau making it easier than ever to create and share data visualisations, they are only going to become more common as the market place of tools becomes ever more crowded. Arguably visual discovery has reached a peak of digital discovery. A good understanding of the various elements, and how to use them to your advantage, is quickly becoming a necessity.

When used correctly data visualisation will not only have a greater impact, it will stick in peoples minds easier, and it will add credibility to your position. Good data visualisation doesn’t just denote numbers, they tell the story behind the numbers. Conversely, poorly represented, ambiguous or inaccurate visualisations can create more digital chaos than harmony.

Ensure The Data Is Solid

Data can be notoriously easy to misinterpret. Using your analytical tools will help you to highlight any abnormalities and get to the root cause of inconsistencies. If any problems are spotted you can then return to the source of the data and work together to refine the processes. A system that incorporates and encourages analysis will improve the quality of your data significantly.

As the quality of data improves it becomes more valuable. Are you using it to its fullest potential? Have you used the data to add extra value to your customers? Have you explored every avenue of monetisation?

Maintain Purity Of Purpose

Keep in mind what you’re trying to achieve. Data visualisation will not be much help if you simply take sheets of confusing information and turn them into sheets of equally confusing visualisations. Divide the data up into easily defined segments so as not to overload or confuse your audience. The easier the information is to digest the more memorable it will be. Don’t overload your visualisations with masses of historical data reflecting things your audience already knows. Consider the questions your audience need answered by your presentation. If the visualisation is posing the question and providing the answer, let your audience know why it’s important to ask the question in the first place.

Ensure all your visualisations are part of a bigger picture. If you create an infographic to tell a particular story, then ensure the data you use supports the same narrative. While you might have a lot of data to get across, and a lot of points to make, they should all be advancing you towards the ultimate goal.

Be Creative

While it’s good to keep your data visualisations simple and succinct, it’s also crucial they are appealing to the eye. While being secondary to the accepted best practices about constructing data visualisations, aesthetics plays an important role in how your message is perceived. Use your colour choices to grab attention and maintain a common theme throughout. Pick a font that’s easy to read. Don’t overload visualisations with text.

These design elements will all have an impact on the general feel of the visualisations. A good way to look at your visualisation, even if they are for internal purposes, is like you’re creating a brand. Maintain your brand’s image and voice throughout the visualisations.

If you’re not confident in every aspect, then a good designer can help you to get the best out of your visualisation by making it intuitive, effective and efficient.

Less Is More

Lots of clear data visualisations are the preferred option, over having less visualisations that are more cluttered and harder to read. Don’t presume everything will be viewed on a big screen. It may get e-mailed to someone else, who will view it on his or her smartphone or tablet. If you use a program like Tableau online, then everything will be stored in the cloud and could potentially be accessed by any device. There are lots of simple things you can do while creating your visualisations that will help. Edward Tufte’s 35-year-old concept of maximizing the “data-ink ratio” (ink on a page that represents data to that which is not data) is as valid today as when conceived.

Keep the titles, text, and labeling simple. Avoid using industry specific jargon and acronyms as much as possible. Highlight your key points so they stand out. Use simple but palatable graphs. Using a 3D infographic might look great on a huge screen, but can appear distorted or awkward if not viewed in the optimal way. Use form, coloring and positioning to create focus

Remember The Data Has A Supporting Role

Presenting lots of data and information in a very appealing way is not your message. It is a tool for you to use to support your message. Don’t become so focused on picking the best graphics scheme you forget about the bigger picture the data is building towards.

Spend some time discovering what will be the best fit for the type of information you want to convey. Keep it simple. Be succinct. Tell the story. Use visualisations that guide actions and encourage timely decisions. If you do all of these things then visualisations can help make your data carry a lot more weight, become more memorable, and greatly increase the chance of it having the desired impact and creating the preferred insights.

At 4Front we specialise in helping companies in the financial sector to tackle their key challenges. Contact us today to see how we can help you.

The post The Dos And Don’ts Of Data Visualisation appeared first on 4Front.

