Thursday 11th April, 2013

To some people the term “big data” can be about as off-putting as its stable mate “cloud technology”. Break the terminology down, explain it – and yes, of course – both make perfect sense. But the trouble with buzz words is that when they're frequently reduced to easy shorthand, they can have the effect of leaving things unexplained, complicated. Of course “cloud technology” isn’t new – but that doesn’t mean that some of the confusion – especially amongst less than techie finance professionals has gone away. Start talking about “big data” and watch eyes glaze over, or flame in a “what’s it got to do with me” way.

And that’s fine, but…it’s actually got quite a lot to do with you. Or at least, if it hasn’t at the moment – it’s coming to an organisation just like yours pretty soon. These days you can’t blink without being told how much and how rapidly the P2P world is changing – and that technology is both the driving force, and a product of those changes. Take Hubwoo for example – a company which grew up in the dot.com explosion, survived to lick its wounds, is today becoming turbo-charged with “many source” data and its possibilities.

Originally focussed on helping organisations leverage their SAP by pushing procurement spend through the network – Hubwoo is part of a growing club looking to provide end-to-end P2P processing. The company became active in the AP space about a year ago, since which time partnerships with other solution providers have enabled better capability as well as a broader customer reach - an expansion indicative of the increasingly blurred lines between AP, Finance and Procurement – with technology driving and enabling that blurred vision. With the growth in job titles such as Global Process Owner and Head of P2P, it’s a trend which is likely to continue.

And big data? Well, it's both the by-product of these changes and the focus of a revolution in data possibilities. Data in, data out from a myriad of interconnected sources, metrics measured and analysed. Every transaction has an intrinsic value and also leaves a fully mapable past and a future. Since Hubwoo, and other organisations in the sector are also in the market (or flirting with being in the market) for CRM functionality – the opportunities open up in the network for marketing, spend and fundamental business analysis. We’re probably only at the beginning of what the solution providers are able to do, or are aware of what they’re able to do – but like Amazon, Facebook or Twitter - in the B2B world it’s increasingly the network that counts (ie the data..and there’s lots of it…in fact, it’s quite big).