ACCA's research project Professional accountants – the future, identified several 'quotients' that accountants need to be competent in to thrive in the ever-evolving world of accountancy - to become the accountant of the future. This week we are looking at the 'digital quotient' and focusing on big data.
In today's world, businesses are tracking and storing data about their existing and potential customers from an increasing number of sources, including information from social media, interactions with websites, customer service records, call centre logs, and even images and videos.
Given the vast amount of data available to modern businesses, today's key challenge is how to join up this data to provide meaningful insights. ACCA believe that accountants are well placed to play a key role in making sure their organisations, understand, manipulate and use data in ways that can help make good business and financial decisions. We can help identify trends, patterns and key insights from the enormous amount of data available to provide value to our businesses.
There are four characteristics of big data that describe how it can be defined and how useful it is:
Volume: How much data there is
Veracity: The quality or accuracy of the data
Variety: What the various types of data are
Velocity: How fast the data can be processed
Value: As with any analysis, we should include a fifth V that is ultimately the most important of the lot!
It is in combining these characteristics that big data gets its name – Big data doesn't just have to be a large volume of data. Big data could refer to a small volume of very complex data with numerous sources and types.
When considering and analysing big data and its various sources, the goal is always to deliver value back to the organisation. If a data set can be processed quickly, but the accuracy or quality of data is unreliable, the value that data set can provide is low. Conversely, if a large volume data set is highly accurate, the insights gained will be much more valuable.
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