Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper

Nada Elgendy and Ahmed Elragal

Department of Business Informatics & Operations,

German University in Cairo (GUC), Cairo, Egypt
{nada.el-gendy,ahmed.elragal}@guc.edu.eg

Abstract. In the information era, enormous amounts of data have become

available on hand to decision makers. Big data refers to datasets that are not
only big, but also high in variety and velocity, which makes them difficult to
handle using traditional tools and techniques. Due to the rapid growth of such
data, solutions need to be studied and provided in order to handle and extract
value and knowledge from these datasets. Furthermore, decision makers need
to be able to gain valuable insights from such varied and rapidly changing data,
ranging from daily transactions to customer interactions and social network da-
ta. Such value can be provided using big data analytics, which is the application
of advanced analytics techniques on big data. This paper aims to analyze some
of the different analytics methods and tools which can be applied to big data, as
well as the opportunities provided by the application of big data analytics in
various decision domains.

Keywords: big data, data mining, analytics, decision making.

1 Introduction
Imagine a world without data storage; a place where every detail about a person or
organization, every transaction performed, or every aspect which can be documented
is lost directly after use. Organizations would thus lose the ability to extract valuable
information and knowledge, perform detailed analyses, as well as provide new oppor-
tunities and advantages. Anything ranging from customer names and addresses, to
products available, to purchases made, to employees hired, etc. has become essential
for day-to-day continuity. Data is the building block upon which any organization
thrives.
Now think of the extent of details and the surge of data and information provided
nowadays through the advancements in technologies and the internet. With the in-
crease in storage capabilities and methods of data collection, huge amounts of data
have become easily available. Every second, more and more data is being created and
needs to be stored and analyzed in order to extract value. Furthermore, data has be-
come cheaper to store, so organizations need to get as much value as possible from
the huge amounts of stored data.
The size, variety, and rapid change of such data require a new type of big data ana-
lytics, as well as different storage and analysis methods. Such sheer amounts of big
data need to be properly analyzed, and pertaining information should be extracted.

P. Perner (Ed.): ICDM 2014, LNAI 8557, pp. 214–227, 2014.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
 Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper 215

The contribution of this paper is to provide an analysis of the available literature on

big data analytics. Accordingly, some of the various big data tools, methods, and
technologies which can be applied are discussed, and their applications and oppor-
tunities provided in several decision domains are portrayed.
The literature was selected based on its novelty and discussion of important topics
related to big data, in order to serve the purpose of our research. The publication years
range from 2008-2013, with most of the literature focusing on big data ranging from
2011-2013. This is due to big data being a recently focused upon topic. Furthermore,
our corpus mostly includes research from some of the top journals, conferences, and
white papers by leading corporations in the industry. Due to long review process of
journals, most of the papers discussing big data analytics, its tools and methods, and
its applications were found to be conference papers, and white papers. While big data
analytics is being researched in academia, several of the industrial advancements and
new technologies provided were mostly discussed in industry papers.

2 Big Data Analytics

The term “Big Data” has recently been applied to datasets that grow so large that they
become awkward to work with using traditional database management systems. They
are data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools and
storage systems to capture, store, manage, as well as process the data within a tolera-
ble elapsed time [12].
Big data sizes are constantly increasing, currently ranging from a few dozen tera-
bytes (TB) to many petabytes (PB) of data in a single data set. Consequently, some of
the difficulties related to big data include capture, storage, search, sharing, analytics,
and visualizing. Today, enterprises are exploring large volumes of highly detailed
data so as to discover facts they didn’t know before [17].
Hence, big data analytics is where advanced analytic techniques are applied on big
data sets. Analytics based on large data samples reveals and leverages business change.
However, the larger the set of data, the more difficult it becomes to manage [17].
In this section, we will start by discussing the characteristics of big data, as well as
its importance. Naturally, business benefit can commonly be derived from analyzing
larger and more complex data sets that require real time or near-real time capabilities;
however, this leads to a need for new data architectures, analytical methods, and tools.
Therefore the successive section will elaborate the big data analytics tools and me-
thods, in particular, starting with the big data storage and management, then moving
on to the big data analytic processing. It then concludes with some of the various big
data analyses which have grown in usage with big data.

