With the closures of stores and bankruptcies caused by the pandemic, the future seems bleak for the retailers as it is for other industries. It raises the question of what steps retailers need to take to tackle the endless challenges lying ahead. This can only be answered by adopting technology. According to a study by Snowflake Computing back in 2018 and Harvard Business Review, companies that make data-driven decisions have the best chance to survive the challenges in the retail market and remain in the business longer. This makes big data a fortune-changer when it comes to the retail industry.

To understand the customers' changing needs and respond to their desires correctly, businesses must take advantage of big data and other related technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML). This will help them differentiate their brands through increased personalization, customer service, and demand forecasting. With the business ecosystem that has turned out to be highly complicated, retailers will be taking advantage of opportunities offered by big data to understand the changes in the landscape and provide customers with an elevated experience.

Personalization is becoming one of the selling points for many businesses. It can only be achieved by using customer data, anticipating and shaping what the customer desires. Due to its importance in enhancing customer satisfaction, most retailers, such as those in the apparel and beauty space, are using it to help customers find their products faster. Sephora, one of the users of this technology, uses AI and big data analytics to scan the face of the customer and shade library to offer recommendations that reduce the time that can be used to search for products. 

Although the massive data that comes from daily operations can be challenging to manage, it can also be a blessing if used well by retailers. With AI-powered customer insights, customer experience can be transformed for the better. With the correct data, you can always overcome customer service challenges that often cause loss of customers and business. Your merchandising team can analyze data regarding product returns and identify the specific products or brands that are having an issue.  Armed with this knowledge, you can remove that specific product from the shelf or return it to the manufacturer to avoid issues with the customer. Data can also come in handy when you want to send personalized messages to the customer, leading to better customer retention.

According to Gartner, the volume of data will rise by over 800 percent in the coming years. This will include 80 percent of the unstructured data. As such, retailers need to have a concrete big data management solution that can help retrieve and process data from different sources. This solution can help retailers gather real-time insights for faster decision-making while generating actual value for the business.

Thanks to machine learning advancements, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence, predictive analytics help enhance accuracy and insightful data to the users. This will help businesses increase sales and make marketing teams more practical through access to precise data needed to make marketing decisions. All these are necessary for determining the lifetime value of a customer. When it comes to identifying issues and trends that may affect business operations, predictive analytics, which is one of the key elements of big data, is highly beneficial. It can help retailers identify issues with a brand and reasons why customers might leave it behind. This is critical information that can allow business owners to take action and improve the experience of the customer.

For years, many people have believed that great marketing is an art. However, this seems to be changing with the entry of big data into the equation. Big data has introduced a scientific element into marketing campaigns. With this, smart marketers now rely more on data to inform their decisions concerning product design, tests, and development strategies. With the increasing demand for personalization by customers, this is a welcome relief for companies and marketers who want to understand exactly what the customer wants. The rising demand for online stores makes big data even more necessary to improve the online shopping experience. So, how exactly is big data changing the retail industry? Here are a few areas, some of which you might have already heard of before.

1. Predicting spending

Retailers like Amazon use big data to recommend items to customers based on their past searches and purchases. With this approach, customers don’t have to look for items they need. Rather, recommended items are shown as soon as they visit the website. This kind of prediction enhances customer experience and increases sales. For instance, through big data-enabled prediction, Amazon generates over 29 percent of sales through recommendation engines.

2. Pricing optimization

Real-time merchandising systems are now a priority for big retailers like Walmart. The retail powerhouse is currently working on a private cloud as it seeks to track millions of transactions per day. Through big data initiatives, critical elements such as inventory levels, competitors, and demand for specific products can be tracked and the pricing of items adjusted accordingly. With big data systems, the retailer can respond to market changes automatically.

3. Demand forecasting

In addition to big data, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are used to analyze the social media and web browsing habits of specific groups of people in the retail market. The data is then collected and used to make retail decisions and stocking of products based on demand. Walgreens, for example, used this type of forecasting to predict the potential demand for anti-frizz products and developed ads and promotions to drive sales. This saw an increase in sales of hair care products for up to 4 percent. Retail forecasting using AI and big data can increase profits.

4. Trend analysis

Customer needs keep changing from time to time. This is even worse at the age of the internet, where trends can be influenced by a few people and within a short time. As such, marketers need to find a way of assessing the changes in the market and adjusting accordingly. Marketers are now using sentiment analysis, a sophisticated machine learning algorithm that takes advantage of data to determine trends. The collected data can then be used to predict the bestselling products in certain categories, and such products are then stocked accordingly.

