Running head: Big Data: The Value of Data on the Decision Making 1

Process.

Big Data: The Value of Data on the Decision Making Process.

Robert W Hetzel

University of Hawaii, West Oahu

BUSA 345-Management Information Systems

Xu, Yongwen
Big Data: The Value of Data on the Decision Making Process. 2

Abstract

The decision making process is marked by two kinds of elements (Poleto, 2015). These
elements include an organizational element and a technical element. Organizational elements
deal with daily operating tasks completed to advance the organizations mission. Technical
elements are the tool sets that enable an organization to complete its organizational tasks.
Technical elements include information systems, data repositories, formal modeling, and analysis
of decisions (Poleto, 2015). The subject of this work is a part of the data repositories element.
Specifically this work will examine the effects of Big Data on the decision making process. The
main objective of this work is to show just how important Big Data is to the decision making
process.

Big Data: The Value of Big Data on the Decision Making Process.

Big Data can be defined as extremely large and complex datasets, typically

characterized as being of high volume, variety, and velocity. (Valacich, 2016). It is one of the

five IT megatrends that contribute to changes in organizational behavior and society outlined in

the text Information Systems Today, Managing in the digital World (Valacich, 2016). The other

four include Cloud computing, Internet of Things, Social Media, and mobile. Of the four, three

additional data sources and in some ways could be considered part of Big Data. The fourth,

Mobile, is not a data source. It is, however, an increasingly popular way to access the above

listed data sources, and therefore, is a very important element in accessing Big Data.

Sorting It Out

One of the most challenging tasks when it comes to the immense volume of data that is

available to organizations today is analyzing it. According to Chris Kimble and Giannis
Big Data: The Value of Data on the Decision Making Process. 3

Milolidakis (Kimble, 2015), some of the most important challenges relating to the volumes of

Big Data are as follows:

The tremendous volume of data,

The ever-increasing speed with which data are produced,
The growing variety of formats that are used to store and transmit data,
The lack of transparency behind the methods with which data are collected,
The complexity of subsequent data processing, and
The human element, particularly when it comes to data obtained through social

media.

Combined, these challenges make it increasingly difficult to effectively analyze the

available data. This difficulty, combined with the knowledge of just how important data can be

has led organizations to devote entire departments to analyzing data. This analyzation and

conversion of data into useful information to aid in the decision-making process is called

business intelligence. Converting this raw data into useful information is the task of business

intelligence professionals.

Value of Big Data

When a customer at a small retail store purchases an item for cash there is a small amount

of information collected. What was sold, what time it was sold, and the price it was sold at are all

the information that is collected. This information may be compared to other purchases of the

same product to see if the product was purchases in conjunction with some other product, how

much on average purchasers of the of the product spent, and perhaps what time of the

day/month/year the product was most popular. All in all very little useful information was

collected. In contrast, when a product purchased online using a credit card, a wealth of

information is collected. Not only does the company who sold the product know the information

relating to the product itself, it knows the information relating to the purchaser. Generally a
Big Data: The Value of Data on the Decision Making Process. 4

retailer online will collect information most customers do not even know is being collected. A

large retailer like Amazon.com will collect data about not only about what a customer has just

purchased, they will collect information about how long that customer spent on the website

before the purchase, what other products that customer looked at, and even the correlation

between the product purchased and any promotional advertisements that were seen by the

customer and its effect on the purchasing process of the customer. These companies store this

information for use in determining what types of ads appear to the customer in following visits to

the site.

The Effect

The effects of the data gathering are that, in the case of the big retailer, any following

visits to the site will be met with a customized shopping experience designed to entice the

shopper with products that they previously spent time looking at but did not purchase, and also

similar products that the customer might find appealing. All of this data collection and

customization of the shopping experience has been shown to greatly increase the likelihood of a

purchase by the customer (Poleto, 2015)

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References

Kimble, C., & Milolidakis, G. (2015). Big Data and Business Intelligence: Debunking the Myths.

Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 35(1), 23-34. doi:10.1002/joe.21642

Poleto, T., Carvalho, V. D., & Costa, A. P. (2015). The Roles of Big Data in the Decision-Support

Process: An Empirical Investigation. Decision Support Systems V Big Data Analytics

for Decision Making Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 10-21.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-18533-0_2

Valacich, J. S., & Schneider, C. (2016). Information systems today: managing in the digital

world. Boston: Pearson.

Pages: 12, 95, 110, 211, 358.