Title: Big data projects and business benefits: empirical evidence from extensive data survey

Authors: Chiara Francalanci; Paolo Giacomazzi; Barbara Pernici; Lucia Polidori; Gianmarco Ruggiero; Philip Carnelley; Gabriella Cattaneo; Mike Glennon; Richard Stevens; Arne-Jørgen Berre; Todor Ivanov; Ivan Martinez Rodriguez; Tomas Pariente Lobo

Addresses: Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy ' IDC Italia SRL, Milan, Italy ' IDC Italia SRL, Milan, Italy ' IDC Italia SRL, Milan, Italy ' IDC Italia SRL, Milan, Italy ' SINTEF, P.O. Box 4760 Torgarden, No. 7465 Trondheim, Norway ' Frankfurt Big Data Lab, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany ' AI, Big Data & Robotics Unit, ATOS, C/ Albarracín, 25 – 28037, Madrid, Spain ' AI, Big Data & Robotics Unit, ATOS, C/ Albarracín, 25 – 28037, Madrid, Spain

Abstract: There is an emerging stream of literature that is aimed at the identification of general drivers of business benefits for big data and analytics. This paper is positioned in this research, towards the definition of a general, high-level model incorporating the variables that are empirically confirmed as drivers of business benefits. We adopt the taxonomy of big data usage that makes a general distinction between descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics, as the sequence of steps to be taken towards a full exploitation of big data and consequent acquisition of business benefits. We put forward a set of hypotheses framing the idea that business benefits grow as companies take these three steps and test them by surveying the opinion of managers from a cross-section of over 700 European companies. Results partly confirm our hypotheses, suggesting that the timely availability of integrated data to decision makers is perceived as the main driver of business benefits, even if it is obtained with simple descriptive analytics.

Keywords: big data; analytics; business benefits; business KPIs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2025.145553

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2025 Vol.48 No.4, pp.500 - 521

Received: 30 Apr 2020
Accepted: 31 May 2021
Published online: 04 Apr 2025 *

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