5. Customer experience personalization

Each customer has different demands and preferences. This makes it hard to identify and accommodate each one of them. However, big data gives retailers a new capability to enhance customer experience. Retailers like Costco use transaction data to keep customers healthy. Big data allows retailers to build a profile of every customer and use the data to develop a relationship with them. For instance, you can personalize product types that your customers purchase, promotional messages, size, color, and the type of products the customer likes.

As retailers continue to look for a competitive edge in service provision, big data is the leading area to make customers get the best. Although big data is still in its early stages, the entry of artificial intelligence and other technologies associated with it, such as machine learning and the internet of things, will indeed change odds for retailers and customers. 

2021 is challenging yet another exciting year for human resource management. Like last year, we continue to see the critical nature of data and data-driven HR in maintaining day-to-day operations in organizations in the COVID-19 era. While last year might have been interesting, experts warn that you will see even exciting trends this year. The good news is that these trends create amazing technologies for small businesses, individuals, and startups, that were never there before. According to the Gartner report of October 2020, big data analytics will help organizations plan ahead and make critical decisions urgently to deal with the pandemic and its effects. Here are other trends that you need to pay attention to in 2021.

1. AI will become faster, smarter and more responsible

As artificial intelligence continues showing a lot of potential in data analytics in the HR arena, enterprises will move from piloting to operationalizing it. This will drive about a 5X increase in streaming of data and analytics. With the pandemic still with us, current techniques such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML) and optimization are critical in generating insights and predictions about the virus and the development of the vaccines. In HR, AI is helping process large amounts of data from employees such as resumes, gauge performance and make decisions on areas that need improvement. It brings transparency to hiring processes.

2. Data scientists will increase

Every serious organization can now bet on data science as the best career move for technology enthusiasts, especially when it has everything to do with machine learning engineering and research. From the trends, there is a strong growth for data science jobs and skills, that according to The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, will be around 28% by 2026. With the sophistication of technology, companies will be seeking employees such as scientists and machine learning engineers to help them in their operations and analysis. These skills will be in high demand going forward.

3. Automated decision-making with AI

According to statistics, large organizations will have analysts that practice decision intelligence and decision modelling. This will bring together various disciplines that include decision support and decision management. With the automation of decision-making, adaptive systems will bring together different traditional and advanced disciplines. Automation allows leaders to design, compose, monitor, process and align their decisions and outcomes. With the improving AI and big data analytics, these two technologies will continue shaping how managers, human resource leaders and operators make their decisions. It will create tremendous opportunities for organizations regardless of the industry.

4. An opportunity for data marketplaces and exchanges is in the offing

Data is indeed the future, and big companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google are setting the trend in ensuring that companies do not expose data without first-party permission, if their recent announcements are anything to go by. Although this can be a good thing in creating data marketplaces or exchanges, it may be detrimental to advertisers. With this new trend, we will likely see platforms that buy and sell data, including licensing, publishing and distributing it. Although this new industry is in its early stages, it can explode into something to admire if things go well. These exchanges could mean more job opportunities for people, although a challenge is presented to advertisers with regard to employment.

With the positive developments concerning COVID-19 and vaccinations worldwide, we will likely start seeing the workplaces that were closed over the past year returning to normal. With this, HR officers will need to develop a swift, flexible and easy transition post-COVID. This progress will be led by proper use of data that involves using modern technologies such as AI and big data analytics.

Businesses quickly discover the importance of big data analytics in their operations. They have embraced ideas behind data analytics and associated technologies and even technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. With the focus now shifted to online after the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, enterprises are modernizing their analytics strategies, testing new technologies and tools and training staff, or acquiring new talent to meet the new realities. As the pandemic continues, many organizational leaders are thinking of how they should prepare their data analytics for 2021. Here are areas of data analytics that you need to concentrate on as we begin the new year.

• Self-service will be a catalyst for a digitized economy

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increasing adoption of IT in different processes in organizations. Enterprises were planning how to improve and ensure speedy extraction of insights by investing in advanced infrastructure while guaranteeing a minimum disruption of existing business processes. The speed of modernization was accelerated, resulting in increased budgets and resources due to the pandemic. With the rise in needs and fewer resources for IT and data teams, self-service and democratization will become a main area of focus. Organizations will provide insights and means for users to resolve business issues inside departments. This means strong data governance policies will be developed to allow data access by business users while ensuring top levels of security and compliance are met.

