I've been working with big data in some form for almost 25 years, starting with building data warehouses and reports at Citicorp. The thing I've learned above all else is that you really need to understand the culture of your organization and how the information is going to be used. Sit down with the folks who will be consuming the information and ask what they need, not what they think IT could do.

When I was at Whole Foods, it took two full meetings to push that idea through. We had data on thousands of stock items, purchases and more, and everyone had ideas for how technology was supposed to get the most out of that data. But once we got the store directors to think about what they really wanted, we found they didn't want reports with numbers, they wanted to see comparisons and be able to choose what stores and products would be compared. That was a revelation.