A STRATEGIC BIG DATA ANALYTICS FRAMEWORK TO PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SMES

Abstract

The paper outlines a holistic strategic framework to overcome the barriers of adoption to Big Data Analytics to support SMEs. Big Data adoption has continued to rapidly increase over the last five years, allowing firms that have successfully adopted the technology to analyse large volumes of complicated, unstructured data in a variety of formats, which has only recently been achievable because of advances in technology. Traditionally, Big Data is associated with large enterprises because of the perceived high entry costs of investing in the required infrastructure, software and data scientists to analyse the data. Due to their smaller size and limited resources, it is a common belief that Big Data is too large for SMEs to adopt and they do not have the volumes of data required to justify the investment. However, this paper demonstrates that there are cost-effective options available for SMEs to adopt including Google Analytics, social media and other Big Data as a Service solutions. This paper identifies the barriers encountered by SMEs in adopting Big Data Analytics and proposes a holistic strategic framework which will allow them to achieve a competitive advantage.