2.1 Characteristics of Big Data

Big data is data whose scale, distribution, diversity, and/or timeliness require the use
of new technical architectures, analytics, and tools in order to enable insights that
unlock new sources of business value. Three main features characterize big data: vo-
lume, variety, and velocity, or the three V’s. The volume of the data is its size, and
216 N. Elgendy and A. Elragal

how enormous it is. Velocity refers to the rate with which data is changing, or how
often it is created. Finally, variety includes the different formats and types of data, as
well as the different kinds of uses and ways of analyzing the data [9].
Data volume is the primary attribute of big data. Big data can be quantified by size
in TBs or PBs, as well as even the number of records, transactions, tables, or files.
Additionally, one of the things that make big data really big is that it’s coming from a
greater variety of sources than ever before, including logs, clickstreams, and social
media. Using these sources for analytics means that common structured data is now
joined by unstructured data, such as text and human language, and semi-structured
data, such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML) or Rich Site Summary (RSS)
feeds. There’s also data, which is hard to categorize since it comes from audio, video,
and other devices. Furthermore, multi-dimensional data can be drawn from a data
warehouse to add historic context to big data. Thus, with big data, variety is just as
big as volume.
Moreover, big data can be described by its velocity or speed. This is basically the
frequency of data generation or the frequency of data delivery. The leading edge of
big data is streaming data, which is collected in real-time from the websites [17].
Some researchers and organizations have discussed the addition of a fourth V, or
veracity. Veracity focuses on the quality of the data. This characterizes big data quali-
ty as good, bad, or undefined due to data inconsistency, incompleteness, ambiguity,
latency, deception, and approximations [22].

2.2 Big Data Analytics Tools and Methods

With the evolution of technology and the increased multitudes of data flowing in and
out of organizations daily, there has become a need for faster and more efficient ways
of analyzing such data. Having piles of data on hand is no longer enough to make
efficient decisions at the right time.
Such data sets can no longer be easily analyzed with traditional data management
and analysis techniques and infrastructures. Therefore, there arises a need for new
tools and methods specialized for big data analytics, as well as the required architec-
tures for storing and managing such data. Accordingly, the emergence of big data has
an effect on everything from the data itself and its collection, to the processing, to the
final extracted decisions.
Consequently, [8] proposed the Big – Data, Analytics, and Decisions (B-DAD)
framework which incorporates the big data analytics tools and methods into the deci-
sion making process [8]. The framework maps the different big data storage, man-
agement, and processing tools, analytics tools and methods, and visualization and
evaluation tools to the different phases of the decision making process. Hence, the
changes associated with big data analytics are reflected in three main areas: big data
storage and architecture, data and analytics processing, and, finally, the big data ana-
lyses which can be applied for knowledge discovery and informed decision making.
Each area will be further discussed in this section. However, since big data is still
evolving as an important field of research, and new findings and tools are constantly
developing, this section is not exhaustive of all the possibilities, and focuses on pro-
viding a general idea, rather than a list of all potential opportunities and technologies.
 Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper 217

