Computerworld conducted its Quick Pulse: Business Analytics Maturity survey to gauge how far along the members of its Inner Circle Research Panel are in the effort to improve data analytics skills and turn the wealth of raw data on their servers into insightful information.

Out of those participating in the study, 50 percent reported that they found being able to reduce costs and achieve more efficient operations the most important part of business analytics. Another 57 percent classified having the ability to improve predictability and forecasting as very important.

Tracy Harris, senior manager of business analytics at IBM, noted in the report that more organizations were starting to see Big Data as a solution that could lift up their entire enterprise, not just one department or project.

She said that maturing businesses get better at collaborating across divisions and are beginning to understand how every department has valuable information to offer "that can collectively produce insight and visibility for competitive advantage."

Harris pointed to customer analytics as an example. "This isn't just one data set and department; you need to bring together data that may be captured by sales systems, marketing systems, operational systems or call centers as well as unstructured data of many types," she commented.

However, businesses will have to battle the corporate culture in order to realize the value that comes from data analytics and market research. In order to do so, those driving the change will need to focus on showing skeptics how the technology will actually make their jobs and lives easier.

"If you don't have the right executive support to champion the message and reinforce what's happening, you are less likely to achieve success," Harris warned.

Yet there is a slight cloud hanging over the idea of using Big Data for marketing. As CBS reports, recent flare-ups regarding online tracking have some consumers concerned about their privacy. But those in the marketing industry are working to establish standards, guidelines and a list of ethics for the burgeoning sector. The Mobile Market Research Association was formed in January, and aims to ease worries about the internet information-gathering industry.

According to a recent study by mobile app user acquisition platform Fiksu, the cost of mobile app marketing dropped in January to the lowest level since July 2011. At the same time, the number of downloads for Apple's mobile operating system climbed even higher. 

The company monitors the top 200 free iPhone apps in the U.S. and measures their average aggregate daily download volume. Its App Store Competitive Index reached its highest point at 6.79 million downloads per day, which represented a 12 percent increase from the previous record-breaker, 6.04 million downloads per day in December. Meanwhile, the cost per loyal user dropped, Fiksu found.

"We've observed many app brands invest heavily in the fourth quarter, seeking extreme growth during the holiday season, then reduce spending in January as they evaluate their marketing programs for the New Year and focus on version upgrades for their apps," stated Micah Adler, Fiksu CEO.

But he added that marketers and advertisers should seize the opportunity to increase their mobile market program's value and expand its reach by investing more in apps, not scaling back.

Marc Iskowitz writes for Medical Marketing & Media that with the recent economic troubles, questions such as what kind of message can convey value or how to integrate disparate channels in a a campaign are going unanswered, because there are fewer market researchers. He cited the latest State of the Industry survey, which predicted that there would be a major impact on commercial decision making as a result of the drop in market researchers.

Todd Francis, vice president and head of commercial support and enterprise marketing for Sanofi US, told Iskowitz that the situation has led to researchers waiting around for "questions to be asked."

"With reduced [research] headcount, [and] the same number of marketers asking the same amount of questions, you become less able to think about what you need to be doing next and more focused on the questions that are being asked," Francis warned.

Avinash Kaushik, Market Motive consulting firm's CEO and founder, said at the recent Strata conference that rather than focus on making decisions as soon as there is information to base them on, companies should be more focused on acting out those choices at the right time, IT World reports.

"Real-time data without the capacity to take real-time action is useless," said Kaushik, as quoted by the source. "The thing we need to seek is right-time data."

With all the hype surrounding Big Data, it is easy to get swept up in the possibilities of knowing more, faster. Yet as Joe Brockmeier, also covering the Strata conference, writes for ReadWriteWeb, companies are starting to curb their enthusiasm for the technology and ask more pointed questions, such as "What can we do with this?"

J.C. Herz, CEO of Batchtags and one of the speakers at the event, said it was important for organizations that want to invest in Big Data to also understand that patience is a key part of success, Brockmeier reports. If they plan to just flood the project with money and then immediately see results, they will be sorely disappointed, he warned.

Herz noted that businesses will need to take stock of all their data in order to know the amount, the speed at which it's coming in and where it's coming from. Then seize responsibility for the information, delegate cleaning and analysis tasks, and ensure that you are actually using that data to make decisions, rather than to create excuses for not making a decision.

Be prepared for the consequences that will come with decisions based on Big Data, he also advised. Some in the organization may not be happy with the results, but it's important to carry on with a well-informed data strategy.

Additionally, Herz outlined some of the costs associated with Big Data initiatives, pointing out that companies will need to consider three scenarios before adopting one analytics platform over another.