• Augmented data management will be a new normal

The use of active metadata, machine learning, and data fabrics will increase as organizations seek to connect and automate data management tasks dynamically. This will reduce data delivery time by more than 30 percent by 2021. Artificial intelligence techniques will be used to recommend the best course of action and data governance controls. According to Gartner, data fabric is something that uses continuous analytics over the existing metadata assets that are discoverable to support the design, deployment, and use of integrated and reusable data objects irrespective of the platform or architecture.

• Invest in data transformation to improve analytics

With the upsurge in data sources and the amount of data in organizations in general, data streams seem not to be keeping up fast enough. IDG Research survey reports that organizations spend almost half of their time preparing data. They take up to a week to prepare data for a normal project. With this inefficiency, enterprises are looking for better ways to enhance data transformation processes and ensure analytics-ready insight is obtained. Most of them have shifted to the cloud to reduce the time it takes to join siloed data together, denormalize and enrich it as well as apply business logic. As pressure increases on organizations to invest more resources and raise budgets, most of them will try cloud solutions to help their data transformation efforts due to the fewer resource requirements needed to do it.

• AI will become a smarter, faster, and most sought after analytics technology

According to Gartner, over 75 percent of enterprises will shift from piloting AI to fully operationalizing it by 2024. This means that AI adoption and operationalization will increase as soon as this year. By the end of 2024, streaming data and analytics infrastructures will have gone up five times. The current challenges will be reduced, and most historical data will likely be obsolete by then. The disruptions will oversee enterprises embracing learning algorithms, reinforcement learning, and edge computing to improve data analytics and get more insights. Data analytics will help organizations find solutions and direction through its ability to ease gathering, transforming, and analyzing data.

Ever since the invention of computers many developments have shaped human lives. The invention of the internet was a landmark achievement which set up the stage for more things that followed. Many would have thought that the internet was the biggest thing ever but it was only a lead-in to developments in the world of big data, AI and IoT.  Big data, AI and IoT have revolutionized the world we live in but what exactly are these terms?

AI, IoT, and big data are among the most talked about topics but still highly misunderstood. The tech jargons has been difficult to grasp for non-tech people but this article sheds a little light on the difference between the three terms, how they are related and how they differ.

The advent of social media and e-commerce led by Facebook and Amazon respectively shook the existing infrastructure. It also altered the general view of data. Businesses took advantage of this phenomenon by analyzing social media behavior through the available data and using it to sell products. Companies began collecting large volumes of data, systematically extracting information and analyzing it to discover customer trends. The word big data then became appropriate because the amount of data was orders of magnitude more than what had previously been saved. Basically, big data are extremely large sets of data which can be analyzed to reveal patterns, associations, and trends by using specialized programs. The main aim of doing so is to reveal people’s behavior and interactions, generally for commercial purposes.

Once the concept of big data had settled in and the cloud became a convenient and economical   solution for storage of huge volumes of data companies wanted to analyze it more quickly and extract value. They needed to have an automated approach for analyzing and sorting data and making decisions based on accurate information by businesses.

To achieve this, algorithms were developed to analyze data which can then be used to make more accurate predictions on which to base decisions.

Cloud’s ability to enable storage coupled with the development of AI algorithms that could predict patterns of data, meant that more data became a necessity and so was the need for systems to communicate with each other. Data became more useful as AI systems began to learn and make predictions.

The internet of things (IoT) is a collection of devices fitted with sensors that collect data and send it to storage facilities. That data is then leveraged to teach AI systems to make predictions These concepts are now making way into our homes as smart homes, smart cars, and smartwatches which are in common use..

In short, big data, AI and IoT are interrelated and feed off each other. They depend on each other for operations as AI uses the data generated by IoT. On the other hand, huge datasets would be meaningless without proper methods of collection and analysis. So yes, big data, IoT and AI are related.

The concept of big data has been around for a number of years. However, businesses now make use of big data analytics to uncover trends and gain insights for immediate actions. Big Data Analytics are complex processes involved in examining large and varied data set to uncover information such as unknown correlations, market trends, hidden patterns, and customer’s preferences in order to make informed business decisions.

It is a form of advanced analytics that involves applications with elements such as statistical algorithms powered by high-performance analytics systems.

