About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Big Data Users – According to Forbes

Subscribe to our newsletter

We’re still grappling with just how to apply Big Data to the real world of financial data management. Interestingly, this article by Forbes’ contributor Adrian Bridgwater (@ABridgwater) takes the well-known book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and uses the seven-habit approach to apply to big data analytics for users, analysts, developers, managers and evangelists.

To summarise, the seven holy virtues according to Bridgwater are:

1 – Begin With No End In Mind (as you never know what analytics can be performed and what insight can be gleaned)

2 – Be Proactive, Pragmatic, Progressive & Persuasive (proactive in looking for trends in data; pragmatic about what’s of real value; progressive in unearthing insights; and persuasive in selling the value of that insight to the board or rest of the company)

3 – Be Technology Toolset Agnostic (being open to openness)

4 – Take Big Data Into The Toilet (ok, not entirely sure this one makes sense but in essence Bridgwater cites an example of an Austrian hygiene company using big data analysis to change its business model)

5 – Be Time Sensitive (he cites Tibco’s European CTO Maurizio Canton as stating not all data is created equal… some of it has a ‘use by’ date, calling for immediate action)

6 – Keep A Wide Open Path For Big Data (you need to be able to rely upon a scalable infrastructure that can keep pace with the rapid exponential growth of your data)

7 – Above All, Be Holistic (you need to still look at the big picture, not just get caught up in the ‘old shoe box (or cluttered draw) of information’)

You can read the original article on Forbes’ website here.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: Data platform modernisation: Best practice approaches for unifying data, real time data and automated processing

Date: 17 March 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Financial institutions are evolving their data platform modernisation programmes, moving beyond data-for-cloud capabilities and increasingly towards artificial intelligence-readiness. This has shifted the data management focus in the direction of data unification, real-time delivery and automated governance. The drivers of...

BLOG

Innovative Systems Wins Best Data Solution for Regulatory Compliance Award at A-Team Group’s DMI USA Awards 2025

Innovative Systems has won the award for Best Data Solution for Regulatory Compliance for its FinScan Enhance solution in the Data Management Insight USA Awards 2025. The awards recognise established providers and innovative newcomers who offer solutions that are providing leading data management solutions, services and consultancy to capital markets participants across Europe. Winners are selected...

EVENT

RegTech Summit New York

Now in its 9th year, the RegTech Summit in New York will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the North American capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

Entity Data Management Handbook – Sixth Edition

High-profile and punitive penalties handed out to large financial institutions for non-compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations have catapulted entity data management up the business agenda. So, too, have industry and government reports on the staggering sums of money laundered on a global basis. Less apparent, but equally important, are...