Exploiting the potential of data science: the case of Scottish SMEs

Since the term Big Data was first coined in the late 1990's Data Science has become an integral part of modern business. Technological advances in data storage and processing have enabled the collection and manipulation of data for scientific and commercial purposes while expending only minimal resources. Indeed, open source software applications and ubiquitous processing power and networking (Provost and Fawcett 2013) has empowered the home programmer to perform complicated data analysis - once the domain only of large tech organisations.
Commercial applications of big data analytics are realising benefits across industries in terms of increased revenue (Xu et al. 2016) process efficiencies and cost savings (Wang et al. 2018), and gaining a sustainable competitive advantage (Erevelles et al. 2016).
However, it appears that this benefit is being realised mainly by larger organisations with 75% currently utilising data analytics, against 34% of all Scottish companies (Scottish Government 2017b). SMEs contribute significantly to Scottish private sector enterprises (99.3%), employment (54.9%) and turnover (41.5%) (Scottish Government 2018a), suggesting that significant economic benefit could be realised if this segment of the Scottish economy could exploit data analytics.
For the Scottish economy to fully realise its potential, factors which influence a company's engagement with data science and what action is needed to increase the uptake among smaller Scottish companies must be identified.
This research compliments work undertaken with a Scottish technology company which highlighted the negative perception among its clients of 'big data' and a reluctance to engage with data analytics. Building on literature by Coleman et al (2016), amongst others, highlighting the barriers facing European SMEs in realising the benefits of data analytics - barriers recognised by the Scottish Government (Scottish Government 2018b) - this study will contribute to the current knowledge of SMEs in Scotland, their characteristics and the barriers to data science engagement.
This research will hold significance for Scottish SMEs seeking to increase profitability through data science, the Scottish Government in their efforts to increase engagement, and for the Scottish economy as the benefits of data science are realised and global demand for data-driven companies increases.