There is a lot of hype surrounding data and analytics. Firms are constantly exhorted to set strategies in place to collect and analyze big data, and warned about the potential negative consequences of not doing so. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently suggested that companies sit on a treasure trove of customer data but for the most part do not know how to use it. In this article we explore why. Based on our work with companies that are trying to find concrete and usable insights from petabytes of data, we have identified four common mistakes managers make when it comes to data.