The amount of data used by organizations has been exploding — 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last four years alone, and much of it is unstructured. It’s not just the amount of data that presents challenges; the types of data being collected are changing and coming from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and from cell phone GPS signals to name a few.

Analyzing large data sets — or big data — has become increasingly complex when needing to identify trends, combat crime, drive efficiency and quality, and reduce fraud and errors. Developing a Big Data plan can deliver many opportunities, but with these opportunities also come challenges, such as how to capture, store, manage, share, analyze, search and protect large amounts of data — as well as having the right employee skills who can derive actionable insight from large amounts of data through analytical techniques and statistical analysis.