Big Data Storage and Management

One of the first things organizations have to manage when dealing with big data, is
where and how this data will be stored once it is acquired. The traditional methods of
structured data storage and retrieval include relational databases, data marts, and data
warehouses. The data is uploaded to the storage from operational data stores using
Extract, Transform, Load (ETL), or Extract, Load, Transform (ELT), tools which
extract the data from outside sources, transform the data to fit operational needs, and
finally load the data into the database or data warehouse. Thus, the data is cleaned,
transformed, and catalogued before being made available for data mining and online
analytical functions [3].
However, the big data environment calls for Magnetic, Agile, Deep (MAD) analysis
skills, which differ from the aspects of a traditional Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW)
environment. First of all, traditional EDW approaches discourage the incorporation of
new data sources until they are cleansed and integrated. Due to the ubiquity of data no-
wadays, big data environments need to be magnetic, thus attracting all the data sources,
regardless of the data quality [5]. Furthermore, given the growing numbers of data
sources, as well as the sophistication of the data analyses, big data storage should allow
analysts to easily produce and adapt data rapidly. This requires an agile database, whose
logical and physical contents can adapt in sync with rapid data evolution [11]. Finally,
since current data analyses use complex statistical methods, and analysts need to be able
to study enormous datasets by drilling up and down, a big data repository also needs to
be deep, and serve as a sophisticated algorithmic runtime engine [5].
Accordingly, several solutions, ranging from distributed systems and Massive Pa-
rallel Processing (MPP) databases for providing high query performance and platform
scalability, to non-relational or in-memory databases, have been used for big data.
Non-relational databases, such as Not Only SQL (NoSQL), were developed for
storing and managing unstructured, or non-relational, data. NoSQL databases aim for
massive scaling, data model flexibility, and simplified application development and
deployment. Contrary to relational databases, NoSQL databases separate data man-
agement and data storage. Such databases rather focus on the high-performance scal-
able data storage, and allow data management tasks to be written in the application
layer instead of having it written in databases specific languages [3].
On the other hand, in-memory databases manage the data in server memory, thus
eliminating disk input/output (I/O) and enabling real-time responses from the data-
base. Instead of using mechanical disk drives, it is possible to store the primary data-
base in silicon-based main memory. This results in orders of magnitude of improve-
ment in the performance, and allows entirely new applications to be developed [16].
Furthermore, in-memory databases are now being used for advanced analytics on big
data, especially to speed the access to and scoring of analytic models for analysis.
This provides scalability for big data, and speed for discovery analytics [17].
Alternatively, Hadoop is a framework for performing big data analytics which pro-
vides reliability, scalability, and manageability by providing an implementation for the
MapReduce paradigm, which is discussed in the following section, as well as gluing
the storage and analytics together. Hadoop consists of two main components: the
HDFS for the big data storage, and MapReduce for big data analytics [9]. The HDFS
storage function provides a redundant and reliable distributed file system, which is
optimized for large files, where a single file is split into blocks and distributed across
218 N. Elgendy and A. Elragal

cluster nodes. Additionally, the data is protected among the nodes by a replication
mechanism, which ensures availability and reliability despite any node failures [3].
There are two types of HDFS nodes: the Data Nodes and the Name Nodes. Data is
stored in replicated file blocks across the multiple Data Nodes, and the Name Node
acts as a regulator between the client and the Data Node, directing the client to the
particular Data Node which contains the requested data [3].

Big Data Analytic Processing

After the big data storage, comes the analytic processing. According to [10], there are
four critical requirements for big data processing. The first requirement is fast data
loading. Since the disk and network traffic interferes with the query executions during
data loading, it is necessary to reduce the data loading time. The second requirement
is fast query processing. In order to satisfy the requirements of heavy workloads and
real-time requests, many queries are response-time critical. Thus, the data placement
structure must be capable of retaining high query processing speeds as the amounts of
queries rapidly increase. Additionally, the third requirement for big data processing is
the highly efficient utilization of storage space. Since the rapid growth in user activi-
ties can demand scalable storage capacity and computing power, limited disk space
necessitates that data storage be well managed during processing, and issues on how
to store the data so that space utilization is maximized be addressed. Finally, the
fourth requirement is the strong adaptivity to highly dynamic workload patterns. As
big data sets are analyzed by different applications and users, for different purposes,
and in various ways, the underlying system should be highly adaptive to unexpected
dynamics in data processing, and not specific to certain workload patterns [10].
Map Reduce is a parallel programming model, inspired by the “Map” and “Re-
duce” of functional languages, which is suitable for big data processing. It is the core
of Hadoop, and performs the data processing and analytics functions [6]. According
to EMC, the MapReduce paradigm is based on adding more computers or resources,
rather than increasing the power or storage capacity of a single computer; in other
words, scaling out rather than scaling up [9]. The fundamental idea of MapReduce is
breaking a task down into stages and executing the stages in parallel in order to re-
duce the time needed to complete the task [6].
The first phase of the MapReduce job is to map input values to a set of key/value pairs
as output. The “Map” function accordingly partitions large computational tasks into
smaller tasks, and assigns them to the appropriate key/value pairs [6]. Thus, unstructured
data, such as text, can be mapped to a structured key/value pair, where, for example, the
key could be the word in the text and the value is the number of occurrences of the word.
This output is then the input to the “Reduce” function [9]. Reduce then performs the
collection and combination of this output, by combining all values which share the same
key value, to provide the final result of the computational task [6].
The MapReduce function within Hadoop depends on two different nodes: the Job
Tracker and the Task Tracker nodes. The Job Tracker nodes are the ones which are
responsible for distributing the mapper and reducer functions to the available Task
Trackers, as well as monitoring the results [9]. The MapReduce job starts by the Job-
Tracker assigning a portion of an input file on the HDFS to a map task, running on a
node [13]. On the other hand, the Task Tracker nodes actually run the jobs and com-
municate results back to the Job Tracker. That communication between nodes is often
through files and directories in HDFS, so inter-node communication is minimized [9].
 Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper 219

