Procurement Trends of 2014 Essay

Business forecasting is the process of studying historical performance for the purpose of using the knowledge gained to project future business conditions so that decisions can be made today that will aid in the achievement of established goals. Forecasting plays a crucial role in today's uncertain global marketplace. Forecasting is

Technology companies are using big data to analyze millions of voice samples to deliver more reliable and accurate voice interfaces. Banks are using big data techniques to im- prove fraud detection. Health care providers are leveraging more detailed data to im- prove patient treatment. Big data is being used by manufacturers to improve warranty management and equipment monitoring, as well as to optimize the logistics of getting their products to market. Retailers are harnessing a wide range of customer interactions, both online and offline, in order to provide more tailored recommendations and optimal pricing.96

The year 2014 holds signs of economic recovery and growth for small businesses. On average there has been an increase in employment per business which

Business thrive when they have the most accurate, up-to-date, and relevant information at their disposal. This information can be used for a plethora of pertinent markers in small and large businesses, relating to accounting, investments, consumer activity, and much more. Big data is a term used to describe the extremely large amounts of data that floods a business every day. For decades, big data has been a growing field, facing controversy on many levels, but as of late, it has been a major innovator in the challenge of making businesses more sustainable. Big data is often scrutinized for its over-generalization and inability to display meaningful results at times. When applied correctly, data analysis can bring earth-altering information to the table.

The amount of data in our world has been rapidly increasing and analyzing these large data sets, or big data, has become crucial for businesses in increasing their success. Many businesses use big data to model their business structures, control processes, and run the business. The availability of this data leads to a more accurate analysis of the target market. More accurate analyses lead to more confident decision making and better decisions means greater operational efficiencies, cost reductions and reduced risk. There are many ways in which big data can be successfully implemented in an organization. Big data allows businesses to segment their target market, creating more precisely tailored products and services. Big data is also used to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions. Finally, big data can unlock value by making the captured information transparent and usable at much higher frequency (Manyika, “Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity”).

A very simplified way of looking at big data refers to, “the sheer mass of data produced daily by and within global computer networks at a pace that far exceeds the capacity of current databases and software programs to organize and process” (Dewey, "Big Data"). The world of big data has evolved primarily from the business intelligence and analytics field of information technology. Big data and big data analytics involve big data sets. The information that is stored requires unique ways of holding and organizing the data in order to process it correctly. Common methods of data storage are just not possible. The internet has added to the amount of data that can be captured. With the ability of advertisers to utilize technologies to capture user information through web interfaces, the sheer magnitude of information that can be kept is staggering. All of this information can be put to use by any number of businesses and governments (Chen, Chiang, and Storey, "Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact."). The ability to direct or channel all of that information opens unbelievable doors to virtually any organization. All kinds of organizations would benefit including businesses, governments, schools and hospitals (Dewey, "Big Data"). “Big data may be as important to business –

Hence the vastness and varieties of Big Data make it clear that Big Data can be applied not only to businesses under the digital platform but also to other businesses across the industrial segment like retail, manufacturing, service, finance, health care and such (Lohr, 2012).

Big Data is all around us, from creating our anniversary videos on Facebook and giving Netflix recommendations to utilizing all cellphones as weather stations to improve predictions (source 4) and combining it with machine learning for interesting insights. (source 5) All this data needs to be processed, creating a multitude of jobs in the data science field. Companies with products relying heavily in internet are investing heavily in Big Data, companies such as Uber, Spotify, Google and IBM to name a

According to a report from The International Business Machines Corporation, known as IBM, 90% of the data in the world has been generated in the last two years. Frank J. Ohlhorst (2013) explains how the concept of collecting data for use in business is not new, but the scale of data that has been collected recently is so large that it has been termed Big Data (p. 1). Company executives who choose to ignore Big Data are denying their companies an advantage over their competitors. Big Data analysis is fundamental for all fields of work; it provides an insight to large amounts of data that will answer questions and make discoveries to improve efficiency in all areas of the world.

The world is changing with respect to the growth in big data and to the way in which it is used. Growth in big data brings with it many challenges, but it also presents new opportunities. Figure 1, helps understand some of the big data related activities that are taking place in the world with respect to volume of data that is being consumed by these activities over the next 5 years.

‘Big Data’ is a new innovation. Processing big data and converting it into useful information can result in many benefits to a company such as increase its profitability, improve their business practice. Companies do spend lots of resources to harness this new technology. “Google Spent $7.3 Billion on its Data Centers in 2013. (Miller, 2013)” Big Data is regularly being generated by our activities such as surfing internet, using social media, blogs etc. Every digital process leaves a trail of information about consumers and their behaviour. These consumer behaviour and purchasing patterns can be used to visualize information. The big companies use big data to improve their customer’s

Big Data has gained massive importance in IT and Business today. A report recently published state that use of big data by a retailer could increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent and it also states that US health care sector could make more than $300 billion profit with the use of big data. There are many other sectors that could profit largely by proper analysis and usage of big data.

Big Data embraces structured, semi-structured and unstructured information. It can be demographic or psychographic information about the customers, their opinions, product reviews etc gathered from variety of sources such as tweets, blogs, other social media content, technical devices like sensors and stream of data from mobile devices. Businesses have started using Big Data to get right information to identify right markets and right customers at the right time in order to make right strategic decisions. The Big Data market is estimated to grow to $32.1 bn by 2015 and $54.1 bn by 2017. According to the report “Be Careful or Big Data Could Bury Your Bank”, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily and last 2 years have contributed to almost 90% of the data which exists today. It empowers institutions to learn more, create more and do more using the data available with them.

This article discusses firms that are at the leading edge of developing a big data analytics capability. Business firms and other types of organizations are feverishly exploring ways of taking advantage of the big data phenomenon. Big data is increasingly the cornerstone on which policy making is based. Firms that are currently enjoying the most success in this area are able to use big data not only to improve their existing businesses but to create new businesses as well. Putting a strategic emphasis on big data requires adding an analytics capability to the existing organization. This transformation process results in power shifting to analytics experts and in decisions being made in real time.

In today’s world, the amount of unstructured data collected is humungous. This unstructured data is of no use if it is not properly processed, analyzed and evaluated. Using this data for the betterment of mankind is what most of the largest companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and much more are targeting. Big data is a term for datasets which are so large and complex that traditional database systems such as MS SQL, MySQL, etc., are incapable of handling them. It is not the amount of data that is important, but what organizations do with data that matters the most. Data can be mapped to useful information which can be further utilized for analyzing and drawing insights that lead to better management practices and strategic