Why Companies Use Big Data Analytics

From new revenue opportunities, effective marketing, better customer services, improved operational experience, and competitive advantages over rivals, big data analytics which is driven by analytical software and systems offers benefits to many organizations.

• Analyze Structured Transaction data: Big data allows data scientists, statisticians, and other analytics professionals to analyze the growing volume of structured transaction data such as social media contents, text from customer email, survey responses, web server logs, mobile phone records and machine data captured by sensors connected to the internet of things. Examining these types of data help to uncover hidden patterns and give insight to make better business decisions.
• Boost Customer Acquisition and Retention: In every organization customers are the most important assets; no business can be successful without establishing a solid customer base. The use of big data analytics helps businesses discover customers’ related patterns and trends; this is important because customers’ behaviors can indicate loyalty. With big data analytics in place, a business has the ability to derive critical behavioral insights it needs to retain uts customer base. A typical example of a company that makes use of big data analytics in driving client retention is Coca-Cola which strengthened its data strategy in 2015 by building a digital-led loyalty program.
• Big Data Analytics offers Marketing Insights: In addition, big data analytics helps to change how business operates by matching customer expectation, ensuring that marketing campaigns are powerful, and changing the company's product line. It also provides insight to help organizations create a more targeted and personalized campaign which implies that businesses can save money and enhance efficiency. A typical example of a brand making use of big data analytics for marketing insight is Netflix. With over 100 million subscribers; the company collects data which is the key to achieving the industry status Netflix boasts.
• Ensures Efficient Risk Management: Any business that wants to survive in the present business environment and remain profitable must be able to foresee potential risks and mitigate them before they become critical. Big data analytics helps organizations develop risk management solutions that allow businesses to quantify and model risks they face daily. It also provides the ability to help a business achieve smarter risk mitigation strategies and make better decisions.
• Get a better understanding of their competitors: For every business knowing your competitors is vital to succeeding and growing. Big data algorithms help organizations get a better understanding of their competitors, know recent price changes, make new product changes, and discover the right time to adjust their product prices.

Finally, enterprises are understanding the benefits of making use of big data analytics in simplifying processes. From new revenue opportunities, effective marketing, better customer services, improved operational experience, and competitive advantages over rivals, the implementation of big data analytics can help businesses gain competitive advantages while driving customer retention.

Big data is fast gaining momentum, and so are the big data projects. Companies are increasing in size and ambition. However, the rising number of big data projects does not mean that they all succeed. Gartner estimates that the number of big data projects that fail is about 60 percent in 2016. In 2017, Gartner revised the number of big data projects that fail to be about 85 percent, which was even higher than the rate stated before. Nothing has changed since then. Even in 2021, the rate of failure still ranges at around 80 percent. Here are some of the reasons why big data projects fail.

1. Poor integration

Siloed data is a leading technological problem that causes big data failures. Since data is stored in multiple sources, integrating it into one and using it to get insights that a company needs is a big challenge. This is even bigger problem if legacy systems are involved. It costs a lot of money and often does not result in the desired outcome. According to Alan Morrison of PwC, siloes create data lakes that are just data swamps. Organizations can only access a small percentage of data with little relationships that are inadequate to find patterns and get enough knowledge. Without a graph layer that interprets all instances of data mapped underneath, you have a data lake that is a data swamp.

2. Not defining goals

Like any other project, big data projects require a proper definition of goals and objectives. Sadly, most people who undertake big data projects do not set goals that they need to achieve. Most of them think they can simply connect the structured and unstructured data and get the insight they need. As a project manager, you need to define the problem and develop the goals you want to attain. Having a clear definition of the problem and defining it in time helps achieve the desired goals accurately. However, many big data project leaders lack vision. This ends up confusing the company on big data projects and its desired objectives.

3. Shortage of skills

There has been a widespread shortage of talent in the data science industry over the past few years.  A 2018 report by LinkedIn reported a shortage of more than 150,000 individuals with data science skills. These are people such as data engineers, mathematicians, data analysts, and others. Since the field is in its initial stages, it is often hard to get people with the required skills. This slows production and ends up stalling the well-intentioned big data initiatives. Additionally, many enterprises cannot run several projects simultaneously without the right skills because they lack enough personnel.

4. Lack of transparency

Lack of transparency in big data projects can result in a disconnect between technical and business teams. For instance, while the data science teams usually focus on the accuracy of models that is often simple to measure, business teams, on the other hand, are concerned mainly with metrics like business insights, profits/financial benefits, and interoperability of the final model produced. The lack of clarity and proper alignment between the teams leads to the failure of big data projects as the different teams try to measure different metrics. This is made worse by the traditional data science initiatives that use blackbox models that lack accountability and are hard to interpret, making it difficult to scale.

