Skip to content

ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Big data and data analytics

Tamsin Foods plans to use customer purchase and location data to create highly personalised offers. The marketing director expects higher sales. The legal adviser warns about the basis on which data was collected. Which is the most important strategic implication for the board?

The board must balance the commercial value of personalisation against data protection, consent and reputational risk, which requires governance and clear limits on data use. Treating it as an IT matter, selling the data, or excluding unstructured data ignores the legal and ethical exposure.

  1. APersonalisation benefits outweigh any legal concern, so governance can be left to the IT department
  2. BThe data should be sold to third parties immediately to offset the analytics cost
  3. CValue from big data must be balanced against data protection, consent and reputational risk, so governance and clear purpose limits are neededCorrect
  4. DOnly structured data should be used because unstructured data has no commercial value

Explanation

Big data benefits such as targeted marketing depend on lawful, ethical use. Boards must set governance covering consent, purpose and security, since breaches harm reputation and bring penalties. Leaving it to IT or selling data ignores this, and unstructured data does have value.

Did you get it right without looking?

One question tells you little. A timed set on Big data and data analytics shows your real accuracy, how long you take and where you lose marks.

Practise Big data and data analyticsFree diagnostic mock

More Big data and data analytics questions