SigmaWay Blog

Big data for a long time has been handled wrongly, as there is problem lies in assigning meaning to data. There is acute skill shortage and the human factor also complicates big data. Here are a few ways how we can get better benefits from big data.
1. The business has to say what it wants to achieve from collating and analyzing data.
2. Asking relevant questions, so the data can provide answers.
3. Start small and then get bigger, trim irrelevant data.
4. Managing costs better
5. Understanding what data matters to the business the most.
To know more, follow: http://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/123459617/big-data-phenomenon-broken-5-tips-doing-analytics-right-way

To provide correct business decisions, we need to address data quality consideration like accuracy, timely, consistency, etc. There is a sheer growth of data which needs to be accounted for and properly identified from the source. Quality movement focuses on many diverse aspects. The origins of defects therefore failed to be identified. The challenge is to understand the data, by use of data models and in context. Analysts build models based on continual consultation with business stakeholders. Metrics are established to quantify the relative importance and evaluate progress. Continual improvement is an ongoing discipline which gives breakthrough results and competitive advantage. To know more:
http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com/2015/07/enabling-a-data-culture-through-continuous-improvement/

People analytics is a data-driven approach to managing people at work. Those working in people analytics strive to bring data and sophisticated analysis to bear on people-related issues, such as recruiting, performance evaluation, leadership, hiring and promotion, job and team design, and compensation.

The 5-step path to people analytics:

1.Bridge the gap-To ensure you have everything you need- people, processes and technology

2. Knowing the stakeholders- involves understanding their challenges, goads and opportunities

3. Setting goals and objectives- This involves agreeing upon mutual goals and objectives

4. Assessment- Doing a reality check pf where you are and where you want to be

5.Prove success with data- Highlighting successes and areas that require improvement.

To know more- https://icrunchdatanews.com/5-step-path-people-analytics/

The increasing number of startups have surpassed the big players with data driven business models. Data science has become obsolete! The next big thing is predictive analytics.

But there are fears associated with adopting this new technology like the fear of complexity, replacement and failure. 

How effective predictive analytics will be depends on how the organization perceives it. When everyone in the business starts thinking about how predictive analytics can improve their organization, it results in big wins for the company. 

To move forward with predictive, the business needs to leave data science behind. Predictive analytics is a completely different approach. Applied to business, predictive models are used to analyze current data and historical facts in order to better understand customers, products and partners and to identify potential risks and opportunities for a company. It uses a number of techniques, including data mining, statistical modeling and machine learning to help analysts make future business forecasts.

To know more- https://icrunchdatanews.com/3-keys-smooth-migration-data-science-predictive-analytics/

Project management now a days requires a more flexible approach than traditional methods. This involves taking step by step actions which are ranked based on priorities.

4 Good Reasons To Do Agile Project Development-

1. Quality -A key principle of agile development is that testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle, enabling regular inspection of the working product as it develops. This allows the product owner to make adjustments if necessary and gives the product team early sight of any quality issues. 

2. Flexibility- In agile development, change is accepted. In fact, it’s expected. Instead the timescale is fixed and requirements emerge and evolve as the product is developed. 

3. Revenue -The iterative nature of agile development means features are delivered incrementally, enabling some benefits to be realized early as the product continues to develop.

4.Predictability – using an Agile  approach with fixed schedule iterations makes the cost of each iteration predictable.

To know more-http://revenueanalytics.com/blog/agile-project-management-benefits-to-a-revenue-management-project/

A U.S. regional bank while reducing its staff and technology cost wanted to see how it could maintain its collection rate. A consultancy based in Chicago and Bangalore analyzed the actions of a U.S. regional bank such as calls, mailers and IVRs and concluded that the bank was overspending.  The bank was thus able to reduce costs by a million $. Analytical companies are now investing in platforms and products to fill the void in analytic stack. To know more: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2015/07/08/bank-reduces-debt-collection-costs-through-big-data-analytics/

Big Data is the game-changing opportunity for marketing and sales. Airlines are spending on advertising. With the help of big data and analytics airlines can see how to allocate ad dollars. Marketing mix is one example of analytics which helps us understand which media vehicle works best. Following are the three key aspects of marketing mix-

1. Examining the noise- Airlines should take into account the impact of noise.

2. Normalizing the data- This means to adjust the data for external factors (those outside marketing campaign).

3. Performing a regression analysis- To calculate the return on each investment made for marketing and to know the mean impact of each campaign analysis of data is necessary.