Figure 1 shows how the MapReduce nodes and the HDFS work together. At stepp 1,
there is a very large dataseet including log files, sensor data, or anything of the soorts.
The HDFS stores replicas of o the data, represented by the blue, yellow, beige, and ppink
icons, across the Data Nodees. In step 2, the client defines and executes a map job and
a reduce job on a particularr data set, and sends them both to the Job Tracker. The Job
Tracker then distributes thee jobs across the Task Trackers in step 3. The Task Traccker
runs the mapper, and the mapper
m produces output that is then stored in the HDFS file
system. Finally, in step 4, the
t reduce job runs across the mapped data in order to ppro-
duce the result.

Fig. 1. MapReduce and HDFS

Hadoop is a MAD systeem, thus making it popular for big data analytics by loadding
data as files into the distrib
buted file system, and running parallel MapReduce com mpu-
tations on the data. Hadoop p gets its magnetism and agility from the fact that datta is
loaded into Hadoop simply y by copying files into the distributed file system, and M
Ma-
pReduce interprets the dataa at processing time rather than loading time [11]. Thuss, it
is capable of attracting all data
d sources, as well as adapting its engines to any evoolu-
tions that may occur in such h big data sources [6].
After big data is stored, managed, and processed, decision makers need to extrract
useful insights by performin ng big data analyses. In the subsections below, various big
data analyses will be discu ussed, starting with selected traditional advanced data aana-
lytics methods, and follow wed by examples of some of the additional, applicable big
data analyses.

Big Data Analytics

Nowadays, people don’t ju ust want to collect data, they want to understand the meean-
ing and importance of the data,
d and use it to aid them in making decisions. Data aana-
lytics is the process of appllying algorithms in order to analyze sets of data and extrract
useful and unknown patterrns, relationships, and information [1]. Furthermore, ddata
analytics are used to extracct previously unknown, useful, valid, and hidden patteerns
and information from larg ge data sets, as well as to detect important relationshhips
among the stored variables. Therefore, analytics have had a significant impactt on
220 N. Elgendy and A. Elragal

