Each day during FICO World, we’re surveying our attendees. The theme of our survey yesterday was “Big Data.” It’s a timely topic given this week’s media hype surrounding Google Glass, including speculation about a number of possible Big Data applications for Google’s gadget, such as real-time facial recognition and augmented reality.
Our first survey question was “What types of Big Data is your business interested in using?” Respondents were able to give multiple answers.
The top response was financial transaction data, which was selected by 91 percent of respondents, followed by unstructured data, such as call detail records (46 percent), social media data (38 percent), mobile/GPS data (28 percent), and videos and photographs (4 percent).
Our second question was “Which one of the following best describes your company’s use of Big Data?”
The top answer was “we have already implemented at least one Big Data analytic initiative” (46 percent). Meanwhile, 29 percent said they are a year or more away from deploying a Big Data analytic solution, and 25 percent said they expect to implement a Big Data analytic project this year.”
Our final question was “In what functional area do you feel Big Data analytics can be most valuable for your company?”
The top answer, cited by 43 percent of respondents, was credit/financing/lending. That was followed by marketing/sales (24 percent), account management (14 percent) and customer service (9 percent). Ten percent of respondents said “other.”
The answers to the first question was interesting. Despite the media’s infatuation with newer technologies such as social networks and mobile devices, our respondents are actually more interested in mining old-school data, like how you’re spending your money and why you’re calling into their customer contact centers.
As the era of Big Data Analytics dawns (71 percent of our respondents have either deployed a Big Data solution or plan to do so in the near future), it seems like there is great truth in the cliché what’s old is new again.