"The triangle is storage, cycles, and performance," Brockmeier explains. "Ask vendors to come up with three cost scenarios that minimize one corner of the triangle each. Most of the time you can make sacrifices in one area and get the results you want."

However, with great power comes great responsibility, and it seems that many organizations do not yet have the understanding or the capabilities to properly manage Big Data and seize the myriad opportunities.

A recently released study from LogLogic and Echelon One on Big Data and cloud computing investigated the current state of businesses' strategies for managing the technology and using it in their enterprises. Respondents indicated that the topic of Big Data remains worrisome, with nearly half (49 percent) saying they had concerns about the issue.

Additionally, 38 percent said they are not even entirely certain what Big Data is. In response to questions about data readiness, 59 percent said they did not have the right tools for managing data from their IT systems. Rather, they have to use spreadsheets and other separate systems in order to organize and understand the information.

"While Big Data, cloud needs and compliance requirements are clearly major concerns, the majority of companies are not prepared to deal with any of them adequately," said Bob West, founder and CEO of Echelon One. "It's fascinating to see the rift, and the overwhelming percentage of companies surveyed are not prepared to manage Big Data properly, monitor cloud environments effectively, or report network and device activities properly."

West added that companies that do not quickly address these issues could be putting themselves at risk when it comes time to make business decisions or comply with federal regulations about how they manage and store data. 

Mandeep Khera, LogLogic's chief marketing officer, said there is power in information, and that having the right processes and policies for using Big Data can provide the kind of insight necessary for addressing compliance, operational and security concerns. However, Khera acknowledged that many of those companies that are gathering data do not have the correct tools. As a result, they run the risk of falling behind and missing the chance to achieve "actionable insights."

As Thor Olavsrud writes for CIO magazine, being able to "drink from the fire hose" of customer details, transactional details and other facts can benefit a variety of fronts for a business. When it comes to security, Big Data can make the occurrences on your network more transparent, which may help wave a red flag if there are any malware of advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks, he says. The insight can also be applied to drive improvements in operational efficiency and supply chain management, Olavsrud points out.

In an article for Intelligent Utility magazine, Phil Carson notes that Big Data is actually nothing new: It's been "happening in many if not most verticles for some time." Yet a few industries have been slow to pick up on the opportunities, namely electric utilities, he says.

Having access to customer-related and operational data is highly valuable, Carson asserts, because it can facilitate a balance between supply and demand, capital planning and operational efficiencies. For utilities, the insight could also help decision makers develop new service plans, rates and strategies for increasing customer use.

Carson acknowledges that there are some concerns about tapping individual data, but he says aggregate data is the most useful – it can make system planning, maintenance and operations more insightful. It will be up to utilities to navigate the regulations and employ the tools and people who can make the data work for them.

As Julie Ginches writes for Econsultancy, there is now a flood of information streaming from emails, online shopping, text messages, social media and other digital and real-world interactions. She notes that all this data opens up chances for businesses to gather new customers and make better decisions more quickly, while also cutting down on expenses.

"If you don't service the needs of your customers, your competitors certainly will," Ginches writes. "They may already be using a digital marketing management platform to deliver a more relevant brand promise to better satisfy your customers – and might not even sense that it's happening."

While online surveys can be useful for getting a sense of what consumers say they want, she points out that this and similar tactics cannot show what people actually want. The internet allows businesses to tweak offerings and product features and measure the actual response rate.

With 75 percent of the digital data in the world coming from individuals, there is ample opportunity for marketers to turn the "asset" into action. However, because of the sheer size of the data sets, technology and automated processes will be needed to sort through it all and make sense of it.

Accepting that advertising has changed from being strictly creative to a "data and analytics game" may be a difficult revelation for some in the industry to accept, Ginches says. Yet marketing budgets are forecasted to drop, which means advertisers will need to find new ways to do more with less, quickly and efficiently.

"The challenge is to make these reduced budgets work harder for you by understanding and profitably fulfilling dynamic demand," she adds. There will also be an increased need for the marketing and IT departments to collaborate. CIOs can help CMOs as they work to derive meaning from the data, and may be able to develop automated marketing platforms that reduce expenses while bring in greater results.

The topic of Big Data has been all the rage in many corporate boardrooms. Sectors ranging from financial services to advertising have been hoping that the information hidden among the millions of lines of data could hold the secret to the next revolutionary product or strategy.

Orlaith Finnegan writes for SmartData Collective that the integration of technology is a vital component in being able to analyze digital content and keep an eye on thousands, if not millions, of online sources.

