OREANDA-NEWS. August 17, 2015. “Today, data is widely recognized as a strategic asset by most companies,” says Karthik Krishnamurthy. “As a result, businesses are looking to generate new revenue streams and business value by increasingly utilizing this data.” Excerpts:

“As companies seek to make the best use of data, we are seeing an explosion in the use of what we at Cognizant call Code Halos, the digital information that surrounds each customer, organization and device. Every online click, comment, search or social media update provides greater insight into their needs, preferences and behavior. By analyzing this data, companies can better understand their customers, encourage loyalty through customized offers and proactively address client needs, in addition to preventing fraud and anticipating future requirements that should drive growth strategies.

Digital disruption and the increasing use of data to improve and grow the business are becoming more widespread. In automotive insurance, for example, digital disruption linked to clever use of data has already picked up pace. Insurers across the globe are offering drivers a tracking device (the Blackbox) to install in the vehicle in order to gain insights into the driver’s driving patterns. The premiums are then based on how safe and conscientious a driver is instead of paying for insurance based on the average person’s driving behavior.

Increasingly, organizations are using “data lakes”, which disrupt the traditional way data is stored in data warehouses: instead of taking the time to structure data for data warehousing, a data lake hosts all the data in an unstructured form, expediting this whole process in various ways. Data lakes allow companies to take maximum advantage of the data, but enterprises will need to re-think their IT architecture for collecting and analyzing data as a result.

Companies of all sizes are realizing the benefits of analyzing and using data surrounding the organization and its customers to make value chains more effective and to develop new business models. Although this development has already come a long way, it looks set to take giant strides in the near future.”