Trends and Outliers
TIBCO Spotfire's Business Intelligence Blog
Category Archives: Business Analytics
2013
The Big Data Business Potential for M2M Communications
Forward-thinking companies in a variety of industries are beginning to see tremendous business potential from using machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technologies through the proliferation of Internet-connected devices.
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In fact, IT and business leaders are planning M2M implementations in areas ranging from smart grid energy networks to manufacturing and industrial plant monitoring to patient monitoring in healthcare, according to a recent study by TechRepublic and ZDNet.
2013
Making Better Decisions with Big Data
Big data may be all the rage. But if the quality and integrity of the data that’s collected and used from structured and unstructured data sources is suspect, then business leaders won’t be properly armed with the insights they need to make well-informed decisions.
When business leaders can access company performance data faster, react more nimbly to business events, and be more accurate in their decision making than their competitors, “then your company can begin to distinguish itself in the marketplace,” notes Aberdeen Group researcher Nathaniel Rowe in a recent report about gaining accurate information from big data.
According to Aberdeen’s survey of 125 organizations, 56% of best-in-class organizations, or the top 20% of aggregate performance scorers, report they’re using faster, more complex analytics to gain a competitive advantage over their peers.
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2013
7 Ways Marketers Can Exploit Data Analysis in 2013
To succeed in 2013 and beyond, marketers must become data Jedi.
This is because they have to deal with the deluge of data generated inside company confines about customer purchases not to mention the revealing aspects about product and service preferences consumers are divulging on social networks and across the entire online landscape.
Research firm IDC predicts that the company C-suite will require that the chief marketing officer produce strategies and tactics for how “market-driven data will significantly contribute to corporate objectives.”
In addition, to exploit the opportunities data analysis offers, the CMO and CIO must work together across multiple other operating units including sales, finance and service.
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Filed under: Business Analytics, Data Analytics
2012
Data Analysis: Lessons Learned from the Feds
NASA’s Johnson Space Center manages one of the largest imagery archives in the world with more than four million still images, over nine million feet of 16mm motion picture film, and more than 85,000 video tapes and files representing 81,616 hours of video in analog and digital formats.
The sheer volume of unstructured data the space agency manages is the “essence of big data,” according to a new report by a commission of government officials and industry representatives. The report details the challenges the government faces as the volume and variety of data it gathers grows exponentially.
The report from the TechAmerica Foundation’s Federal Big Data Commission highlights the potential applications of using big data analytics in health care, education, transportation and other areas. For example, using analytics to mine big data that’s contained in electronic health records to unearth treatments that are the most effective across large populations.
Filed under: Big Data, Big Data Analytics, Business Analytics
2012
Data Analysis: Venture into the Unknown (Part 1)
The buzz surrounding the potential for big data to transform every industry from marketing to medicine has become almost deafening.
Many experts agree that the power of business analytics to transform the vast amounts of data streaming into companies is not being over hyped.
For example, an article in Harvard Business Review declares that big data and data analysis could transform the way companies do business, “delivering the kind of performance gains last seen in the 1990s, when organizations redesigned their core processes.”
Companies that increasingly rely on data analysis to drive key decisions, will stand out from their competition, HBR notes.
But some industry observers have begun highlighting the hazards created by big data if not used to its full advantage.
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Filed under: Big Data, Big Data Analytics, Business Analytics, Data Analytics
2012
Using Data Mining to Pinpoint What Customers Really Want
One of the greatest strengths of data mining is its ability to provide companies with revealing and compelling insights into the needs and preferences of their customers.
This includes information that customers share about themselves in social media channels, in contact center interactions, and through their online behaviors.
Through the sentiments they share and the actions they take, customers convey the types of products they’re interested in as well as the services, processes, and policies used by companies that delight or infuriate them.
As Liana Evans says in recent blog, customers reveal a great deal about their interests and their likes and dislikes through comments shared each day on Facebook alone. “When we hear one suggestion over and over again, we know we have to take the next step . . . ,” adds Evans.
Of course, there are numerous ways to identify and act on the information that customers are sharing across multiple channels beyond Facebook. For instance, web mining allows retailers and other types of companies to detect patterns in online customer behaviors. As wiseGEEK notes, structure mining examines how customers are using web sites, including the types of pages they’re visiting and the information being sought.
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2012
Big Data Analytics Goes to Work in the Biggest Firms
More than 85% of Fortune 1000 companies have big data initiatives underway, with more than half focusing on gleaning customer insights and bolstering customer experience using big data analytics, according to a new survey from NewVantage Partners.
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The consulting firm, which helps companies benefit from big data, surveyed Fortune 1000 C-suite and federal government executives at organizations including American Express, Bank of America, CitiGroup, GE and the Department of Defense to uncover how these firms are wrangling the data stream pouring in from the Web, social networks, devices and other systems using big data analytics.
Filed under: Big Data, Business Analytics, Data Scientist
2012
Going into Battle with Big Data Analytics
Much has been made of the vast potential of big data and big data analytics to help companies battle to keep existing customers, find new ones and more effectively fight off their competitors, but the data explosion also has applications during real wars.
For example, Venture Beat points out that researchers are getting close to being able to predict when a war will break out based on information gleaned from big data analytics.
In 2010, a group of researchers use simple code to extract dates and locations of stop-and-search operations and battles from about 77,000 unclassified reports that are part of the WikiLeaks scandal. This reveals several battlefield hotspots.
This year, the same team of researchers have teamed up with some mathematicians to try to use a prediction model to determine a war zone. Using this approach, the researchers find a general pattern to the locations and intensity of violent outbreaks in Afghanistan.
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2012
Big Data Analytics: The Nerve Center of Digital Business
All the digerati buzz about big data and big data analytics may have caused some companies to wonder about the change in business brought on by the significant massive influx of information from the web, mobile devices, sensors and the social web into corporate networks.
O’Reilly Media contributor Edd Dumbill takes a step back from the hoopla to provide an interesting take on where big data fits in the overarching digital landscape.
For anyone still dismissing big data and big data analytics as a phenomenon pertinent only to the web behemoths Amazon, Google and Facebook, Dumbill likens the information technology ecosystem that has transferred paper-based processes like payroll and inventory to the computer as a supporting “digital exoskeleton” within corporate confines.
But big data generated from the web has altered the entire anatomy of information technology within business, he notes.
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Filed under: Big Data, Business Analytics, Data Analytics
2012
5 Ways Big Data Analytics Can Help the CMO
“Data should be the oxygen of any marketing and advertising organization,” Michael Kaushansky notes in a recent post about big data analytics on Online Metrics Insider.
With a growing arsenal of customer data available from multiple channels, including the web, mobile, social, chat, email, and voice, as well as powerful analytics and customer strategy tools to draw from, chief marketing officers (CMO) are well positioned to take advantage of big data and big data analytics to do their jobs more effectively, he says.
However, many marketers are just beginning to scratch the surface while others are struggling to decide how to get started.
Just 37% of company projects make use of, or even request, available market analytics for decision making, according to this blog post from The CMO Survey. Delving a bit further into the use of marketing analytics, The CMO Survey finds that less than half of organizations that evaluate marketing analytics actually use these tools.
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Filed under: Big Data, Big Data Analytics, Business Analytics, CRM analytics
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