research and technologies, since decision makers have become more and more inter-
ested in learning from previous data, thus gaining competitive advantage [21].
Along with some of the most common advanced data analytics methods, such as
association rules, clustering, classification and decision trees, and regression some
additional analyses have become common with big data.
For example, social media has recently become important for social networking
and content sharing. Yet, the content that is generated from social media websites is
enormous and remains largely unexploited. However, social media analytics can be
used to analyze such data and extract useful information and predictions [2]. Social
media analytics is based on developing and evaluating informatics frameworks and
tools in order to collect, monitor, summarize, analyze, as well as visualize social me-
dia data. Furthermore, social media analytics facilitates understanding the reactions
and conversations between people in online communities, as well as extracting useful
patterns and intelligence from their interactions, in addition to what they share on
social media websites [24].
On the other hand, Social Network Analysis (SNA) focuses on the relationships
among social entities, as well as the patterns and implications of such relationships
[23]. An SNA maps and measures both formal and informal relationships in order to
comprehend what facilitates the flow of knowledge between interacting parties, such
as who knows who, and who shares what knowledge or information with who and
using what [19].
However, SNA differs from social media analysis, in that SNA tries to capture the
social relationships and patterns between networks of people. On the other hand, so-
cial media analysis aims to analyze what social media users are saying in order to
uncover useful patterns, information about the users, and sentiments. This is tradition-
ally done using text mining or sentiment analysis, which are discussed below.
On the other hand, text mining is used to analyze a document or set of documents
in order to understand the content within and the meaning of the information
contained. Text mining has become very important nowadays since most of the in-
formation stored, not including audio, video, and images, consists of text. While data
mining deals with structured data, text presents special characteristics which basically
follow a non-relational form [18].
Moreover, sentiment analysis, or opinion mining, is becoming more and more im-
portant as online opinion data, such as blogs, product reviews, forums, and social data
from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, grow tremendously. Sentiment
analysis focuses on analyzing and understanding emotions from subjective text pat-
terns, and is enabled through text mining. It identifies opinions and attitudes of indi-
viduals towards certain topics, and is useful in classifying viewpoints as positive or
negative. Sentiment analysis uses natural language processing and text analytics in
order to identify and extract information by finding words that are indicative of a
sentiment, as well as relationships between words, so that sentiments can be accurate-
ly identified [15].
Finally, from the strongest potential growths among big data analytics options is
Advanced Data Visualization (ADV) and visual discovery [17]. Presenting informa-
tion so that people can consume it effectively is a key challenge that needs to be met,
in order for decision makers to be able to properly analyze data in a way to lead to
concrete actions [14].
 Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper 221

ADV has emerged as a powerful technique to discover knowledge from data. ADV
combines data analysis methods with interactive visualization to enable comprehen-
sive data exploration. It is a data driven exploratory approach that fits well in situa-
tions where analysts have little knowledge about the data [20]. With the generation of
more and more data of high volume and complexity, an increasing demand has arisen
for ADV solutions from many application domains [25]. Additionally, such visualiza-
tion analyses take advantage of human perceptual and reasoning abilities, which
enables them to thoroughly analyze data at both the overview and the detailed levels.
Along with the size and complexity of big data, intuitive visual representation and
interaction is needed to facilitate the analyst’s perception and reasoning [20].
ADV can enable faster analysis, better decision making, and more effective presen-
tation and comprehension of results by providing interactive statistical graphics and a
point-and-click interface [4]. Furthermore, ADV is a natural fit for big data since it
can scale its visualizations to represent thousands or millions of data points, unlike
standard pie, bar, and line charts. Moreover, it can handle diverse data types, as well
as present analytic data structures that aren’t easily flattened onto a computer screen,
such as hierarchies and neural nets. Additionally, most ADV tools and functions can
support interfaces to all the leading data sources, thus enabling business analysts to
explore data widely across a variety of sources in search of the right analytics dataset,
usually in real-time [17].

3 Big Data Analytics and Decision Making

From the decision maker’s perspective, the significance of big data lies in its ability to
provide information and knowledge of value, upon which to base decisions. The ma-
nagerial decision making process has been an important and thoroughly covered topic
in research throughout the years.
Big data is becoming an increasingly important asset for decision makers. Large
volumes of highly detailed data from various sources such as scanners, mobile
phones, loyalty cards, the web, and social media platforms provide the opportunity to
deliver significant benefits to organizations. This is possible only if the data is proper-
ly analyzed to reveal valuable insights, allowing for decision makers to capitalize
upon the resulting opportunities from the wealth of historic and real-time data gener-
ated through supply chains, production processes, customer behaviors, etc. [4].
Moreover, organizations are currently accustomed to analyzing internal data, such
as sales, shipments, and inventory. However, the need for analyzing external data,
such as customer markets and supply chains, has arisen, and the use of big data can
provide cumulative value and knowledge. With the increasing sizes and types of un-
structured data on hand, it becomes necessary to make more informed decisions based
on drawing meaningful inferences from the data [7].
Accordingly, [8] developed the B-DAD framework which maps big data tools and
techniques, into the decision making process [8]. Such a framework is intended to
enhance the quality of the decision making process in regards to dealing with big data.
The first phase of the decision making process is the intelligence phase, where data
which can be used to identify problems and opportunities is collected from internal
and external data sources. In this phase, the sources of big data need to be identified,
222 N. Elgendy and A. Elragal