The above reasons for the failure of big data projects indicate the need for proper plans when implementing big data projects. The problems can be sorted by planning ahead, working together, and setting realistic goals.

According to reports, the global big data as a service (BDaaS) industry is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. The sector was valued at $4.99 billion in 2018 but will likely reach more than$61 billion by 2026. This growth is attributed to the fast adoption of big data as a service in different industries. Other factors that are expected to drive the BDaaS industry are the rising demand for actionable insights and the increasing organizational data across businesses due to the digitization and automation of most business processes. Here are trends that you should expect in the BDaaS industry:

• The increased adoption of BDaaS by social media platforms will lead to growth

The increase in digitization and automation of business processes is the leading factor in the adoption of BDaaS and its subsequent market growth. With the ongoing deployment of the 5G infrastructure, this demand will become rapid as social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, among others, embrace data as the main approach to reaching customers for growth. Consequently, social media platforms will play a crucial role in the rising global BDaaS market.

• Big companies will hold the largest share

Large multinationals continue to lead in the adoption of BDaaS solutions. With competition heating up, they are likely to continue investing in these solutions as they seek to access customer data and gather the right insights for improved decision-making. They help collect data scattered in various locations or departments to gain valuable insights through big data analysis. Large corporations are spending large amounts of money on training their employees and leveraging the benefits of BDaaS solutions as they seek to edge their competitors and know exactly what their customers want.

• Hadoop will continue in its leadership in this area

In the last year, Hadoop was a significant player in big data as a service. The Hadoop-as-a-service segment held about 31.6%, with the rest sharing the remaining 68.4%. Moving forward, this Hadoop segment is expected to grow exponentially, gaining more CAGR in the future as the craze for BDaaS continues rising. The growth will result from the continued adoption of Hadoop-as-a-service solutions among the small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) worldwide who seek to take advantage of this technology in their service provision. 

• North America will continue dominating BDaaS investments

In 2020, North America was leading in BDaaS investments with $ 6.33 billion. This region is expected to continue holding the leadership spot between now and 2026 in terms of adopting big data as a service and the revenue coming from this industry. This is due to the number of significant players that will invest in it and others such as Intel Corporation that will go on manufacturing chips that will help in the expansion of the existing storage. However, the Asia Pacific region will register a significant increase as countries such as India, China, Japan, and South Korea raise their investments.

• Large companies will embrace joint ventures to strengthen their positions in the market

Large companies that have a global presence are looking for better alternatives to stay ahead in the competition. One of the strategies includes mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and joint ventures. In most cases, smaller companies are acquired by bigger ones, while others may strike partnership deals to compete favorably in the market. IBM is one of the companies with large big data as a service market share and has been launching solutions and building partnerships that help companies gather data of customers for use in marketing and decision-making activities.

While the coronavirus pandemic has left the world bleeding, it has also highlighted weaknesses in the global healthcare systems that were hidden before. It is evident from the response to the pandemic that there was no plan in place on how to treat an unknown infectious disease like Covid_19. Despite the challenges that the world is facing, there is hope in big data and big data analytics. Big data has changed how data management and analysis is carried out in healthcare. Healthcare data analytics is capable of reducing the costs of treatment and can also help in the prediction of epidemics’ outbreak, prevent diseases, and enhance the quality of life.

Just like businesses, healthcare facilities collect massive amounts of data from patients during their hospital visits. As such, health professionals are looking for ways in which data collected can be analyzed and used to make informed decisions about specific aspects. According to the International Data Corporation report, big data is expected to grow faster in healthcare compared to other industries such as manufacturing, media, and financial services. The report estimates that healthcare data will experience a compound annual growth of 36% by 2025.

Here are some ways in that big data will make a difference in hospitals.

1. Healthcare tracking

Along with the internet of things, big data and analytics are changing how hospitals and healthcare providers can track different user statistics and vitals. Apart from using data from wearables, that can detect the vitals of the patients, such as sleep patterns, heart rate, and exercise, there are new applications that monitor and collect data on blood pressure, glucose, and pulse, among others. The collection of such data will allow hospitals to keep people out of wards as they can manage their ailments by checking their vitals remotely.

