Big Data Projects: Who is the Organization's Big Data Leader

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.

The big question for any consulting organization trying sell Big Data projects is to find the Big Data leader in that organization. There is always one person in every organization who has spurred the company you are selling into to use the massive amounts of data that they have access to to create solid, decision driving data.

Who is that person? Is she the CIO? or is he the CMO? or could she be a Director-level person with a special charter? Tom Davenport, the Data Analytics Guru from Harvard discusses this well within his Wall Street Journal blog. You can read it here. Tom's opinion is pushing for a decision within a corporate organization for where the Big Data Leader should be. I agree with his overall complaint from the Deloitte poll shown below that the leader should be someone who works enterprise-wide, so that an overall Big Data strategy can evolve. In a perfect world that would be great.

But I think reality is different in the companies I have insight to when it comes to their Big Data adoption. In reality, a Big Data project comes out of a need to know more about your customers than your competitors know. It has to start with a dream somewhere in the organization that says, if we had this piece of information, we could sell more, grow market share or save the cost of creating products no one wants. This need could develop in an IT organization, but only if their goals are clearly aligned with the business goals, which sadly is not often the case. Most of the times, I have seen this need arise was in the business unit level, where goals are clearly tied to the success of selling products.

If 64% plan a Big Data project, why are so few IT consulting companies prepared?

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According to a Gartner survey, 64% of the companies surveyed plan to invest in some sort of Big Data project in 2013. Many of those surveyed will run some sort of pilot project, not investing in hardware as much as investing time with a singular goal: where will Big Data payoff? how much needs to be invested to get which results?

Despite this strong opportunity, few IT consulting organizations have strengthened their ranks with specialist who can guide their clients through the uncertainty of this new market. One indicator is the lack of career positions posted for Big Data sales specialists and consultants who can create a solid business assessment that is strong enough to justify further funding. There are some who are not only specialized in this area, but also host cloud environments, where their clients can start a real pilot without any data center investments. It seems that these few will do well in the upcoming boom as others scramble for Big Data market share.