As data has become more central to business operations, it has also become more readily accessible within organisations. Whether it is customer trends or financial reports, a lot more employees now have the ability to access the data they deem relevant. Is this a good or bad thing? Should anyone other than qualified specialists have access to bespoke reports?

The Positives

There are many advantages to being better informed. It helps your employees to make better decisions based on factual data. Having direct access to the data can speed up the decision making process. They gain a better insight into the current operations of your business in a more specific and timely manner.

It increases efficiency by reducing the amount of time they need to wait for a report, and takes the pressure off the accounting department that would usually have to deal with the requests.

The benefits go on:

• Simplified reports that are customised to only contain the data required
• On the spot analysis to test assumptions and confirm theories
• A greater understanding of the businesses position amongst your workforce

These benefits combine to provide a business with a huge advantage. They become more efficient, more informed, more profitable. Although this all sounds like a great idea, are there any pitfalls or dangers businesses should be aware of?

The Negatives

Some of the positives can also be negatives if the use of the data isn’t implemented properly, and your employees aren’t sufficiently fluent to interpret the data they are handling. Others may draw incorrect assumptions from self-penned visual guides.

Having the ability to create reports that are effectively a custom snapshot of more detailed information can lead to data being unintentionally misinterpreted. While access to this data speeds up the decision making process, the decision will only be good if the interpretation of the data is good.

Manually collating and transforming data can be seen as a key risk to the reliability of results. Furthermore, individuals bespoke solutions often lack consistency, especially in a broader organisational context.

The ability to create custom reports also opens up the possibility of someone intentionally manipulating the data to fit a particular requirement, or to misrepresent a situation.

People with access to the data must also know how to choose the right time to refer to it. Constantly and needlessly referring to data can be a waste of an employee’s time.

In summary the potential negatives include:

• The potential for misinterpretation or manipulation of data
• Too many options and over reliance could lead to less efficiency
• Key-person dependency risk
• Lack of organisational standards make broader comparisons difficult
• Bad information could lead to bad decisions

While these negatives are very real, none are stand alone problems.

The Answer

The argument over whether the more traditional prescriptive analytics should replace proprietary, and often ad-hoc, analytics has been ongoing for decades. All of these potential negatives associated with self-service financial reporting are a direct consequence of bad implementation. Building a solid understanding of how different departments will use the reports will give you an insight into any potential problems they might encounter.

This allows you to build a self-service infrastructure that will reduce the likelihood of these negatives from the start. If self-service financial reporting is new to your organisation let your employees know of the potential negatives they could encounter. Encourage people to provide feedback and make suggestions in the early stages, and be flexible in your approach so you can quickly adjust your systems to compensate for other problems as they occur.

If you think your company might be susceptible to the misuse or misinterpretation of data, then why not chat to us about ways to avoid some of the pitfalls. We have many years experience in the financial sector, and we’re always happy to share our professional knowledge to save you from potentially costly mistakes. Call or e-mail us today.

The post Is Self-Service Data A Positive Or A Negative For Financial Reporting? appeared first on 4Front.

Most traditional reporting approaches generate passive output. This can add interest and context but does not adequately empower a business to reach or surpass its goals. The increasing popularity of visualisation tools has led to a surge in software, as well as consultants who are understandably eager to show off their latest shiny new toy. Building this way can shift focus to the colour and availability of the bricks rather than the overall design, purpose and applicability of the resultant building. It’s an age old IT oxymoron, reporting that embraces effective simplicity is often the most complex to both conceive and implement.

Below are ten crucial aspects that embody 4Front’s approach. Each one is vital when creating actionable reporting to genuinely accelerate profitability and growth.

Vital Areas

Align your priorities

Your priorities must align with those of the stakeholders and management. This ensures you all share the same vision moving forward, and have the resources available to facilitate strong accountable and actionable metrics. Failure to align your priorities can lead to a protracted and exasperating process with underwhelming results.