To know more- http://revenueanalytics.com/blog/airlines-can-maximize-return-on-marketing-spend-with-predictive-analytics/

Big data is an emerging phenomenon. Nowadays, many organizations have adopted information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) in business to handle huge amounts of data and gain better insights into their business. Many scholars believe that Business Intelligence (BI), solutions with analytics capabilities, offer benefits to companies to achieve competitive advantage towards their competitors. But this journey of increasing adoption of analytics requires much more thinking with an organization.

1. Promotion of decision making based on business outcomes: 

Investment should focus on implementation of analytics rather than infrastructure. Great companies link analytics to results to ensure gains.

2. Data –led decision making: 

Adoption of analytics should be encouraged and intuitive decision making should be discouraged.

3. Technology and business move together: 

Capabilities are built by amalgamating data, technology and business talent.

Therefore, decision makers should realize the importance of big data analytics in improving their business. Changes should be created in organizations for successful adoption of business analytics.

To know more- http://analyticsindiamag.com/successful-adoption-of-analytics-the-journey-from-good-to-great/

Hospitality industry has not been concerned about technology and big data which resulted in widening of the gap between customers and industry. Big Data can result in improved customer satisfaction and personalized marketing campaigns. In addition, Big Data results in a boost in employee productivity and more efficient operations. The advantages of Big Data for the hotel industry are enormous.

1. Improving Customer experience through Personalization  

To improve customer experience, businesses must work towards gauging preferences .There is likely to be an enormous amount of information about every person on the Internet, so the key is to mine this information, and get the most relevant details out of it

2. Marketing Strategies

Big data can help companies devise the best marketing strategies for each target segment, based on their activities and preferences. When businesses understand their customers well, they can devise the right strategies to reach out to them. For example, if a company knows that a particular target group is spending an average of thirty hours a week on social media, they can devise their marketing strategies through social media channels. Such a strategy will give the greatest visibility for the company within their target group. 

3. Competitive Advantage

Companies that make use of big data have edge over others. They are able to foresee trends and make pricing strategies accordingly.

To know more- http://analyticsindiamag.com/how-big-data-is-leveraging-the-hospitality-industry/

There is a great potential in “unadvised assets”. The necessary growth rates for a profitable business are close to hundreds and millions of AUM increase per month. Alternative steps needed to be taken by the businesses are:
• Substantial growth in terms of AUM has to be made.
• Varying customer acquisition costs will have to be taken into account during profitability calculations.
• Shift to adjacent markets; from pure online to more sophisticated hybrid services.
• Separated commoditized investment management services and focus on areas of finance and estate planning.
• Get rid of proportional fee model.
Read more at: http://bankinnovation.net/2015/07/half-a-dozen-possibilities-in-automating-asset-management/

Actionable data to support or automate decision making is used by predictive and prescriptive analytics. Prediction of a quantity i.e. regression is required by many use cases. The actions based on the predictions is more important than the actual quantity predicted. Predictions of future events in the context of predictive and prescriptive analytics needs a full probability density distribution. The predictions might give some estimated value of expected fluctuations, but details will still be hidden in the full probability density distribution. In this case, advanced predictive models can be used to derive best point estimator for a given scenario.
Read more at: http://www.blue-yonder.com/blog-e/2015/07/20/predictions-as-a-probability-density-distribution/

Big data is growing now days because companies are demanding more output from big data. Data and data management solutions have helped companies to modify the customer interaction and tackle the risk of uncertainty in timely communications. After having good views of customers, agents can help transforming marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads with smarter interactions. There has been a change in the role of Chief Data Officer (CDO) who was earlier working as data scientist to help transforming big data into new repositories. Today there is compensation for CDO for the value they extract from all sources of data. The large volume and variety of data from other sources and social media has made the marketers very busy. CDO’s are held responsible to judge the relevance of consumer data and assign a particular value.  Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/gayle-nixon/332221/data-within-and-data-without

