SigmaWay Blog

It is an interesting conjecture that data can be thought to have a life cycle. This life cycle can be further broken down into phases. The first phase being data capture, creating data values for an enterprise. There are several ways for data capture. These are namely Data acquisition, data entry and signal reception. Data acquisition is the induction of existing data of an organization, data entry is the process of creating new data values for the enterprise and signal reception is the data generation process by devices working in sync with IOT. Data maintenance is the next phase of data life cycle. It necessarily deals with data synthesis and data usage. It includes processes such as movement, integration, data cleansing, extraction, etc. Read more at: http://www.dataversity.net/the-data-life-cycle-in-7-phases/

Firms looking for potential customers should proceed with caution while deciding on the marketing strategies. The marketing strategies should be not such that annoy customers. Here are some general pointers:
• It is best to come clean about the product and its limitations. There is no sense in hiding weakness initially which might make the customer deflect later due to inefficiency.
• Promotion of the product should be done either through email or phone, not both. Some decorum should be maintained while having a conversation over phone or emailing a customer.
• Demonstrations made to the customers should be engaging and interactive.
• The discussion sphere should not be kept confined to the product only, it pays to enquire about the customer. Even if opinions differ or disinterest is shown by the customer, it helps to give value to the reasons the company got rejected.
Read more at:  http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/5-sales-marketing-tactics-guaranteed-to-annoy-customers-01274974

Companies are always trying out ways and means to keep their employees satisfied, after all they are the work force that keeps that wheels running. Companies are often coming up with new and innovative ideas to motivate their employees keeping an eye on their budget constraints. Here is one innovative idea; a luggage party. All one needs to do is to select random employees and send them on an all paid trip for the weekend. The prospect of a trip, a chance to get away from the work pressures, that too on the house excites most.  Another idea could be to give “play time”, a chance to relax with activities like table tennis, indoor basketball. Its a sure shot way to reduce stress levels and keep employees happy. Introducing a snack bar might also help the cause. To know more, please follow:
http://www.business2community.com/human-resources/5-fun-employee-benefits-big-companies-offer-and-you-can-too-01268109

Understanding and collecting data is an important part of viable businesses nowadays. Big data helps us in that with its many applications in various spheres. Big data is not only limited to marketing applications, it can analyze structured and unstructured data searching for purchase patterns, build logs and store day to day information. Big data has helped optimize business performances, has led to an increase in productivity and thus it has made its impact felt on the profit margins. Big data empowers organizations with knowledge of their employees thus enabling interactions on an individual level. This is bound to make an impact on employee productivity eventually leading to growth of the organization in the long run. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/big-data-a-big-impact-on-productivity-01274278

Big data and analytics are the buzz words in any industry now, but one should not forget that data inaccuracy can lead to huge losses for any industry. Big data becomes useless unless it possess a reasonable degree of accuracy. In case of industries like healthcare and banking big data mistakes can even take someone’s life. Data should be cleaned before data scientists can leverage it to derive useful insights. Practicing good data management is the need of the hour. Executives, instead of being impressed by the size of data, should question its quality. Systems should be designed in such a manner that it is able to simplify the process of data collection and minimize risks from inefficient data. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7782-big-data-vs-bad-data 

Other than having health implication, alcohol have a direct impact on match’s performance and cost the team valuable performance. So Arsène Wenger, manager of Arsenal started waving away team’s bad habits. His sophisticated approach and implemented policies, worked as catalysts for sport’s keen interest in analytics. The sports current value is predicted to rise due to the increasing accessibility to cloud computing, improved infrastructure allowing smart-phones and tablets play a bigger role in training programs.Arsenal’s rivals, Manchester United use analytics to maintain squad balance. Many sports are still unconvinced which shows that analytics still has room to grow. Other than elite sport, there is a rising valuation of sports analytics in amateur sport also. Major sporting institutions and amateur athletes still remain to tap in. Read more about it at:  https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/sports-analytics-market-to-reach-4-7bn-by-2021

While running a business, one should consider not only internal data but external ones as well. Due to the inability to access information and integrate it, businesses are lagging behind. Though a huge amount of external data is available, it’s not always easy to find the desired information. Certain software aid the process of finding external data. Bringing both external and internal data together provides a unified view as well as helps in the process of decision-making and discovering insights. Data from all sources should be brought together and technologies that are able to perform this task and are able to put equal importance to all sources of data should only be accepted. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/does-your-car-have-more-awareness-than-your-business

