What Are the Top Challenges of Big Data and How To Resolve Them?

Apoorv Gehlot
14 min readMay 17, 2023

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Nowadays, businesses are quickly embracing big data solutions. For organizations to remain competitive in their various industries, analyzing and extracting insights from this massive volume of data.

Big data can completely change how you run your business by empowering you to make better decisions, increase customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive advantage.

But managing and utilizing this vast amount of information effectively can be difficult for you due to the unique challenges that come with big data.

In this blog, we’ll give an overview of big data, explore its advantages to your business, and look at the primary challenges of big data analysis poses for businesses across various industries.

So, let’s get started!

  • Big data is generated and updated at an incredibly fast pace, making it challenging to analyze in real-time.
  • Companies can use data integration tools to combine data from different sources and formats into a single format.
  • Organizations can implement data quality management processes to ensure data accuracy, completeness, and consistency.
  • Big data contains sensitive and valuable information, and implementing robust security measures like encryption, access control, and data masking can help mitigate the risks associated with handling big data.

Big Data: Quick Overview!

Large complex data volumes that are difficult to handle and analyze using standard data processing techniques are called “big data.” Big data usually stands out by its quantity, speed, and variety. It refers to a vast amount of information produced quickly from numerous sources and in various formats.

The ability of big data to use cutting-edge technologies to handle and analyze these huge data sets is important to understand to know how it functions. Big data automate the process of data analysis and unearth valuable insights by using advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques, as opposed to depending on manual processing and analysis.

In a retail business, you can examine this data to acquire insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends using big data analytics technologies. You can use this information to determine which products are most popular with your customer, which aren’t, and which are frequently bought together. You can also use these smart insights to optimize your inventory, change pricing plans, and strengthen marketing efforts to boost sales and improve customer happiness.

Generally speaking, big data is a vital technology for businesses in all sectors. Big data analytics can help you discover insightful information that will enable you to make wiser choices, enhance your processes, and beat out the competition.

Big data: Key Market Stats!

  • In 2021, the worldwide big data market was valued at USD 163.5 billion. By 2030, it is anticipated to reach USD 473.6 billion, with a 12.7% CAGR from 2022 to 2030.
  • In 2021, North America’s big data market share was approximately 35%.

Moving forward, let’s discuss this,

Top Benefits of Big Data for Businesses & Industries!

To help you understand how digital transformation services and technologies like big data will help your business, let’s go through some of its main advantages.

Superior Decision-Making

One of the big data’s main benefits is its ability for better decision-making. You can identify trends and patterns by looking at data from many sources, such as social media, sales, and customer interactions. You can predict consumer behavior, enhance their workflow, and outperform the competition.

By researching data, you can also discover new opportunities and potential threats. As an outcome, you make wiser decisions and save costly errors. Furthermore, you possess the data to identify potential fraud or other threats so that you can reduce the risks by taking appropriate actions.

Enhanced Operational Effectiveness

Big data-based enterprise solutions can help you improve your company’s operational efficiency by identifying where processes might be automated or simplified.

Analyzing data can help you identify areas where you can reduce costs and boost productivity. You can optimize your production processes with sensor data to cut waste and increase output.

You can monitor how you’re operating in real-time to identify issues early and take proper action. Big data gives you the ability to utilize data to track shipments, identify any delays, and then take the necessary steps to ensure quick delivery if you operate a logistics business.

Improved Customer Experience

Using big data to gain a deeper understanding of your customer base can be advantageous for you. By examining information from social media, sales, and customer contacts, you can identify trends and client preferences that can direct your marketing and product development. Therefore, creating products that more successfully meet market demands will be possible.

By providing insights into comments, complaints, and inquiries, big data can help you improve your customer service. By analyzing this data, you have the ability to identify the areas of your customer service that need improvement and put a fix in place.

More Efficient Product Development

By providing information on consumer trends and preferences, big data will be incredibly beneficial for product innovation. By evaluating data on client behavior, you can identify opportunities for innovative products or services that meet your customers’ needs.

Competitive Benefit

Big data offer your company a competitive edge by enabling you to make better decisions, manage your operations, and enhance the customer experience. By implementing big data analytics and using the data, you can acquire insights into market trends, consumer behavior, and competitor activity.

