According to a survey by Avanade, a business intelligence company, 95 percent of executives say that data management has extended beyond the realm of IT. Companies are now using big data as a way to make even the smallest decisions across all departments.

In addition, the survey found that 75 percent of the respondents also said they plan on making additional investments in their ability to aggregate and analyze data within the next 12 months. This marks a surge in the importance of custom database software to help managers effectively interpret large amounts of data.

Corroborating that, a recent Harvard Business Review article states that many managers may not be "data-minded" enough to handle the rise in big data. This problem can be solved with the supplementary use of custom software.

"Managers and business analysts must be able to apply the principles of scientific experimentation to their business," writes HBR contributor Jeanne Harris, a senior executive research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance. "They must know how to construct intelligent hypotheses. They also need to understand the principles of experimental testing and design, including population selection and sampling, in order to evaluate the validity of data analyses."

One of the key components to the scientific method is the recording of data and, when using such large amounts of information with big data programs, its essential for managers to be able to store it all in custom database software.

By consulting FileMaker developers, companies can create the software they need to effectively manage the information they will use to based their decisions off of. These decisions will form the grounding for the experiments and changes they may make to improve business operations and employee productivity.