In recent years, many companies realized how much competitive advantage big data analytics can bring to their business model. This has drastically increased the demand for big data professionals. Since top talents in this field are already hard to find, companies often need to outsource big data analytics in order to bridge over labor market’s skill gap.
Many companies invested huge funds in data science in order to follow new analytic trends. Unfortunately, in some cases, these investments produced much smaller ROI than expected. This is one of the reasons why many entrepreneurs decide to completely outsource this department.
Decision-making process
Adding big data analytics department to company’s business scheme is not always the best thing to do, and this move can slow down company’s development on many different levels. If hiring top big data experts requires drastic budget cuts in other departments, you might end up with less competent production, sales or marketing teams. This will definitely have an effect on your company’s overall profitability and outsourcing big data tasks is definitely the best solution. Of course, you won’t be choosing this option if the data you want to analyze is critical for the survival of your business. In this case, you will need to conduct in-house big data analysis.
When deciding to outsource big data analytic work, entrepreneurs should have very precise goals in mind. Goals like ‘increasing sales’ or ‘cutting delivering costs’ aren’t well formulated, and may result in no meaningful analysis conclusions. Changing your company’s business process with big data requires you to give very strict and precise orders to future partners, which should include due dates, percentages etc. So, before you ask some third-party agency to do your business data analysis, analyze your needs and determine the things you expect them to do.
Choosing the right partner
The second step in outsourcing big data is choosing the right agency to conduct structuring and analysis tasks. Like with other types of outsourcing, it’s always better to choose a steady partner with whom you will build mutual trust than to always search for better offers and separate your big data assignments into small projects that you will give to the best bidder.
In Western World, most people associate outsourcing with assigning overseas agencies or individuals with business tasks, because they are able to do it for much lower price (due to cheap labor). Price should definitely be one of the top priorities when choosing the right outsourcing partner. But you should also think about your country’s laws and regulations. Many countries forbid companies in different niches to export their customer data abroad. Also, if you choose an outsourcing agency from a different side of the world, you might have various other payment and communication issues. That’s why many companies choose to outsource their big data to domestic or nearshore agencies.
Another important question to pose, when choosing an outsourcing agency that will conduct your big data analysis, is whether you should stick to agencies specialized for a particular industry or hire big consultancy firms that work with hundreds of other partners. For specialized analysis tasks, small agencies that already work in the field are much better choice.
Outsourcing big data is still big in many different niches, but there is also a completely new Big-Data-as-a-Service concept, which allows companies to conduct their own analysis by using big data software that’s being hosted in a cloud. This type of software is also much easier to understand than classic tools big data engineers use for structuring and analysis tasks. Different programs often come with dashboards or control panels, and a much better user experience. BDaaS is quickly gaining popularity, and predictions say that in 2021, it will take at least 35% of big data market share.
