If you thought big data was just another one of those tech trends that cost a lot and add little value to an operation, you might want to think again.

It played a big role in the recent presidential election and the candidate who used it well won. The guy whose campaign botched a big data operation lost.

Coincidence? Not if you understand how using these analytics can be used to get out the vote.

Turns out the Obama campaign data mining operations (nicknamed Narwhal and Dreamwatcher) were super successful at getting out the Democratic voters.

On the other side of the aisle, the Romney campaign was using big data software Orca to identify likely GOP voters who hadn’t gotten to the polls yet on election day.

The Republican brain trust failed to test the software before Nov. 6, say insiders, and kept it so secret that they never even trained volunteers (who were supposed to use it to get their supporters to vote). Orca also kept crashing throughout the day, making it virtually useless to the operation

While big data may seem like a major undertaking, the outcomes of the election prove one thing: Using big data correctly is likely to give an organization a significant edge.

Tags: big data, fail, obama, projects, Romney, succeed