Organizations have made big advances in Big Data analytics, but there’s still a long way to go even though many are already starting to see a significant impact on their bottom line.

That’s the biggest takeaway from a new survey conducted by Forbes Insights, sponsored by Teradata Corp., in partnership with McKinsey & Company. Teradata quizzed 316 senior data and IT executives in its report with the goal of better understanding the current Big Data landscape, the level of investment and the level of return on that investment, and the results were highly encouraging.

The survey reveals that most organizations are putting a very high priority on Big Data and analytics, with 59 percent of respondents saying it was either the single-most important way to achieve a competitive advantage, or a top-five issue for their companies. This stance is reflected in the level of investment companies are making in Big Data, with 90 percent reporting “medium to high” levels of investment, while one third said their investments were “very significant”. Even more encouraging, is that two-thirds of the executives quizzed reported their investments were paying off, and had “a significant, measurable impact on revenues”.

All of this progress comes despite the fact that over half of Teradata’s respondents said a “data-driven” culture was not universally recognized within their organization. Teradata said the study shows there are three key challenges to becoming a “data-driven organization”, which it breaks down as cultural, operational and strategic.

The challenge of building a data-driven culture

One of the biggest barriers for many organizations is knowing how to best experiment with their data to achieve the desired business outcomes. But experimenting is only possible if a company has a solid strategy in place to know where to begin. Sadly, the survey showed that 43 percent of companies cited developing a corporate strategy as a big challenge.

Of course, any Big Data strategy needs to be supported by a corporate culture that rewards the use of Big Data. But 43 percent of executives said that fostering such a culture remains difficult. In order to do so, decision-makers need to learn to trust data and use it to guide their decisions, but the survey shows not everyone is doing so – some 48 percent of respondents cited “making fact-based business decisions based on data” as a significant challenge.

As for the operational challenges, these cover a wide range of issues, including building organizational models to take advantage of data, putting Big Data learning into action, providing access to data, and keeping track of data to govern the business. But this is where the challenges intersect, because any organization that begins tracking something new is likely to make mistakes before getting it to work. Therefore, organizations need the right strategy in place to understand how to experiment and lessen these mistakes, and also a data-driven culture that understands failure is a necessary part of putting Big Data into action.

“Despite the progress we see reported, as companies make the most of big data resources, there remains plenty of room for improvement. The cultural challenges can handicap every facet of a big data initiative,” said Matt Ariker, Chief Operating Officer of Consumer Marketing at McKinsey. “But the good news is that the reverse is true as well: improving how a company fosters a culture and mindset that rewards the use of data experimentation can help a data and analytics initiative gain momentum and impact.”

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