Nowadays, like other fields, big data insights affects strategies of digital marketers helping them to create effective campaigns. The discovery of various marketing technologies makes it clear that, companies are keen to invest in this. Sentiment Analysis tool is unethical but not illegal and is really helpful to find opinion –rich information to be acted upon. This “opinion mining” with the help of other tools can actually manage conversations about a brand when used with some other tools. But the drawback of it is we never know if the analysis becomes misleading and leads to the loss of a brand. There are many more such tools used. This proves the relationship between big data and digital marking has transformed into a more sophisticated one. Read more at:  https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/where-big-data-marketing-meet

The present events ongoing in the world economy give us the impression that we are amidst turbulence and chaos. To become more active and adjust to rapidly changing events, Finance Planning and Analysis (FP&A) departments should consider a vast amount more of data for forecasting. A lot of this can be achieved by making use of advanced technologies like Cloud, Big data and analytics. With Cloud, necessary information can be disseminated to required destinations. FP&A organizations are now moving from spreadsheets to enabling technologies and integrated platforms thus ensuring transparency of assumptions and drivers. Big data and analytics enables faster than ever processing of data. Using software, sifting through a chunk of unstructured data and identifying patterns has become easier. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-rolling-forecast-for-fp-a

Delivering added business value to existing product and services can be done through the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT can help organizations improve relation with customers without much physical interaction. Using IoT, personalized services can be delivered in a less personal way. The key to launching IoT is to think big. Organizations should be able to identify the limitations yet be able to offer integrated services including IoT and other services and applications. After creating an understanding of IoT, companies should communicate its values, potential, risks and ecosystem roadmap implications. An example of how IoT can be used to deliver personalized services can of the car insurer who, in the event of an accident of his customer, is informed immediately through the car's on-board systems. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7726-why-a-customer-is-never-a-thing

The finance function has undergone a metamorphosis in recent times owing to financial crisis and several other events. The treasurer is now being relied upon to cut costs and add value to organizations. Treasurers, today, face the challenge of doing more with less and this is being facilitated by cloud. Cloud facilitates movement of money and information between countries. Having a centralized treasury team can be done away with as using cloud platform facilitates management of operations from every corner of the world. Communicating with partners outside the organization is also made easier with a cloud-based treasury management system. Treasurers are being prevented from using Cloud due to safety and security of data issues which can be overcome with cloud providers providing better security than in-house systems. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/the-treasurer-and-the-cloud

Hadoop has grown to be one of the best large scale and batch oriented analytics tool, used by webscalers as well as enterprises. Hadoop was designed to integrate with and complement the existing business intelligence of any corporation. But, the issue with Hadoop is that the adoption rate is very slow with the data center administrators. So, most developers have been looking at possible alternatives. Today we will name a few worthy alternatives that you can look at which have a potential of replacing Hadoop in the years to come. They are:
• Disco
• Misco
• Cloud MapReduce
• Bashreduce
• Qizmt
• HTTPMR
• Skynet
• Sphere
• Riak
• Octopy
• MapReduce
• Filemap
• Plasma MapReduce
• Mapredus
• Mincemeat
• GPMR
• Elastic Phoenix
• Preregrine
• R3
• Ceph
• QFS
• Cloud-Crowd
• HPCC
• Condor
• Storm
• HaLoop
• MapRejuice
• GoCircuit
• Spark
• Stratosphere
• Gridgain
• MongoDB
• Mars
• Minceat
• Dato Core
• HPCC
• MapReduce Lite
• Gearman

For more information visit:
http://www.fromdev.com/2015/03/hadoop-alternatives.html?m=0

As people are the most important asset for any organization, hence talent management is a crucial part for a successful organization. It is critical for an organization to control its people by talent acquisition, employee engagement, performance management and leadership and development for better performance.
The 5 Step paths to People Analytics:
v Identify the Stakeholders – Whichever be the area that might have been chosen, it is essential to identify everyone involved in that function.
v Establish Goals and Objectives – Quantifiable targets should be determined so that it can be assessed whether the target is achieved or not or for tracking the progress.
v Do a “reality check” – A realistic goal for improvement is to be determined.
v Bridge the gap – This step makes sure that everything that is needed for the process is present like people, processes and technology.
v Prove success with Data – Analytics in this step highlights the successes or the areas of improvement in the function.
Read more at: https://icrunchdatanews.com/5-step-path-people-analytics/

Cancer is a disease that had killed many people in past decades. Few years back it was not possible to treat a patient suffering from cancer. Now doctors have treatment of cancer. But it could more easier with the help of big data. Let us see how big data make it easier. 