"As the amount of sources on the web continues to spiral, the reliance on automated solutions to collect, manage and filter huge swathes of information has propelled the market research industry forward in its ability to provide ever faster and more accurate research findings," Finnegan writes.

She says that market researchers were able to benefit from the investments of other companies that wanted to gain access to the customer psyche, and now they have delved even further into automation and other tools that would enable them to do so.

Additionally, the growing ubiquity of social media has created a new window into how consumers think and act. But that access comes with a price, Finnegan notes, explaining that researchers now have to come up with new methods for converting the data into insight, and turning that knowledge into action even while juggling increased workloads and reduced staff.

"The market research industry has found the only viable solution lies in greater automation and integration of technology to harness information effectively," she says.

As Forbes blog contributor "bitsybot" writes, market research helps "businesses lower the risk involved in difficult decisions by providing context through custom and syndicated research." She notes that data visualization – translating lines of raw information on consumer behavior and other factors – will also grow to be a key part of devising business strategies. However, it will be important for companies to ask "the right questions."

In a post for O'Reilly Radar, Julie Steele writes that not every visualization of data will be useful for the business, and some can be misleading or confusing. So how do you find the graphs, charts and other visualizations that actually lead to "an absolute revelation"?

Steele says to look for those that reveal a previously unknown fact about patterns and relationships that are resting beneath the surface.

"Understanding those relationships – and being able to observe them – is key to good decision making," she says, pointing to the periodic table as a perfect example of visualization done right. "If visualization done right can reveal so much in even a small dataset like this, imagine what it can reveal within terabytes or petabytes of information."

In addition to having different ways to present data, there are also various ways to interpret it, Steele notes. Think of it like a new set of languages, enabling the coding, transmission and decoding of information so that everyone gains an understanding of what the data actually means for their business, marketing or operational purposes.

When using the tactic to "explore" data and find something when you're not sure what you're looking for, Steele recommends taking some time to consider the best methods for approaching, cleaning and analyzing the data. She suggests using software and automation in order to experiment on the data and "find the signal within the noise."

Another kind of visualization, that used for explaining, is most helpful when it is "clean," she says. It's necessary to clear away all the unnecessary information and look at the structure of the data in order to understand it and share that insight with others in the organization. Typically, this category takes the form of sales reports, presentations, infographics and custom-made images, she adds.

While data visualization of marketing research, online surveys and other information is in its nascent stages in terms of industry use, Steele warns that customers and collaborators will soon come to expect that businesses have the capability to put data into an easier-to-digest format.

"As Big Data becomes bigger, and more companies deal with complex datasets with dozens of variables, data visualization will become even more important," she predicts. "So far, the tide of popularity has risen more quickly than the tide of visual literacy, and mediocre efforts abound, in presentations and on the web."

Having the ability to conduct the research and gather the data in the first place will also become a bigger priority for many industries, particularly the technology, healthcare and automotive sectors in emerging economies, Business Standard reports. India-based Azure Knowledge Corporation has seen a growing demand for market research, the company's CEO, Jay Ruparel, told the source. He also noted that customer interaction and financial services were growing markets.

"Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a 'predictive analytics' department devoted to understanding not just consumers' shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them," the news outlet explains.

However, targeted advertising informed by online surveys or other forms of market research can cut too close to the bone, making some consumers uncomfortable with how much companies know. As the source points out, Target's research and buying models enabled it to profile a pregnant teenager through her purchases and send coupons to her house, even before her father knew she was expecting.

This presents an extreme case of targeted marketing, but many other businesses have also found success with the advertising and sales tactic. The key is to offer consumers a choice, to make them know they have control over their personal data, as Kashmir Hills writes for Forbes. She notes that Target presents customers with the option to opt-out of its marketing programs.

"While you can't opt out of having your information tracked, you can opt out of having Target act on it with advertising," Hill says.

Although the tools used to study consumer habits and conduct research on shoppers have changed dramatically in recent years, the results essentially remain the same, as Business 2 Community acknowledges.

"Marketing is about communication," the source says. "Businesses forever strive to reach their audience and tell their story in a compelling manner."

Technology and Big Data help marketers achieve efficiency. The tools allow them to more quickly analyze the information they have on customers and act upon it, designing more relevant ad campaigns. That capability could not have come at a better time – people are generating vast amounts of data just through their daily internet browsing habits and social media activity. Businesses that are able to process this and use it to create sale offers or educational online content may see increased sales and more engaged customers, the source suggests.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology research affiliate, Grant McCracken, writes for the Harvard Business Review that Pinterest is a rapidly growing newcomer on the social scene, but admits he struggled to understand what it has to offer researchers.