2. Reduce the cost of healthcare

Big data has come just at the right time when the cost of healthcare appears to be out of reach of many people. It is promising to save costs for hospitals and patients who fund most of these operations. With predictive analytics, hospitals can predict admission rates and help staff in ward allocation. This reduces the cost of investment incurred by healthcare facilities and enables maximum utilization of the investment. With wearables and health trackers, patients will be saved from unnecessary hospital visits, and admissions, since doctors can easily track their progress from their homes and data collected, can be used to make decisions and prescriptions.

3. Preventing human errors

It is in records that medical professionals often prescribe the wrong medication to patients by mistake. These errors have, in some instances, led to deaths that would have been prevented if there were proper data. These errors can be reduced or prevented by big data, that can be leveraged in the analysis of patient data and prescription of medication. Big data can be used to corroborate and flag a specific medication that has adverse side effects or flag prescription mistake and save a life.

4. Assisting in high-risk patients

Digitization of hospital records creates comprehensive data that can be accessed to understand the patterns of a particular group of patients. These patterns can help in the identification of patients that visit a hospital repeatedly and understand their health issues. This will help doctors identify methods of helping such patients accurately and gain insight for corrective measures, that will reduce their regular visits.

Big data offers obvious advantages to global healthcare. Although many hospitals have not fully capitalized on the advantages brought about by this technology, the truth is that using it will increase efficiency in the provision of healthcare services.

Datanomix Inc. today announced the availability of its Fusion platform in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Microsoft Azure. CNC manufacturing companies can now take advantage of the scalability, high availability, and security of Azure, with streamlined deployment and management. Datanomix Fusion is the pulse of production for modern machine shops. By harnessing the power of machine data and secure cloud access, Datanomix has created a rich visual overlay of factory floor production intelligence to increase the speed and effectiveness of employees in the global Industry 4.0 workplace.

Datanomix provides cloud-based, production intelligence software to manufacturers using CNC tools to produce discrete components for the medical equipment, aerospace, defense and automotive industries with its Fusion platform. Fusion is accessible from any device, giving access to critical insights in a few clicks, anytime and anywhere. Fusion is a hands-free, plug-and-play solution for shop floor productivity. 

By establishing a data connection to machines communicating via industry-standard protocols like MTConnect or IO-Link, Fusion automatically tracks what actual production is by part and machine and sets a benchmark for expected performance. To measure performance against expected benchmarks, a simple letter grade scoring system is shown across all machines. In cases where output has not kept pace with the benchmark, the Fusion Factor would decline, informing workers that expected results could be in jeopardy. 

“Our Fusion platform delivers productivity wins for our customers using a real-time production scoring technology we call Fusion Factor,” said John Joseph, CEO of Datanomix. “By seeing exactly what is happening on the factory floor, our customers experience 20-30% increases in output by job, shorter time to problem resolution and a direct correlation between part performance and business impact. We give the answers that matter, when they matter and are excited to now give access to the Azure community.” 

By seeing the entire factory floor and providing job-specific production intelligence in real-time, there is no more waiting until the end of the day to see where opportunities for improvement exist. In TV Mode, displays mounted on the shop floor rotate through the performance metrics of every connected machine, identifying which machines need assistance and why.

“TV Mode has created a rallying point that didn’t exist on the shop floor previously. Fusion brings people together to troubleshoot today’s production challenges as they are happening. The collaboration and camaraderie is a great boost not only to productivity, but also morale,” says Joseph.  

Continuous improvement leaders can review instant reports offered by Fusion that answer common process improvement questions ranging from overall capacity utilization and job performance trends to Pareto charts and cell/shift breakdowns. A powerful costing tool called Quote Calibration uses all of the job intelligence Fusion collects to help business leaders determine the actual profit and loss of each part, turning job costing from a blind spot to a competitive advantage.

Sajan Parihar, Senior Director, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. said, “We’re pleased to welcome Datanomix to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, which gives our partners great exposure to cloud customers around the globe. Azure Marketplace offers world-class quality experiences from global trusted partners with solutions tested to work seamlessly with Azure.”

The Azure Marketplace is an online market for buying and selling cloud solutions certified to run on Azure. The Azure Marketplace helps connect companies seeking innovative, cloud-based solutions with partners who have developed solutions that are ready to use.

Learn more about Fusion at its page in the Azure Marketplace.