and the data needs to be gathered from different sources, processed, stored, and mi-
grated to the end user. Such big data needs to be treated accordingly, so after the data
sources and types of data required for the analysis are defined, the chosen data is ac-
quired and stored in any of the big data storage and management tools previously
discussed After the big data is acquired and stored, it is then organized, prepared, and
processed, This is achieved across a high-speed network using ETL/ELT or big data
processing tools, which have been covered in the previous sections.
The next phase in the decision making process is the design phase, where possible
courses of action are developed and analyzed through a conceptualization, or a repre-
sentative model of the problem. The framework divides this phase into three steps,
model planning, data analytics, and analyzing. Here, a model for data analytics, such
as those previously discussed, is selected and planned, and then applied, and finally
analyzed.
Consequently, the following phase in the decision making process is the choice
phase, where methods are used to evaluate the impacts of the proposed solutions, or
courses of action, from the design phase. Finally, the last phase in the decision mak-
ing process is the implementation phase, where the proposed solution from the pre-
vious phase is implemented [8].
As the amount of big data continues to exponentially grow, organizations through-
out the different sectors are becoming more interested in how to manage and analyze
such data. Thus, they are rushing to seize the opportunities offered by big data, and
gain the most benefit and insight possible, consequently adopting big data analytics in
order to unlock economic value and make better and faster decisions. Therefore, or-
ganizations are turning towards big data analytics in order to analyze huge amounts of
data faster, and reveal previously unseen patterns, sentiments, and customer intelli-
gence. This section focuses on some of the different applications, both proposed and
implemented, of big data analytics, and how these applications can aid organizations
across different sectors to gain valuable insights and enhance decision making.
According to Manyika et al.’s research, big data can enable companies to create
new products and services, enhance existing ones, as well as invent entirely new busi-
ness models. Such benefits can be gained by applying big data analytics in different
areas, such as customer intelligence, supply chain intelligence, performance, quality
and risk management and fraud detection [14]. Furthermore, Cebr’s study highlighted
the main industries that can benefit from big data analytics, such as the manufactur-
ing, retail, central government, healthcare, telecom, and banking industries [4].

3.1 Customer Intelligence

Big data analytics holds much potential for customer intelligence, and can highly
benefit industries such as retail, banking, and telecommunications. Big data can create
transparency, and make relevant data more easily accessible to stakeholders in a time-
ly manner [14]. Big data analytics can provide organizations with the ability to profile
and segment customers based on different socioeconomic characteristics, as well as
increase levels of customer satisfaction and retention [4]. This can allow them to
make more informed marketing decisions, and market to different segments based on
their preferences along with the recognition of sales and marketing opportunities [17].
Moreover, social media can be used to inform companies what their customers like, as
 Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper 223

well as what they don’t like. By performing sentiment analysis on this data, firms can
be alerted beforehand when customers are turning against them or shifting to different
products, and accordingly take action [7].
Additionally, using SNAs to monitor customer sentiments towards brands, and
identify influential individuals, can help organizations react to trends and perform
direct marketing. Big data analytics can also enable the construction of predictive
models for customer behavior and purchase patterns, therefore raising overall profita-
bility [4]. Even organizations which have used segmentation for many years are
beginning to deploy more sophisticated big data techniques, such as real-time micro-
segmentation of customers, in order to target promotions and advertising [14].
Consequently, big data analytics can benefit organizations by enabling better targeted
social influencer marketing, defining and predicting trends from market sentiments, as
well as analyzing and understanding churn and other customer behaviors [17].