"This is a critical moment," he says, pointing to Pinterest's different format – images gathered in boxes on the screen – as something to be deciphered. "Do we stay and dig in? Or cut and run? The temptation is to cut and run because, well, what if we waste 20 minutes figuring out that this is nothing? What if we unwrap this package and there's nothing inside?"

He says it will be necessary to invest some time in the website to get an understanding of how it works and what, if any, insight and value can be derived from it. McCracken acknowledges that like any new technology, there are some inherent risks. If a company stubbornly refuses to try something unfamiliar, it may fall behind competitors, while using it comes with the threat of embarrassment or lost time.

Additionally, Pinterest and the other digital platforms that change the way we communicate with each other could be ushering in a new social order and more categories by which to sort the culture, McCracken says, citing extensive research by Clay Shirky.

Sites such as Pinterest enable consumers to express the nuances of these various categories in a clearer, more visual way. That capability, he argues, makes the website into "an observation platform from which to study a culture that becomes ever more liquid, responsive, crowd-sourced and generally speaking dynamic." Because of that, Pinterest could offer cultural observers a new means of listening for shifts and catching them early on in the cultural transformation.

The website also offers valuable marketing opportunities for retailers, as The Wall Street Journal reports. For example, Lands' End Canvas now includes a widget on its product pages that allows visitors to its website to share items they like on Pinterest. Crafts marketplace Etsy.com has taken it a step further by including product names and prices in the pictures that fans repost on the social media site, the newspaper notes.

However, the news outlet also reports that some of Pinterest's marketing deals with retailers have drawn criticism. The company engages in affiliate marketing – the same strategy that Amazon.com uses – by drawing a portion of the sales that result from links that retailers have posted on the site.

As WebProNews explains, Pinterest offers more value to some kinds of businesses than it does to others. Unlike other social networks, it does not create the same opportunity for brands to spread their message or verbally interact with consumers. Graphic-heavy companies, such as designers, architects or merchants that have already built up online catalogs, are better suited to use the site.

"No one comes here to shop," the source adds. "They come here to find things they like. Respectfully converting that sale is key."

While the brand-consumer connection may take a different form, it is still possible. By regularly pinning new items, building new categories and following other users' interests, companies will be able to build up traffic on their home websites.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology research affiliate, Grant McCracken, writes for the Harvard Business Review that Pinterest is a rapidly growing newcomer on the social scene, but admits he struggled to understand what it has to offer researchers.

"This is a critical moment," he says, pointing to Pinterest's different format – images gathered in boxes on the screen – as something to be deciphered. "Do we stay and dig in? Or cut and run? The temptation is to cut and run because, well, what if we waste 20 minutes figuring out that this is nothing? What if we unwrap this package and there's nothing inside?"

He says it will be necessary to invest some time in the website to get an understanding of how it works and what, if any, insight and value can be derived from it. McCracken acknowledges that like any new technology, there are some inherent risks. If a company stubbornly refuses to try something unfamiliar, it may fall behind competitors, while using it comes with the threat of embarrassment or lost time.

Additionally, Pinterest and the other digital platforms that change the way we communicate with each other could be ushering in a new social order and more categories by which to sort the culture, McCracken says, citing extensive research by Clay Shirky.

Sites such as Pinterest enable consumers to express the nuances of these various categories in a clearer, more visual way. That capability, he argues, makes the website into "an observation platform from which to study a culture that becomes ever more liquid, responsive, crowd-sourced and generally speaking dynamic." Because of that, Pinterest could offer cultural observers a new means of listening for shifts and catching them early on in the cultural transformation.

The website also offers valuable marketing opportunities for retailers, as The Wall Street Journal reports. For example, Lands' End Canvas now includes a widget on its product pages that allows visitors to its website to share items they like on Pinterest. Crafts marketplace Etsy.com has taken it a step further by including product names and prices in the pictures that fans repost on the social media site, the newspaper notes.

However, the news outlet also reports that some of Pinterest's marketing deals with retailers have drawn criticism. The company engages in affiliate marketing – the same strategy that Amazon.com uses – by drawing a portion of the sales that result from links that retailers have posted on the site.

As WebProNews explains, Pinterest offers more value to some kinds of businesses than it does to others. Unlike other social networks, it does not create the same opportunity for brands to spread their message or verbally interact with consumers. Graphic-heavy companies, such as designers, architects or merchants that have already built up online catalogs, are better suited to use the site.

"No one comes here to shop," the source adds. "They come here to find things they like. Respectfully converting that sale is key."

While the brand-consumer connection may take a different form, it is still possible. By regularly pinning new items, building new categories and following other users' interests, companies will be able to build up traffic on their home websites.