The impact of big data analytics on firms’ high value business performance

Abstract

Big Data Analytics (BDA) is an emerging phenomenon with the reported potential to transform how firms manage and enhance high value businesses performance. The purpose of our study is to investigate the impact of BDA on operations management in the manufacturing sector, which is an acknowledged infrequently researched context. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, this empirical study leverages a comparative case study of three manufacturing companies with varying levels of BDA usage (experimental, moderate and heavy). The information technology (IT) business value literature and a resource based view informed the development of our research propositions and the conceptual framework that illuminated the relationships between BDA capability and organizational readiness and design. Our findings indicate that BDA capability (in terms of data sourcing, access, integration, and delivery, analytical capabilities, and people's expertise) along with organizational readiness and design factors (such as BDA strategy, top management support, financial resources, and employee engagement) facilitated better utilization of BDA in manufacturing decision making, and thus enhanced high value business performance. Our results also highlight important managerial implications related to the impact of BDA on empowerment of employees, and how BDA can be integrated into organizations to augment rather than replace management capabilities. Our research will be of benefit to academics and practitioners in further aiding our understanding of BDA utilization in transforming operations and production management. It adds to the body of limited empirically based knowledge by highlighting the real business value resulting from applying BDA in manufacturing firms and thus encouraging beneficial economic societal changes.

Conceptual Model Development of Big Data Analytics Implementation Assessment Effect on Decision-Making

“…Several studies have adopted RBV theory to deepen their understanding of BDA capabilities in achieving organizational performance such as, in manufacturing [4] [18], health care [17] [19], retail [15], and non-specific domains [7] [16] [20] [21]. On the other hand, the adoption of ISSM theory focuses only on data, information and system quality factors towards organizational impact and benefits.…”

“…Likewise, the analytics results used by business leaders have improved decision-making and facilitate better planning in business management activities. BDA implementation will also benefit in strategic long-term planning to support business growth and business value creation that leads to organizational performance enhancement [3] [4].…”

The Importance of Big Data Analytics in Business: A Case Study

“…Organizations focus on recognizing trends to gain competitive advantage and get the opportunities related to data analytics. However, researchers argued the leveraging technology benefits and the ability to make the best use of new agility trends, Insights from big data analytics have the possibility to enable business process oversight and measurement, reinforce quality management and the relationship with customers [18].…”

Deliberate storytelling in big data analytics adoption

“…The use of big data analytics (BDA) (Bose, ; Côrte‐Real, Oliveira, & Ruivo, ; Wamba, Akter, Edwards, Chopin, & Gnanzou, ) has become a trending practice for organizations that supports their decision‐making by deriving valuable insights from big data. BDA constitutes a new generation of disruptive technologies that use big data to analyse business operations (Davenport, Barth, & Bean, ), improve business performance (Popovič, Hackney, Tassabehji, & Castelli, ; Wamba et al, ), and gain competitiveness (Côrte‐Real et al, ). Research on BDA has therefore become increasingly important to scholars and practitioners over the past decade.…”