Mining data, whether it is structured or unstructured, creates new business roles and fundamentally disrupts existing business models. Big Data is big business. However, some consultants say tread lightly and beware of the boom. Either way, Big Data is consulting's golden opportunity, especially for firms set up to take full advantage if it.
BIG DATA is generating massive consulting opportunities, which concerns some highly analytical consulting veterans. "We need to be careful to distinguish between hype and reality," says Tamim Saleh, a Partner and Managing Director with The Boston Consulting Group.
Saleh sounds like a bit of a buzz-kill at a time when consultants, in all industries and service lines, are madly integrating deeper data analytics into their offerings. These Big Data believers sound like old-school oil speculators when they feverishly describe data as a "radical resource," a conjurer of "fundamentally new business models," and as a "new natural resource." Yet some consultants sound a cautionary note, even though they're just as swayed by the transformative, revenue-generation powers of Big Data.
