Big Data experts discussed some of their concerns at the 5th Mobile Contactless Payments Innovations Conference in Chicago on Wednesday.
Panelists agreed that most companies are still trying to get their arms around the collection, analysis of and liability issues surrounding Big Data. Just the sheer amount of data is daunting. According to one report, Wal-Mart collects 4.5 petabytes of transaction data alone in a single hour.
But simply capturing the data, even the volume of data of a company like Wal-Mart is not enough, said Rajeeve Kaul, senior vice president for OfficeMax, cautioning that some companies fall into the trap of collecting too much information rather than focusing on actionable information. “Your next challenge is to see what you can evolve that data into.”
“Once you have the data, you need to put structure around it and it needs to be searched for relevant information,” agreed Usher Lieberman, director of corporate communications for TheFind Inc.
To be useful, the data must be timely and easily acceptable, enabling a user to provide the customer with a compelling offer, added Tom A. Pawelkiewicz, Royal Bank of Canada director of payments strategy and business development.
Lieberman added that companies should use the analysis of Big Data to help improve the customer experience. Only about one quarter of companies do that today.
David Almedia, partner with Chicago-based law firm Sedgwick LLC, cautioned that there are several liability issues that gatherers and users of Big Data must concern themselves with:
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Proper vetting of security procedures of third-party providers: This is already the modus operandi in financial services and in health care. Even if the company collecting the data maintains the security of the information, there are several cases of a third-party suffering a breach or a potential breach (e.g., a lost laptop containing the information), so business of all type have to thoroughly vet their partners to try to protect themselves from liability
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Length of retention of information: Some consumers are contending that if a customer provides his personal information to a company for a warranty, product return or similar purpose, the company no longer has the right to that information after the warranty or return period expires. There hasn’t been a definitive court decision, but even winning such a case can be costly.
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Some cases regarding the frequency of communications with opt-in customers are starting to emerge.