Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the, until now somewhat unutilized, potential given by ‘Big data’. We argue that tools well-known to quality practioners and researchers, i.e. QM/QC tools, can be used to explore the full potential of Big Data and hence giver better decisions in operative and strategic processes. With this conceptual paper we aim at starting up a new field of development, combining the two fields of Analytics and Quality Management.Methodology/Approach: The paper is a conceptual paper setting the scene for a new research stream. It is based on experiences and research within the fields to be combined. We use examples from our own research at companies and partners, combined with a literature review of the field.Findings: The TQM principle of Fact-Based Decision Making has often been ignored with the excuse of no or too few data. We argue that this principle can be combined with the research stream of Analytics/Big Data. During a few years Analytics has emerged as a new trend within Business and Operations Management. The purpose of Analytics is to explore and utilize the huge amounts of data produced in today’s management processes and systems. IT and visualization tools developed for this purpose are often labelled Business Intelligence or Analytics solutions. The outcomes of these tools are often summaries and visualizations of many data, which is ‘new’ in the sense that you now have many data where you used to have few or none.However, there still is a tendency to view data in a rather traditional, i.e. deterministic, way. We see the potential of analyzing these data in a more probabilistic way, showing and analyzing variation in data and its root causes; what we normally call QC tools. We also see a big potential in using the well-known QM tools for data-mining and data-cleansing turning unstructured data, e.g. large amount of e-mails, into structured data that can be analyzed.Research limitations/implications: Analytics/Big Data on the one hand and Quality Management on the other hand have until now been two separate research streams. We aim at combining these into a new cross-fertilized research area investigating and developing new tools, procedures and practices to utilize the full potential hidden in data. We aim at developing new on-line tools for better decisions in operative processes, as well as off-line tools for strategic and development processes.Originality/Value of paper: This conceptual paper starts a new research stream. Based on previous research and on following projects in the field we aim at utilizing Big Data, giving better decisions, and in the long run, more agile and profitable companies delivering increased customer satisfaction.