Big data is one of the most talked-about trends in business these days, but many companies don’t fully understand what it is or why it is important, or else they lack the insight to take full advantage of the information they gather. An article in CMS Wire points out a few of the factors that businesses should take into account before launching into a data analytics strategy.

Data comes in many forms and from many sources, and it’s essential that companies have the tools to read all forms and extract the parts that will be useful to their business. Millions of gigabytes of data are automatically generated by devices connected through the Internet of Things, but a smaller yet often more important amount of information comes from emails or social media interactions, or is entered manually by employees.

The degree to which each source of data is useful varies greatly from one organization to the next, and can change over time as business strategies evolve. Even though it is still the early days of analytics, companies that have managed to implement successful systems are already reaping the rewards. A recent Accenture study found that high-performing companies are five times more likely to use information analytics, and that companies with advanced analytics outperform the average S&P 500 business by 64 percent.

A data management services provider can help companies get started on the daunting task of gathering and organizing information from various sources through the extract, transform, load process. This involves culling data and uploading it to the receiving system in a unified format, making it much easier to analyze and draw conclusions from.