Preparation

New visualisation tools and sensationalist pre-canned demos can be very seductive and leave stakeholders hungry for results. They can also trivialise the effort required to create actionable corporate solutions. The temptation to dive straight in or simply add tools as a veneer to existing EUAs (End User Applications) can be strong. It’s important at this stage to go the extra mile. Build a solid understanding of what is needed by asking key questions. Consider feasibility and build cohesive cross-team plans. Having a collective understanding where you gather, gauge, govern and manage active metrics will drive the strong actionable results.

Be SMART

Goals and Objectives must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-related). The SMART approach ensures actionable metrics are more comprehensible and transparent. The Time-related G&Os should be divided between Short-Term and Long-Term. Steer clear of monitoring KPIs difficult to influence or regulate as they make poor candidates for actionable metrics.

Less is more

The temptation to amass as many KPIs as possible, with the view it will provide a comprehensive set of actionable measures, will distract your focus and be costly and ineffective. Less is more. A few well-defined KPIs will help keep the actionable element strong and transparent, and provide a clear understanding of the impact on what matters.

Defined hypotheses

Analysis requires a plainly defined hypothesis with believed statements of cause, effect and reasoning behind them. The resulting analysis of KPIs must be able to tie the findings to impact. Hypothesis validation helps achieve a greater understanding of the different facets of the impact behind the numbers and implement meaningful action as a result.

Relevant Segmentation

When the panel of stakeholders is represented by a number of different divisions, such as regional or product based departments, segmentation will play a key part in relevant actionable deliverables. Defining different segments that have some attributes in common is important in cases where a belief ‘one size fits all’ simply isn’t true. Various stakeholders may have different questions to address and action. Filtering, grouping and segmenting the data plays a vital role in assessing key actionable measures of relevance.

Targets

Every key metric should have a target. The KPIs with the most actionable metrics are those that have a target or forecast for comparison, providing context and meaning.

Data quality

Ensuring actionable data is dependable and validated should be a top priority. A more efficient route to action means misinformation carries higher consequences. Incorporating automated data quality processes, covering everything from enrichment, verification, and issue alerts is essential and a prerequisite to publishing any actionable measures. This doesn’t mean actionable KPIs should always wait until being confirmed as 100% correct before being distributed, the true accuracy and completeness of the data should be recognised and appreciated.

Time

Time is not only a core element in whether something is short, medium or long-term, but also in many cases it’s key for actionable data to be seen as time series. Forecasts and targets are normally pinned to periodic intervals, and as such actionable measures should at least be viewed with the same frequency. Analysing as time series is a significant factor in detecting trends and patterns that help predictive analytics, potentially allowing preemptive action to be taken.

Testing and Iteration

The best actionable pathway will be iterative. Consistent testing of hypotheses, and the effectiveness and practicality of actionable elements, requires a fluid approach. Adapting to small incremental changes to suit your key metrics can be key to optimising actionable measures that ultimately deliver your core G&Os.

Successful implementation of effective and actionable analytics reporting is dependent on all of the above factors. The degree of relevance of each factor will vary depending on each organisations own structure.

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The amount of time the average person is connected has constantly been increasing. More devices are becoming Internet-enabled every year, from TVs to alarm clocks, expanding the Internet of Things (IoT) at an ever-increasing rate. The refinement of apps, tech and improved accessibility have all contributed towards a trend of accessing services using mobile devices. There are ‘Mobile Only’ services established or popping up in many sectors, from financial services to music.

The more time we spend connected, whether through a social media resource, a game, or searching the Internet for information, the bigger the data trail left in our wake. Big companies store and try to interpret this data obsessively. Some have been more successful than others in leveraging genuine value from the data. Regardless of their level of success so far, they all face the same challenges.

Big data is not only ‘Big’ in size but also in breadth and arriving at an ever-increasing frequency. Many sources are predicting its exponential growth is set to continue and could be over 5 times the current size by 2025.