For any business, minimizing time to insight is a significant cost-saving driver. This is the reason for the increased adoption and investments in big data. As competition in different industries hots up, organizations increasingly feel the need to learn quickly and act faster. Survey indicates that 83.5% of survey respondents view factors related to speed, insight, and business agility as the main reasons for increased investment in big data. According to research, customers would be reluctant to shop with a given retailer if they receive poor customer service and a bad experience. This is revenue lost, a potential increase in shipping costs, and a risk of product returns that may never be resolved. Here are some ways you can prepare to boost your returns with big data in your e-commerce business.

1. Use e-commerce returns data to improve your business

Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce retailers have no luxury of physical interaction with customers. This has a significant effect on product returns for e-commerce retailers, which are always higher. To mitigate this challenge and reduce the costs caused by product returns, Shopify returns management software, which automates and eases the return process, is now a proper solution for many online retailers. Although there are various solutions that help save time, most of them do not give retailers the necessary insights needed to improve their products or websites.

With big data, retailers can identify the challenges in their websites, such as misleading product photos, inaccurate product descriptions, inconsistencies in sizing conventions, and how often they drive product returns. Get feedback from shoppers concerning the problems they encounter and the leading causes of returns. This information can help improve products. Use the data to align the shoppers’ expectations and reality. Identify why certain products have high returns and spot issues by looking at the frequently used words.

2. Use the returns data to learn about your shoppers

One of the biggest challenges that retailers face in e-commerce is knowing their shoppers' interests, purchase patterns, and challenges. Although returns may have implications on the cost of running a business, it is not entirely a bad thing. It shows that a customer was close to getting what they needed. You can learn a lot about the needs of customers and their relationship with your brand without ever meeting them. The comments from customers are valuable in improving customers’ experience. Comments about returns give unique positive and negative feedback that can offer insight into the shortcomings of a product and shine a light on issues that may otherwise go unnoticed. Big data helps retailers identify acquisition and retention, which are critical for the survival of the e-commerce retail business. With big data, you learn when the customers are likely to repurchase, how customers have changed over time, and revenue coming from return customers, among other critical things necessary to run a business.

3. Use e-commerce returns data to evaluate and improve operations

The operational processes in retail have a substantial impact on customer experience. Proper operational processes enhance efficiency and allow products you order to arrive in time. For instance, if a customer orders a swimsuit for a pool party event, it should arrive in time for use in that event. If the product arrives late and the client does not receive a refund for several weeks, it would have a negative experience for the customer who will never shop on that website again. With such problematic processes, you will never compete in today’s business landscape. Blend sales and returns data to help improve your processes both in the forward supply chain and reverse supply chain. This is the only way you can compete in the modern retail landscape.

The holiday season is here again, and you do not need a crystal ball to know that the year’s biggest shopping season is here with us. According to a survey, November and December account for about half of the annual sales for many retailers. Although you might have been successful in the past holiday seasons, every holiday season is unique and often comes with its share of unique challenges. We bring fresh insights for better holiday shopping results to help you deal with this year’s challenges. With these insights, retailers are informed and inspired, and the shoppers are empowered. 

1. Online sales will continue rising

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased online sales on a scale never witnessed before. This was evident in 2020, which broke records. This year, you should expect online sales to continue growing for about 10% in the US and around 7% in the rest of the world. As we inch closer to November and December, known for increased shopping activity, online shoppers in the US will spend over $259 billion and about $1.2 trillion globally. This means that you need to have an excellent online presence as a retailer.

2. Gift cards will continue being a leading choice for consumers

Gift cards still rule the shopping world, and you are likely to get a few in the coming season. Therefore, as the new season draws closer, prepare gift cards for your customers because it is still one of the favorite discount options. Whether you are running a department store or a grocery store, gift cards might work well for your customers.

3. Rising costs will affect the shopping experience

There has been an increase in the cost of doing business across the world. This has led to the rise in labor costs and the costs associated with freight and manufacturing. As the holiday season gets closer, consumers will pay 20% more for their shopping as retailers and manufacturers raise the cost of products. This will likely affect shopping this holiday season as most people scale down their shopping.

4. There will be more swapping and shopping post-holiday

After the holidays, some people would expect a reduction in shopping activity. However, this is not always the case. Expect more shopping and swapping to go on even after the holidays as consumers plan to cash in on after-holiday bargains where the cost of products has dropped. Most consumers also expect to return gifts after the holidays, meaning shopping will continue some days after the holidays have ended.

