Benefits of Hadoop: Better data analysis, flexibility and customer understanding

The three main benefits of Hadoop

Using Hadoop has advantages almost across the board. Among the named benefits of Hadoop initiatives, comprehensive analytics and improved data integration (59 percent worldwide) ranked first followed by building a platform to better predict customer behavior and improve customer retention (53 percent). Increased analytic flexibility (47 percent) came in third.

Regional differences can be found in these responses. Aside from predicting customer behavior, the North American sample uses Hadoop more heavily for predicting the success of sales or products (42 percent), monitoring and optimizing IT systems (38 percent), and increasing the effectiveness of operational processes (35 percent).

Benefits of Hadoop initiatives (n=144)

Another interpretation is that North America uses Hadoop on a broader scale and analyzes areas beyond customers – for example, products – in order to make operational processes more efficient. This last point, in particular, is where BARC sees the greatest potential for data. In order to become a data-driven company, it is important to act on the results of data analysis in operational processes instead of just following predefined workflows and rules.

Users should be able to access additional functionality within an individual process and take actions based on insights. This closes the classic management loop from information to action.