IBM’s survey found that 63% of companies in the UK and Ireland said that big data provides a competitive advantage, compared to 34% in 2010.

However, only 39% of companies said that they analyse data from social media, while 39% ignored external feeds and 37% neglected geospacial data.

Nine out of ten respondents said that they collected data from business transactions, and around 60% said they collected it from emails and events.

Matin Jouzdani, strategy consultant at IBM Global Business Services, said: “One key reason for companies not collecting and analysing wider varieties of data lies in the veracity – or truthfulness – of insights generated from sources such as real-time data and social media.

“Striving for high data quality is an important big data requirement, and the survey respondents questioned the ability to trust rapidly growing forms of unstructured data, such as those generated from one-line consumer comments, reviews, tweets and other forms of freely offered opinions.”

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