300 billion credit card transactions are expected to take place each year by 2018, creating 300 billion opportunities to understand customers better. Unfortunately, many banks remain ignorant of this wealth of information at their disposal, and they opt for mass marketing and costly above-the-line communications.

The key to making big data initiatives a success lies within making the produced data more digestible and usable in decision making, rather than making it just ‘more,’ resulting in the creation of an environment wherein information is used to generate real impact. Put another way, the survival of Big Data is more about making the right data(not just higher volume) available to the right people (not just higher variety) at the right time (not just higher velocity).