In healthcare, the main challenge when big data is concerned is to ensure that both healthcare providers and patients are benefiting from the huge flow of information, and are not getting confused by it. Big data is not to be forced and is to be adopted by the healthcare system, in a stable and efficient way. There is a need for targeted and personalized data to improve service quality, even at doctors’ levels. Restricted accessibility to information often creates hurdles for healthcare organizations. The healthcare providers are now deriving both medical and financial information from the insurance sector. EHR data can act as a major playground for big data analytics, as the healthcare sector are adopting more and more e-measures. Read more at: http://healthitanalytics.com/news/how-healthcare-big-data-analytics-drives-systematic-improvement

New companies prefer to wait for a few years, exploring their profitable opportunities first, before focusing on their financial stability. There are associated risks, of ensuring continuous availability of funds throughout the initial phase. Again, in order to stay in the competition, it is also important to prepare the business model at the earliest. When firms delay in preparing their business models, there remains a scope of further innovation in the model, but it can be costly too, if a model is rebuilt from scratch. In each business model it is important to understand the tradable values, that may include brand value of a company, the company’s intellectual property rights, user circles, user circle data, and information regarding the stakeholders. Read more at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/12/how-to-define-your-business-model-when-your-business-is-still-up-in-the-air/

The rate, at which virtual reality is undergoing evolution, it may soon be possible in the recent future to virtually teleport from one place to another, via remote reality, even at the most distant corners of the earth. Networking is the most important factor required to make this possible. High speed internet must be accompanied with advanced audio and visualization technology, to make the media feeds, received by the users more realistic and communicable. Drones and robots will come handy in the age of remote reality and it is important to match the system response speed with the immediacy of real world actions, to avoid motion sickness of users caused by the deferment. Read more at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/13/omnipresence-and-the-coming-age-of-remote-reality/

Mobile computing has changed the consumers as well as enterprise landscapes. Due to this, businesses are being forced to develop mobile-based strategies, Business Process Management (BPM) software being one of them. BPM software allows companies to gain faster and better insights into the operations taken by it. It offers a bouquet of possibilities, the major ones being business model analysis, mobile features, social interactions and cloud technology.  This software is also useful for company workers having a mobile workforce. The software can be used to operate all aspects of the business. The adoption of this platform allows companies to achieve increased efficiency, productivity and future integration of business entities to the system. In order to fully utilize the benefits of this platform, it is suggested to focus on processes that are essentially important to the business. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7922-why-companies-are-adopting-mobile-bpm

The global scene of business changes quite often with the different factors in the market. The business dashboard helps in keeping us updated and analyzing the business scenario for an improved market. The process helps us in keeping a track of what to do and what not to for running a smooth and sustainable business. For a healthy business, there is a need for individual business process to keep the flow of the business. The immediate feedback of the business helps us in evaluating the pros and cons of the business and also helps us in getting the answers for the business questions. The continuous evaluation leads to increased profits when we compare the cost and the return of investment. The productivity gets boosted with the help of dashboards and so it helps in creating business opportunities. It helps us in collaborating and consolidating the work process of the business structure and thus the business objectives get fulfilled.  There are different types of dashboard which helps you in keeping track with the trend of business and gives an added advantage of competing with your competitors.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/business-innovation/how-business-dashboards-can-boost-your-small-business-01275428

As soon as Big Data started transpiring into the future, it is believed that it would transform the way companies sell, market, communicate, educate etc. There has been an enormous progress of Big Data which helps in data integration and analytics. Nowadays much of the work is concerned on future and therefore it focuses on identifying the consequences of it. The prospect of Big Data has enlarged in recent days and there are key "first-order", second and third order, sample "second-order", sample "third-order implications of Big Data. With the conversion of Big Data into Implications Wheel, it furnishes everyone with new perception and control.

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7899-the-implications-of-big-data

Initially social media was used for socializing but with the progress of time it has undergone an impactful makeover. It is not only about advertising to a huge section of consumers but it is also the fundamental tool to influence customers. Firms will be able to determine basic information about their customers while marketing over social media and as a result the probability of obtaining clear data rises. This enables quick and easy access to data. The data collected from social media platforms are more or less accurate. However companies should take advantage of the various social media networking sites for trading their products and thereby improving both data and content.

To know more about this study, please follow the link: http://www.business2community.com/social-selling/social-media-purchasing-feature-changing-marketing-01283019