Big data creating new business opportunities and jobs

With the promise that big data can help companies improve processes that are essential to their operations, it's no surprise that the analytics strategy is attracting enormous attention. By simply harnessing the vast amount of content that's being generated all the time by enterprises and consumers, decision makers can reach new levels of business intelligence that enable them to anticipate problems.

For instance, car companies can pair customer feedback from social media sites with manufacturing information to identify which parts might be causing problems, according to Entrepreneur Magazine. However, simply compiling information from Twitter, inventories and customer databases doesn't guarantee companies will make landmark discoveries. Rather, they require the expertise of highly skilled professionals to make sense of it and verify data quality.

This is why there is a growing demand for data scientists across a range of fields, according to InformationWeek. Financial institutions, marketing firms and retailers are all competing for individuals in a labor pool that's shallow because the field is still so new. To fill this deficit, some businesses are looking to recent graduates coming out of fledgling data departments, and others plan to re-train the employees they already have on staff.