Schools Can Teach Businesses a Lesson in Using Big Data

In data — like many things in life — what counts is not what you have, but what you do with it.

By 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as it did in 2011. But while all this information provides huge opportunities, it is meaningless unless you can use it to make informed decisions. I caught up with James Eiloart from Tableau Software, which makes software that translates these gigantic datasets into meaningful insights for businesses.

Eiloart told me that companies in the private sector would do well to follow some of the approaches to data adopted by schools and universities.

“Several of today’s leading public institutions are implementing data strategies that can teach even the largest, most commercially-minded organisations a few lessons. For example, using visual analytics platforms to gather important insights into student attrition, growth rates and performance.

Here are three approaches to data analytics that he found are making a difference at schools and universities and could perhaps be adapted to other sectors: