Big Data

The term ‘big data’ describes a massive volume of data, including both structured as well as unstructured form, which is so large and complex that traditional data processing applications become inadequate.

Big data skills, therefore, is the ability of an individual to convert all such data that inundates a business into a valuable business tool. It is the ability to align all such data with the business objectives by manipulating, storing, and carefully analyzing this large volume of data to gain useful insights for the purpose of improving business operations and enhance business growth.

Why are big data skills important

Companies from all sectors including technology, retail, financial services, media and many others benefit particularly from the consumer data collected for the purpose of assessing the trends in market. The significance of big data, however, is not all about the large volume. It revolves around what organizations are able to do with that data.

Good big data skills allow for analysis such that not only decision-making but strategic moves of the business are also improved. These skills help in unearthing valuable insights such as the causes of failures or defects, as well as identifying the risks and issues.

As a result, businesses tend to have improved operations with the help of reduced costs and time, and more optimized offerings with the development of products and services tailored precisely to the needs of the target market.

How to improve big data skills

The following tips will help you improve your big data skills:

• Begin by keeping in mind the business problem. Using the most advanced analytics tools to explore large volumes of data might be fun for you but it is useless for the organization if you are unable to translate your results into something that is capable of solving real-world problems. Therefore, you must identify the business problems or challenges which you can address with the data at hand.
• Focus on data that matters. The volume, complexity, and velocity of data inundating an organization make the analysis problematic such that it becomes difficult to find any correlation. Therefore, before beginning to analyze, it is important that you filter out the noise i.e. irrelevant data early on in the process.
• Verify the uniqueness of any trend identified. Once the irrelevant outliers and noise are filtered out, you will be able to identify significant patterns and trends within the available data. The next important step for you is to figure out whether the trend identified is just a norm or a serious problem/threat. The best way of verification is to compare with the trends exhibited everywhere else.

Job profiles that require this skill