How Big Data Helps CEOs in China

Many use it to find new customers, as well as to better understand existing ones

CEOs in China, like those elsewhere, use data and analytics in many different ways, whether to better understand their existing customers or to monitor the market.

Some 57% of respondents surveyed by KPMG said they use data and analytics to drive process and cost efficiency. And almost as many do so to develop new products and services.

And the list goes on. Roughly half of respondents said they use data and analytics to predict or manage skills shortages and four in 10 respondents said they use it to improve financial reporting.

Application of big data will be an important cornerstone to China’s “Internet Plus” economic development strategy.

Indeed, buoyed by the country’s “Internet Plus” development strategy announced in 2014 and incorporated into the government’s most recent five-year plan—which guides China’s social and economic development between 2016 and 2021, big data will play a key role in modernizing and improving the country’s economic growth, particularly in traditional sectors such as agriculture, banking, construction and transportation.

Growth in big data is already occurring. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) reported that big data spending in China, including related hardware, software and services, totaled RMB 11.59 billion ($1.89 billion) in 2015, from just RMB 8.4 billion ($1.37 billion) a year earlier.

—Man-Chung Cheung