Sports fans hearts got crushed while others jumped with glee this past Sunday as they rooted for their favorite football players across the nation. Those who joined fantasy football leagues prior to the season starting were no exception. Thoughts raced through everyone’s heads as the games progressed. Did they pick the right players? What happens if their quarterback was benched for an injury? Did they do enough to ensure they picked the winning team?

“Let's work together to identify the ways we'll measure the effectiveness of my work,” Julie Igorevna, founder and digital superhero of Kur8 tells her new clients. Igorevna runs a digital marketing and PR boutique agency that enables tech start-ups to get their story heard. “We strive to help our clients find their creative voice through a variety of services.” So much of today’s marketing industry is driven by statistics that it practically goes hand and hand. Upon opening her agency, Igorevna knew she wanted to incorporate data in her business model to ensure that she could contribute to her clients’ success. “Our data shows that for every $1 spent on email marketing; $44 is made in return.”

Companies are investing in data capabilities within their organization as well as employees with data skills. Whether it is the ability to code, analyze reports, or visualizing data -having data experience has never been more important in the job market.

Going by what we keep hearing about big data, professionals and evangelists of this technology make it feel simple as if businesses can just take off as soon as they implement it. However, the truth is actually the opposite. Big data may not show results as soon as you implement it. Rather, it demands patience since it may take some time and perseverance for the data to be collected and used in what the initial intention was. It takes time to separate the useful information from data, prioritize, visualize and extract insights needed to make business decisions.