Interpreting The Data

All that data is useless unless a company can turn the information into actionable knowledge. To effectively do this they need a system that can extract just the relevant parts for any given purpose. Once extracted, it needs to be reported and analysed in a suitable way. This requires hiring talent that can accurately interpret the data in a way that’s useful to the company.

To effectively do this requires employees with a wide range of hard and soft skills. Unfortunately there aren’t enough qualified professionals to go around, making it hard for many companies to find or keep suitable personnel.

The IoT is creating new data at an alarming rate, and poses a different set of challenges for interpretation. While many acknowledge the endless opportunities it could create, the pitfalls are also numerous and not yet fully understood. This could require a completely different set of skills and open up a whole new area of recruitment.

Because this is a constant learning curve for some companies, they also need a platform that can aggregate different data sets in a meaningful way, and adapt quickly as their needs change. Connecting, harmonising and governing the new and the old accurately is no small challenge. Current estimates put the annual coats of ‘bad data’ to US businesses in the region $600 billion dollars, and growing.

Sheer Scale

The rate at which data is flowing into companies is astonishing. They are well into units of measurement the average person has never heard of. This makes storage a huge challenge. The problems are greater than simply having the digital real estate to shove it all, as this data is going to need to be retrievable for it to be useful. The data coming in is also coming from multiple sources and in a variety of formats.

Creating a storage infrastructure that caters to all the needs in a secure way, while being sufficient to handle the demands of the future is a challenge companies are constantly addressing.

Security

Naturally people can get a little annoyed if any of their personal information falls into the hands of an unknown person or entity. The risks posed by big data are much more serious, presuming whoever gets access to it is able to interpret it effectively. Security isn’t just a key issue on a corporate performance level, but also with respect to individuals. Initiatives such as GDPR (Overview of the General Data Protection Regulation) forcing compliance, however necessary, will generate complexity and increased costs.

For some companies data protection concerns prove a major obstacle in their attempts to use the data in the way they’d like. Up until now most security measures taken by companies have proven insufficient in some way. With the increasing number of connected devices their company networks are becoming exposed in ways they haven’t encountered before, and may not yet even be fully aware of.

Keeping Pace

The companies that seem to have been the most successful in making use of their data are already tech based. It’s a fast-paced environment, and companies that are naturally moving with the market will find it a lot easier than a company who is reliant on updates and new technologies from a technology provider. Big data is the fuel for areas of current focus, such as predictive and prescriptive analytics, machine learning and the focus on real-time analysis.

Generating A Return On Your Investment

So you’ve gathered all the data. You can store it securely. You adhere to regulatory restrictions of how, where and why you are holding that data. You can access it effectively and interpret it accurately. Great. Where’s the value? The truth is the value in the data is constantly evolving. The obvious example is targeted advertising. Companies can also use the data to improve their customer service, drive product development, and even change the direction the company is heading.

Many new business models have tried to leverage data in new ways, but it’s an evolving practice, and we can expect it to continue to develop for quite a while yet. Some companies have used big data extremely effectively, but even they are potentially just scratching the surface, and it will be many years before the same level of insight is available to everyone.

Why Persevere?

Big data analysed correctly can be a complete game changer. To companies, marketers and governments we go from being a vague demographic to a largely predictable individual. This sort of knowledge gives advertisers, or institutions trying to convey a message, a road map to the people they should target. This doesn’t just make a company more effective, but greatly increases their power within the marketplace.

The impact big data will have on our lives is still unknown. One thing we can say with near absolute confidence, corporations will keep tirelessly developing, innovating and experimenting with big data. If you’re worried about falling behind, or are undecided if this will even affect you, then you can e-mail, call or fill out our contact form. We’re always ready to help and would be happy to chat about your situation.

The post The Challenges Of Big Data appeared first on 4Front.

insurance & reinsurance

Agile Methodology

We implement immediate solutions to arrest imperative business issues and then work to set up a core infrastructure to address the key business focus. When necessary we put immediate fixes in then work on long term solutions. The 4FRONT focus is proven to drastically reduce risk factors, lower costs and ensure success.

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