Enhanced Risk Management

Big data-based enterprise solutions will be an effective tool for risk management since it allows you to recognize potential risks and provide insightful information on how to reduce them. You can identify and manage risks more successfully by looking at customer behavior, market trends, and other aspects.

Businesses, especially insurance companies, can also use big data to analyze claims data and spot fraud tendencies, lowering their risk exposure. Big data can help insurance companies improve their risk management plans and shield their clients from potential losses.

Also Read: Navigating Risk Management Software Development: A Step-by-Step Guide

Cost Cutting

Big data-based enterprise solutions can assist you in cutting expenses. They help you identify and eliminate wastages and optimize your resource planning activities, thereby reducing extra spending and saving costs.

Big Data can be used by a transportation business to optimize delivery routes and save fuel usage. This can save costs significantly while also speeding up deliveries and raising customer satisfaction.

New Streams of Income

Big data can assist you in finding new revenue sources by revealing untapped potential. Businesses will find opportunities to develop new products or services that cater to customer wants by analyzing data. If you’re in financial services, you can use information from customer transactions to find new products you will offer to satisfy their demands. You can maintain your competitiveness and create new revenue sources as a result.

Businesses and industries in 2023 stand to gain a lot from the use of big data. Big data help firms make better decisions, work more efficiently, understand their customers better, and find new revenue sources. Big data can be complex and require specialized knowledge, so it’s crucial to have the right people and tools to use it efficiently.

Connect with us today, as we are recognized as a top custom enterprise software development company. We’ll help your business with big data analytics. Our data experts will assist you in creating a unique data strategy that fits your specific business requirements.

Top Challenges of Big Data Analysis!

Let’s first discuss some of the big data challenges; then, we’ll discuss the impact of the challenges on businesses & industries and their solutions.

Data Quality

Poor data quality is one of the biggest problems with extensive data. It is crucial to ensure the data is correct, full, and consistent when working with enormous amounts of data. Inaccurate insights from low-quality data can affect company decisions. Several things, including human error, incorrect data entry, and outdated data, can cause data quality problems.

Data Security

Big data faces additional serious challenges, like data security. Companies must safeguard their data against cyber dangers like hacking, data breaches, and ransomware attacks as the amount of data generated and stored rises. Companies/businesses need to have strong security measures in place to protect their data and stop illegal access.

Data Privacy

Data Security and Data Privacy are closely related concepts. Companies must ensure they comply with laws and safeguard their consumer’s personal information in light of new data privacy rules like the GDPR and CCPA. Before collecting and processing personal data, businesses must notify individuals of how it will be used and obtain their consent.

Data Integration

Data integration can be very difficult when dealing with big data because it frequently originates from several sources and is in different formats. A solid data integration plan and a clear understanding of the data are necessary for data integration.

Data Storage

A lot of storage space is needed for big data. You need to ensure that your storage solution is scalable and that they have enough storage space to store your data. You must also consider the storage cost and how it will affect their budget.

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Data Processing

Data processing can be time-consuming and resource-intensive when dealing with massive data. You must invest in reliable data processing tools and methods to efficiently extract insights from their data.

Data Analysis

Analyzing data to find patterns, trends, and insights is the process. Data analysis with big data can be challenging and call for specialist knowledge. To provide actionable insights, you need a team of data analysts to evaluate and interpret the data efficiently.

Data Governance

The management of data policies, practices, and standards is called data governance. A strong data governance structure is crucial to ensure that large data is managed successfully and efficiently. Data governance guarantees that data is used ethically, transparently, and with accuracy, consistency, and completeness.

Data Accessibility

Having access to and being able to use data as necessary. Having a system to ensure that data is readily available to people who need it is essential when there are enormous volumes of data. To guarantee that the appropriate individuals have access to data at the proper time, you must have a solid data accessibility plan.

Data Visualization

To make big data insights understandable and actionable, data visualization is essential.

Challenges and Solutions: How Industries Can Tackle Big Data Challenges!