3.2 Supply Chain and Performance Management

As for supply chain management, big data analytics can be used to forecast demand
changes, and accordingly match their supply. This can increasingly benefit the manu-
facturing, retail, as well as transport and logistics industries. By analyzing stock utili-
zation and geospatial data on deliveries, organizations can automate replenishment
decisions, which will reduce lead times and minimize costs and delays, as well as
process interruptions. Additionally, decisions on changing suppliers, based on quality
or price competitiveness, can be taken by analyzing supplier data to monitor perfor-
mance. Furthermore, alternate pricing scenarios can be run instantly, which can ena-
ble a reduction in inventories and an increase in profit margins [4]. Accordingly, big
data can lead to the identification of the root causes of cost, and provide for better
planning and forecasting [17].
Another area where big data analytics can be of value is performance management,
where the governmental and healthcare industries can easily benefit. With the increas-
ing need to improve productivity, staff performance information can be monitored
and forecasted by using predictive analytics tools. This can allow departments to link
their strategic objectives with the service or user outcomes, thus leading to increased
efficiencies. Additionally, with the availability of big data and performance informa-
tion, as well as its accessibility to operations managers, the use of predictive KPIs,
balanced scorecards, and dashboards within the organization can introduce operation-
al benefits by enabling the monitoring of performance, as well as improving transpa-
rency, objectives setting, and planning and management functions [4].

3.3 Quality Management and Improvement

Especially for the manufacturing, energy and utilities, and telecommunications indus-
tries, big data can be used for quality management, in order to increase profitability
and reduce costs by improving the quality of goods and services provided. For exam-
ple, in the manufacturing process, predictive analytics on big data can be used to mi-
nimize the performance variability, as well as prevent quality issues by providing
early warning alerts. This can reduce scrap rates, and decrease the time to market,
since identifying any disruptions to the production process before they occur can save
224 N. Elgendy and A. Elragal

significant expenditures [4]. Additionally, big data analytics can result in manufactur-
ing lead improvements [17]. Furthermore, real-time data analyses and monitoring of
machine logs can enable managers to make swifter decisions for quality management.
Also, big data analytics can allow for the real-time monitoring of network demand, in
addition to the forecasting of bandwidth in response to customer behavior.
Moreover, healthcare IT systems can improve the efficiency and quality of care, by
communicating and integrating patient data across different departments and institu-
tions, while retaining privacy controls [4]. Analyzing electronic health records can
improve the continuity of care for individuals, as well as creating a massive dataset
through which treatments and outcomes can be predicted and compared. Therefore,
with the increasing use of electronic health records, along with the advancements in
analytics tools, there arises an opportunity to mine the available de-identified patient
information for assessing the quality of healthcare, as well as managing diseases and
health services [22].
Additionally, the quality of citizens’ lives can be improved through the utilization
of big data. For healthcare, sensors can be used in hospitals and homes to provide the
continuous monitoring of patients, and perform real-time analyses on the patient data
streaming in. This can be used to alert individuals and their health care providers if
any health anomalies are detected in the analysis, requiring the patient to seek medical
help [22]. Patients can also be monitored remotely to analyze their adherence to their
prescriptions, and improve drug and treatment options [14].
Moreover, by analyzing information from distributed sensors on handheld devices,
roads, and vehicles, which provide real-time traffic information, transportation can be
transformed and improved. Traffic jams can be predicted and prevented, and drivers
can operate more safely and with less disruption to the traffic flow. Such a new type
of traffic ecosystem, with “intelligent” connected cars, can potentially renovate trans-
portation and how roadways are used [22]. Accordingly, big data applications can
provide smart routing, according to real-time traffic information based on personal
location data. Furthermore, such applications can automatically call for help when
trouble is detected by the sensors, and inform users about accidents, scheduled road-
work, and congested areas in real-time [14].
Furthermore, big data can be used for better understanding changes in the location,
frequency, and intensity of weather and climate. This can benefit citizens and busi-
nesses that rely upon weather, such as farmers, as well as tourism and transportation
companies. Also, with new sensors and analysis techniques for developing long term
climate models and nearer weather forecasts, weather related natural disasters can be
predicted, and preventive or adaptive measures can be taken beforehand [22].

