Financial analysts find new ways to utilize analytics

For business leaders in every sector, the ultimate goal when working with big data is to find innovative ways to save money using analytical strategies. This is an especially salient point for those in the financial industry, where making money is the name of the game.

For bankers, the objective is to take people's wealth and turn it into more wealth. Portfolio managers who control large financial accounts often have impressive academic credentials and dazzling professional backgrounds, but that still doesn't mean they should be too reliant on intuitive thinking to determine how to manage people's money. To truly determine the best strategies in finance, executives should use analytical approaches to find innovative new strategies.

According to Information Week, this ideal is becoming a reality. The big data movement has already established a foothold in the healthcare, retail and industrial sectors, and now it appears that finance is next. Rod Bodkin is founder and CEO of Think Big Analytics, a relatively new consulting firm that helps manage finances for large corporations, and he told the news source that big data is rapidly improving the way his industry manages money.

"We think it's already having a big impact," Bodkin said of big data. "When you look at capital markets, you see that there's a lot of opportunity to apply new data sets and new algorithms. Fundamentally, we see big data coming in and letting people solve problems that were never before solvable."

Financiers are finding new, innovative ways of developing strategies. For example, they can gather information from Twitter about the latest buzz regarding a given stock or bond. Using analytical tools to break down this information, they can access real-time data that helps them make decisions not only faster, but more accurately as well.

Widespread adoption
According to Forbes, finance has been one of the most eager recent adopters of big data platforms. The news source recently cited a survey by the University of Oxford and IBM's Institute of Business Value, which found that 71 percent of business leaders in the finance industry are already using analytics, which is nearly doubled from 36 percent two years ago.

The next step for the industry will be a renewed focus on data quality. Financial officials have large volumes of money on their hands, and a single flaw in a data cluster could cost millions. Never has accurate information been more important than in the high-stakes banking world.