The presidential election offers practical lessons to companies planning to profit from Big Data. The data-driven get-out-the-vote operations illustrate the four steps in Big Data: (i) data collection; (ii) analytics based on the data collected; (iii) business decisions based on the analytics; and (iv) converting the decisions into business outcomes. Analyzing data and making decisions without translating them into specific outcomes such as getting the right voters (customers) to vote (purchase products) short-circuits the business use of Big Data.
Recent developments give companies access to tremendous amounts of data. Data comes from customers, business partners, external public sources, private sector data suppliers, internet usage analysis, social media, and other sources. In computer terms, this means combining structured and unstructured data. The data collected from voters, or about them from external sources, illustrates this. It also demonstrates that data has a life cycle. Data from 2008 may be outdated in 2012. For businesses, the legal issues include obtaining customer permission to collect and use data. This, in turn, requires careful drafting of website Terms of Use provisions and online agreements. Potential liability can arise when regulated data is commingled with unregulated data. The legal department must supervise marketing departments when they plan to build the databases with disparate sources of data. Wrongful use of restricted data can be like a virus that infects the entire database and exposes the company to liability. Legal issues can arise when a company’s use of data from external sources exceeds the scope of the data licenses.
