As technology grows more advanced, the streams of data through which companies sift also grow. Big Data is a central issue in the industry, and getting a firm grasp on all that incoming information can be difficult. Luckily, there are companies like PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP) that have dealt with business analytics for years and can shed a light of expertise on handling Big Data.

Amaresh Tripathy, partner and analytics leader at PwC, talked with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during this week’s HPE Big Data Conference about PwC and how it plans to remain a leader in Big Data.

Experience is key

PwC has been an expert in business analytics for more 13 years and that experience aids the organization today. It has have become an “analytics hub,” said Tripathy. PwC incubates all the analytics its various services collect and finds a way to integrate them into every service line.

Handling Big Data analytics isn’t just the responsibility of a single department at PwC; it’s a part of “everything we do,” according to Tripathy.

Making it work

At PwC, it’s not just about collecting the data, but finding a way to make it useful. It can help companies build an analytics model and then work with organizations to “integrate those analytics,” said Tripathy.

However, in order to make data analytics a priority, it has to be supported from “the top down,” Tripathy explained. There has to be a tone for the organization to follow and must align with an organization’s vision. Big Data can be a big issue, and it takes the whole team to gain the best value.

Why Big Data?

Big Data in its simplest form is a large collection of data coming from a multitude of sources. It can help organizations and companies better understand patterns that may help their businesses succeed. For example, PwC is is partnering with HP to help change the healthcare industry.

A hospital that sees thousands of patients a year collects mountains of data and may not even realize “their biggest asset is the data they gather from patients,” said Tripathy. Finding better ways to collect, store and gather insight on that data would help hospitals and patients.

Big Data can even be used to improve predictive maintenance with airplane flights, and PwC has done just that. By combining flight sensor data with captains’ flight logs, it has decreased cancellations “by 20 percent,” according to Tripathy.

As technology gets more advanced, the data we collect should be used to “make solutions simpler,” said Tripathy.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Big Data Conference.

Photo by SiliconANGLE