Associations stand at a crossroads. We have more types and greater amounts of data readily available to us than ever before, and the cost of the tools needed to process all that data has declined dramatically. In fact, the combination of data and tools available in 2014 should allow us to move beyond the standard operational dashboards we’ve been using for years and get to the “good stuff,” where we can start asking the kinds of meaningful, mission-driven questions that allow us to use data to inform our decision-making processes. But how?
This whitepaper (published in 2014) answers that question. It begins with a working definition of Big Data for associations, then explains and illustrates the concepts that allow you to use data to make evidence-based decisions. It also discusses the challenges you will face shifting to a culture of evidence-based decision-making. And we’ll share how six associations have made that shift.