Doctors collect data from pre and post treatment of patients. Predictive models can be formed using the extensive data that can help doctors to analyze whether a treatment is success or failure for some set of patients. There are some advancements where AI is used in diagnosis and treatment of cancer. With the help of big data analytics doctors can see which drugs are most effective in treatment. Also running analytical models doctors can find which drugs are not necessary and significant. Only necessary drugs can be used to target the specific forms of cancer. The systematic and data driven view for looking at cancer has increased the potential for its prevention. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/big-data-in-cancer-revisited

If you keep an account of your store’s electricity consumption, you would realize that almost half of it goes to waste. Energy costs are sky high apart from the fact that more consumption leads to increased carbon foot prints. Energy use can be minimized by eliminating energy wastage. FirstFuel, a software start up monitors energy wastage using bi data. It uses the electric meter data, weather data GIS (geographic information system) mapping to create the required database. This database helps analyze energy performance without physically stepping into the building, thereby saving the time effort and cost. Read more at:

http://www.businessinsider.in/How-revolutionary-technology-is-tackling-the-200B-problem-of-wasted-energy-in-buildings/articleshow/47460842.cms#ixzz3f7Nme5ct

A wealth of past data is available in years of medical records of ICU patients, which can be used to measure risk levels in ICU. In case of predictable risks, checklists can be created of obvious risks like infections caused by catheters or tubes, delirium caused by overseadation etc. In case of less predictive risk, a system can be generated that gives a running risk report of the ICU on the doctor’s hand held devices. Medical centers have developed an application that pulls out data from the EHRs and creates a visual dashboard of the patient that helps doctors in real time monitoring, thereby personalising patient care. Read more at:  http://www.wsj.com/articles/hospital-icus-mine-big-data-in-push-for-better-outcomes-1435249003

Big data can provide contextual intelligence, which would work as a catalyst in supply chain operations. While legacy ERP (Efficient Resource planning) and SCM (Supply Chain Management) are designed for order, shipment and transactional data, big data can create knowledge sharing supplier networks, revolutionizing the supply chain. Delivery networks can be optimized using geoanalytics, which fixes one of the major challenges in this business. Companies that have adopted big data analytics say that there is improvement in customer service and demand forecasting and optimization of inventory and asset productivity. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/07/13/ten-ways-big-data-is-revolutionizing-supply-chain-management/

Sentiment Analysis is a text mining technique used to analyze the sentiment (unstructured data representing opinions, emotions or attitudes) about a particular product or topic, employing machine learning technique. Organizations across the world are extracting insights from the social data to understand how public feels about the product at a particular point in time. Sentiments are first categorized into negative or positive and then analyzed using various software like Hadoop. It can also be performed on excel. To know more, read the article at: https://www.brandwatch.com/2015/01/understanding-sentiment-analysis/

Through Predictive analytics, customer behavior can be predicted to learn engaging with them and improve their experience. Mobile on the other hand is making marketers refocus their analytic efforts. Thus, predictive mobile analytics enable organizations discover consumer behavior by looking at data of how apps are used and finding their acting patterns. Using this information, marketers can focus on their marketing and advertising initiatives, looking at customer engagement during a promotion in real-time to facilitate greater targeting. Through predictive analytics, one can find the targeted customers. Digital tags enable to create a digital dossier where browsing history can link to a particular unidentified individual helping maintain their privacy. Thus can establish repeat behaviors that lead either to a purchase, or a rejection. Read more about it at:  https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/why-you-must-invest-in-mobile-analytics

No one can guarantee success but obviously can influence success. Selling a product or a service or an idea is an art which rarely people possess. But not like people would be successful in selling every time. So rather than feeling de-motivated, they should learn from it. Practice makes people behave perfect in real-life situations. So rather than avoiding, we should get involved in uncomfortable discussions to be prepared for the future. But not everything can be done alone always. Hence, hiring and training more people makes it easier to grow a business quickly and effectively. Finally to achieve the goal, we must get started today, in fact right now to avoid the risk of tomorrow. Read more about this article at:  https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/5-important-ingredients-for-success