As more and more organizations are following a data centric approach to manage their business, they are utilizing all the benefits of Big data. However, the number of companies deploying big data will double in the near future, with an intention to improve their businesses and organizational performance.

With an aim of obtaining details on how enterprises are harnessing big data, the Institute of Management Accounts (IMA) released a new report on Big data titled - “The impact of big data on finance – Now and in the Future”. This report has not just helped in inspecting how enterprises are increasingly harnessing big data but it has also helped the finance and accounting professionals to in building their expertise.

“Big data is being implemented by companies at a much higher rate than other technological initiatives, and the number of companies that use it will double in the near future,” said Raef Lawson, Ph.D, CMA, CSCA, CPA, CFA, CAE, professor in residence and vice president of research policy at IMA. “For accounting and finance professionals, this provides an opportunity to increasingly assume the role of business partner with others in their organizations, as they draw on their competencies in governing, analyzing and communicating data,” he added.

One of the major observations in this study was that most companies have acknowledged the importance of big data and have already started implementing Big data in their businesses. When compared to the other implementation of the other technologies, the implementation rate of big data has far exceeded due to mobile delivery and self-service reporting. These technologies include voice recognition, automation and predictive modelling technology implementations.

Big data acts as key in performance measurement

While big data is majorly used by businesses to derive customer insights for transparent and simpler products the key use of big data with the greatest benefit is performance measurement. Today organizations face numerous challenges in calculating the performance of employees, processes, machinery etc. Therefore they have started deploying big data capabilities in order to collect and evaluate the huge amount of data that helps in calculating these performances.  

In order to evolve into a truly data driven organization, all the strategies must be in place. The employees should be trained well on the technology and they should also know how to use it appropriately, understand and report the results based on the understanding. The reason why employees must be committed to act on insights uncovered based on the data, is because without having these strategies in place, it is a waste of money and time for organizations in purchasing the big data technologies.