The magazine for alumni and friends of the UB School of Management
Issue link: http://ubschoolofmanagement.uberflip.com/i/261286
B B Spring 2014 Says Debabrata Talukdar, professor of marketing, "These characteristics imply two big challenges for effective leveraging of big data: database management —how to organize, store and manage such data sets to make them amenable to analyses; and data mining and analysis tools—how to develop and apply appro- priate analytical and statistical techniques to gain strategic insights that are likely to be embedded in the raw data." On the job for business The big data revolution, these professors say, has only just begun. "Almost all sectors in the modern economy are being changed in significant ways by big data," Talukdar says. "That includes retail, health care, manufacturing and logistics. Essentially, big data helps both consumers and firms to better reduce the information uncertainty related to their decision environments and thus to make potentially better decisions. "For example, think of the tremendous surge in publicly available data on the Internet that consumers can search for information on product prices and peer feedback on product quality. For businesses, big data is helping to achieve more customized or effective targeting in ads and price promotions, and to make better market sales forecasting. While big data is not going to usher in a 'perfect information' decision environment for consumers or firms, it is increasingly helpful." Similarly, the finance sector—which is all about the exchange of information—has taken the techniques of big data to an extreme, says Cristian Tiu, associate professor of finance and managerial economics. Tiu, who studies nonstan- dard investors such as hedge funds and endow- ment managers, says stock trading has become so automated and so fast that stock exchanges are living examples of big data in action. "It's just impossible to sit in a trading pit and see what's going on," Tiu says. "The frequency of data transmission is now at the millisecond level, beyond what humans can distinguish. The exchange is in effect a machine. You basically have a chip stuck in the machine, and the exchange has an algorithm that matches buyers and sellers." "The frequency of data transmission is now at the millisecond level, beyond what humans can distinguish. The exchange is in effect a machine." Cristian Tiu Associate Professor, Finance and Managerial Economics