Big data offers capabilities for insights and innovation. But it also has several challenges. Let’s discuss some challenges and opportunities of big data to help industries tackle:

Transportation & Logistics Industry

Challenge — Data Analysis & Data Security

For the industry to improve operations, increase efficiency, and improve customer experience, a large number of data must be appropriately managed, analyzed, and interpreted.

However, the logistics and transportation industry have substantial challenges when managing big data due to the growth in data amount and complexity.

Data security is one of the major issues with big data in the transportation and logistics industry. There is a significant possibility of data breaches and cyber-attacks due to the enormous amounts of sensitive data generated, such as consumer, financial, and private business data. Reputational damage, financial losses, and legal repercussions can result from data breaches.

Data analysis is one of the big data challenges for the logistics and transportation sector. With adequate resources and expertise, analyzing massive data can be easy. Data analysis manually can be time-consuming and error-prone due to the vast amount of data generated daily.

Solution

Businesses engaged in transportation and logistics must employ suitable data security measures, such as encryption, firewalls, and access restrictions, to safeguard their data from unauthorized access.

As a result, businesses must spend money on data analytics software and employ data analysts to analyze and interpret their data properly.

Education & eLearning

Challenge — Data Integration

Every day, the education and eLearning businesses generate enormous amounts of data, including information about students, learning management systems, assessments, and other topics. The information can improve student outcomes, personalize education, and improve teaching and learning.

Data integration is a key challenge of big data analytics in the education and eLearning industry. Integrating data from numerous systems and platforms becomes challenging because of the enormous volume of data collected from various sources.

Data integration entails merging information from several sources to create a cohesive view. Companies in the education and eLearning domains run the risk of having fragmented data that is difficult to analyze and interpret, which would result in operational inefficiencies.

Solution

Educational institutions and eLearning providers must implement a robust data integration plan to integrate data from diverse sources. Institutions can locate the data’s sources, create a data map, and put data integration tools and procedures into practice. Cloud-based enterprise solutions can facilitate data integration with scalability and cost efficiently.

Manufacturing Industry

Challenge — Data Quality

Assuring data quality is one of the biggest challenges of big data analysis in the manufacturing industry. The manufacturing industry produces a significant amount of data from various sources, like sensors, equipment, and production lines. Data must be precise, trustworthy, and consistent to make wise decisions. However, a number of issues, including human mistakes, equipment failures, and data corruption, might impact the quality of the data. Accurate analysis and judgments based on good data will severely affect production.

Solution

Ensuring data quality is crucial for manufacturers who want to use their data to make wise decisions. Manufacturers should set up procedures for data cleansing, validation, and enrichment to guarantee that their data is precise and comprehensive. It will assist them in deriving valuable insights from their data and informing the decisions they base those decisions on.

Manufacturers who want to handle their data successfully must implement a data management system. Using a data management system, you can rapidly and effectively organize, store, and analyze your data. Modern manufacturing processes should be able to generate data at a volume, velocity, and variety that the system can handle.

Insurance Industry

Challenge — Storing and Managing Big Data

Insurance companies produce a staggering amount of data, which can be overwhelming. Insurance businesses must invest substantially in reliable data management systems to store and handle the data. These systems can manage vast volumes of data, store it securely, and provide staff with easy access to it when they require it.

Utilizing cloud-based storage options is one way to overcome the significant data dilemma. Compared to conventional on-premise storage options, cloud-based storage solutions have a number of benefits. As your data needs change, they are scalable, allowing them to expand or contract. They are very inexpensive as you pay for the storage you use.

Some Other Solutions

  • Invest in big data analytics tools — Data analytics solutions can assist insurance companies in more efficient data analysis. These solutions can help insurance businesses gain insights from unstructured data and make more informed business decisions.
  • Hire data scientists — Hire talented data scientists that are experts at analyzing vast volumes of data and gleaning insights.

Real Estate Industry

A vast amount of data is generated by the real estate sector. Numerous sources, such as real estate listings, public documents, and web searches, might provide information. While the data can be beneficial, it also poses several difficulties for individuals working in the field.

Challenge — Data Overload & Data Accuracy

Finding the most pertinent and useful information among all the available data might be difficult. It will be challenging to make wise choices, which result in missed chances.

