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Bigger and Bigger Data

How treasury and finance can find value in their company's exponentially expanding data stores.

By Treasury & Risk Staff | Updated on January 30, 2014
slightly larger“Big data” is a hot topic right now. It’s clear that companies and government entities are collecting more and more information every year about both the external environment and their internal operations. This, in turn, is driving increased sophistication of data analytics technologies, which have the potential to turn big data into insights. But it’s not necessarily clear how specific corporate functions can utilize big data to improve their value to the organization.

Treasury & Risk sat down with Brian Loughman, Americas leader in the Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services practice at EY, LLP, and Scott Keipper, principal and reporting lead for the Americas Enterprise Intelligence practice at EY, LLP, to explore the opportunities for corporate treasury, finance, and risk management functions to put big data to work.

T&R:  First of all, what does the term ‘big data’ mean in a corporate setting?

Brian Loughman:  If you think back 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of the activities in the business were being recorded electronically, but they were often archived in separate systems. The warehouses would have an inventory log; the sales team would have a sales register and accounts receivable. A company might have had all the building blocks for financial systems, but the data stayed separate. And a lot of the incidental transactions were recorded on paper. Today, practically everything is recorded digitally, and it can often be collected easily into a single database. Then it can be analyzed to develop a perspective that is relevant to various stakeholders in the business.

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