Qualitative study on barriers of adopting big data analytics for UK SMEs

Big data analytics have been widely adopted by large companies to achieve competitive advantage. However, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are underutilising this technology due to the existence of a number of barriers to adoption including financial constraints and lack of information. Previous research identified 69 barriers to SMEs adoption of big data analytics, rationalised to 21 barriers categorised into pillars based on theoretical frameworks. The barriers identified through the research were validated quantitatively, through a survey and also qualitatively, through semi-structured interviews with UK SME representatives. This paper describes the qualitative validation of the barriers to SME adoption of big data analytics and discusses how these barriers were incorporated into an SME big data adoption framework.