Making sure the data is accurate is an issue faced by big data in the real estate sector. It can be difficult to guarantee that the data is correct and current, given how much data is produced from many sources. The following can be particularly problematic if decisions need to be made using the data.

Solution

  • Use data analysis tools — Utilize data analysis tools to assist you in going through the massive volumes of data at your disposal and finding the most pertinent, useful information. You can find fresh opportunities and make better judgments by utilizing these tools.
  • Data quality control — It’s critical to have data quality control methods to address data accuracy issues. It will entail routine data scrubbing and checking, as well as the application of tools for data validation. You will draw decisions more smartly on the data if you ensure it is correct and current.

Healthcare Industry

Challenge — Data Processing & Data Security

The quantity of data generated and gathered has increased along with technological advancement. In the healthcare sector, where amazing amounts of data are generated every day. The healthcare sector creates more data virtually than any other sector, including information from patient records, medical pictures, and clinical trial data.

While these data are important for increasing patient care and medical research, they pose substantial processing and security difficulties.

It might take a lot of work to quickly extract valuable insights from the vast amounts of data produced daily.

The conventional method of processing healthcare data is centrally storing it and analyzing it with specialized software. It can be cumbersome and ineffective, especially when working with huge data sets.

The HIPPA, which is in law in the United States, is one such regulation that places strict standards on healthcare providers with regard to data security. The provider’s reputation could suffer, and there could be severe financial repercussions for breaking these rules.

Solution

Cloud-based processing is one approach to the problem of data processing. You can access and analyze data in real-time from any place by storing it on the cloud. The lack of costly onsite gear and software makes cloud-based processing more affordable than traditional processing techniques.

Encryption and access control are two ways to deal with the problem of data security. Access control involves limiting access to data based on user roles and permissions, whereas encryption encrypts data so that it can indeed only be read by authorized users.

The safety of data against unauthorized access can be guaranteed by deploying encryption and access control. Additionally, by taking these steps, companies can abide by the legal requirements for data security.

Retail & eCommerce

Challenge — Data Accessibility & Data Governance

If you’ve ever done any online shopping, eCommerce and retail websites frequently tailor to your likes and interests. The enormous volumes of data that these businesses gather and examine. Retail and eCommerce businesses have access to a staggering amount of information about their clients, including demographic data as well as browsing and purchase histories.

However, enormous power also carries immense responsibility. The retail and eCommerce industries face a genuine problem with data accessibility and control, which calls for thorough consideration and preparation.

It may prove challenging for businesses to access and utilize the data properly because so much data is generated and kept.

Businesses can find it challenging to compete with bigger corporations that can afford to invest in data analytics if they need more access to data.

Companies must have robust data governance policies in place to ensure that data is utilized ethically and legally, given the volume of data being gathered and analyzed.

Data assets, including rules, processes, and standards for data use, storage, and analysis, are managed through data governance. Furthermore, it entails making sure that data is safe and shielded from illegal access.

Solution

  • Cloud-based analytics — By storing data on the cloud, businesses can access and analyze data from any place using a variety of analytics tools and platforms. Smaller businesses will have the same access to data as larger businesses, which will be more affordable than conventional onsite data storage and analytics.
  • Data governance framework — The framework should provide standards for data use and access and also policies and procedures for data collection, storage, and analysis. It should also have systems for monitoring and enforcing data regulations. Retail and eCommerce businesses can guarantee that data is utilized ethically and legally and that customer privacy is safeguarded by putting in place a strong data governance framework.
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Conclusion

Big data is revolutionizing the way organizations run by giving access to previously inaccessible information about consumer behavior, market trends, and operational inefficiencies. Nevertheless, with its advantages, managing and using big data can be difficult due to the particular and significant difficulties that come with processing enormous amounts of information.

Businesses require professional guidance and assistance from experienced data consultation service providers like Matellio in order to overcome these challenges and fully utilize the power of big data. The experts at Matellio can help you in extract valuable insights from your company’s data and gain a competitive edge in your sector thanks to our extensive expertise in big data and custom enterprise software development services.

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Apoorv Gehlot

Founder & Board Member at Matellio — Technology enthusiast with enterprise solution design & development expertise