3.4 Risk Management and Fraud Detection

Industries such as investment or retail banking, as well as insurance, can benefit from
big data analytics in the area of risk management. Since the evaluation and bearing of
risk is a critical aspect for the financial services sector, big data analytics can help in
selecting investments by analyzing the likelihood of gains against the likelihood of
losses. Additionally, internal and external big data can be analyzed for the full and
dynamic appraisal of risk exposures [4]. Accordingly, big data can benefit organiza-
tions by enabling the quantification of risks [17]. High-performance analytics can also
 Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper 225

be used to integrate the risk profiles managed in isolation across separate departments,
into enterprise wide risk profiles. This can aid in risk mitigation, since a comprehen-
sive view of the different risk types and their interrelations is provided to decision
makers [4].
Furthermore, new big data tools and technologies can provide for managing the
exponential growth in network produced data, as well reduce database performance
problems by increasing the ability to scale and capture the required data. Along with
the enhancement in cyber analytics and data intensive computing solutions, organiza-
tions can incorporate multiple streams of data and automated analyses to protect
themselves against cyber and network attacks [22].
As for fraud detection, especially in the government, banking, and insurance indus-
tries, big data analytics can be used to detect and prevent fraud [17]. Analytics are
already commonly used in automated fraud detection, but organizations and sectors
are looking towards harnessing the potentials of big data in order to improve their
systems. Big data can allow them to match electronic data across several sources,
between both public and private sectors, and perform faster analytics [4].
In addition, customer intelligence can be used to model normal customer behavior,
and detect suspicious or divergent activities through the accurate flagging of outlier
occurrences. Furthermore, providing systems with big data about prevailing fraud
patterns can allow these systems to learn the new types of frauds and act accordingly,
as the fraudsters adapt to the old systems designed to detect them. Also, SNAs can be
used to identify the networks of collaborating fraudsters, as well as discover evidence
of fraudulent insurance or benefits claims, which will lead to less fraudulent activity
going undiscovered [4]. Thus, big data tools, techniques, and governance processes
can increase the prevention and recovery of fraudulent transactions by dramatically
increasing the speed of identification and detection of compliance patterns within all
available data sets [22].

4 Conclusion

In this research, we have examined the innovative topic of big data, which has recent-
ly gained lots of interest due to its perceived unprecedented opportunities and bene-
fits. In the information era we are currently living in, voluminous varieties of high
velocity data are being produced daily, and within them lay intrinsic details and pat-
terns of hidden knowledge which should be extracted and utilized. Hence, big data
analytics can be applied to leverage business change and enhance decision making, by
applying advanced analytic techniques on big data, and revealing hidden insights and
valuable knowledge.
Accordingly, the literature was reviewed in order to provide an analysis of the big
data analytics concepts which are being researched, as well as their importance to
decision making. Consequently, big data was discussed, as well as its characteristics
and importance. Moreover, some of the big data analytics tools and methods in par-
ticular were examined. Thus, big data storage and management, as well as big data
analytics processing were detailed. In addition, some of the different advanced data
analytics techniques were further discussed.
226 N. Elgendy and A. Elragal

By applying such analytics to big data, valuable information can be extracted and
exploited to enhance decision making and support informed decisions. Consequently,
some of the different areas where big data analytics can support and aid in decision
making were examined. It was found that big data analytics can provide vast horizons
of opportunities in various applications and areas, such as customer intelligence, fraud
detection, and supply chain management. Additionally, its benefits can serve different
sectors and industries, such as healthcare, retail, telecom, manufacturing, etc.
Accordingly, this research has provided the people and the organizations with ex-
amples of the various big data tools, methods, and technologies which can be applied.
This gives users an idea of the necessary technologies required, as well as developers
an idea of what they can do to provide more enhanced solutions for big data analytics
in support of decision making. Thus, the support of big data analytics to decision
making was depicted.
Finally, any new technology, if applied correctly can bring with it several potential
benefits and innovations, let alone big data, which is a remarkable field with a bright
future, if approached correctly. However, big data is very difficult to deal with. It
requires proper storage, management, integration, federation, cleansing, processing,
analyzing, etc. With all the problems faced with traditional data management, big data
exponentially increases these difficulties due to additional volumes, velocities, and
varieties of data and sources which have to be dealt with. Therefore, future research
can focus on providing a roadmap or framework for big data management which can
encompass the previously stated difficulties.
We believe that big data analytics is of great significance in this era of data over-
flow, and can provide unforeseen insights and benefits to decision makers in various
areas. If properly exploited and applied, big data analytics has the potential to provide
a basis for advancements, on the scientific, technological, and humanitarian levels.

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