5. Social media is still king

Social media continues to rule the marketing world, and this will not be different in the coming holiday season. As holidays get nearer, many retail companies will use hashtags to drive their sales messaging about their products. As retailers take advantage of social media platforms for marketing, you will see different hashtags. The only thing that retailers need to do is be consistent and look at the trends and what customers love. Companies will embrace concepts such as Facebook Live video to market their products.

Generally, with the pandemic still in place, there are still many challenges that make this year’s holiday experience different than ever before. Although in-store shopping will continue, online shopping is gaining momentum, and many retailers will continue embracing it. Millennial shoppers are most likely to increase their shopping and spend more money during the holiday season. On the contrary, the older shoppers tend to stick with their budget, although they will spend more compared to last year where the pandemic was at its peak. Regardless of the differences between this year’s shopping habits compared to those of the other years, you must have a concrete strategy to appeal to your customers.

As the holiday season approaches, retailers increasingly feel pressure from different quarters to deliver the best customer experience. Despite the disruption by the pandemic, reports indicate that online sales will grow significantly as the holiday season draws closer. However, the only question is, how ready are we? Have you taken advantage of technologies such as analytics to improve your business processes and seize opportunities presented by the pandemic? One of the things you can take advantage of going ahead is big data. Here are some ways that big data can help your holiday plans this year.

1. Look at the future of retail

Things have substantially changed because of the pandemic, and the changes might not go away any time soon. As such, consumer expectations have increased in number and complexity. This has set the bar high for retailers who need to do more than they used to do before. Today, customers are forced to collect more data from their customers from everywhere so that they can accommodate them. The only way marketers can capture the shoppers' attention and assess the competition is to take advantage of analyzed data and insights from different sources. Data allows marketers to develop messaging and products that suit their customers.

2. Using predictive modeling to optimize pricing

The constant competition and the ever-changing pricing models are a challenge to retailers during holidays. However, big data and analytics can help retailers anticipate pricing based on the competitors’ prices and the market demands. Based on data from best-selling items, profits, and inventory levels, retailers can improve their prices and achieve their targets.

3. Handling rising user traffic

During holidays, retailers are forced to work extra hard to meet the rising needs of the customers. This can even be worse for online retailers who are sometimes overwhelmed in holidays such as Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and even Christmas. During such moments, the cost of operations can skyrocket, mainly when it comes to cloud storage space. Due to the increase in traffic from customers, retailers can use previous data to assess the increasing demand, including aspects such as geographical location and timelines.

4. Use analytics to plan supply chain

During holidays, supply chains face many challenges, and the pandemic might have made things even worse than ever. According to Shopify, ecommerce marketing holidays, returns for expensive products surge to 30% and may go as high as 50%. This means that if you don’t handle marketing well during the holidays, things may go wrong. This may reverse the efforts you have put for months. Therefore, you must take advantage of data to find the best policies that will work well in your supply chain. The correct data allows you to identify the mistakes made in the past and solutions to the problems. Analyze the vehicle maintenance logs, past service conditions, past problems, customer complaints, and feedback data. All this big data will allow you to improve your services. Furthermore, the correct information can be used to create custom digital lists for mailing and marketing.

As we approach the busy holiday season, big data and data-driven insights will significantly help retailers and customers. Big data and analytics give retailers the much-needed knowledge that enhances understanding of opportunities, challenges, and threats that may affect the delivery of services. As such, retailers must ensure that their strategies with regard to data offer insights and information needed to address problems in real-time. With this in mind and well addressed, you can be ready to start serving your customers properly during this busy season.

Ever since it became available in 2011 as an open-source program, Hadoop has made a significant impact in solving big data issues. It has also undergone significant transformations that have not only made it more robust but effective as well. Since it was founded, Hadoop has gone through major changes in versions that have made it stand tall in the big data arena. The good thing about Hadoop is that it has an active community that releases updates that keep the platform new. The latest update on Hadoop is Apache Hadoop 3.x rolled out in 2017. This new version comes with bug fixes, features, and enhancements over Hadoop 2.x. Here are some of the new features that will boost Hadoop in version 3.x that you need to know.

• JDK is the Minimum runtime version for Hadoop 3.x

With the end of Oracle JDK 7 in 2015, Hadoop 3.0 JAR files are compiled to run on a new version-JDK 8. This enables Hadoop 3.x to have a new dependency upgrade to modern versions because most libraries support only Java 8 and above.  Hadoop users who still use lower versions need to upgrade to the higher JDK 8 version compatible with these files.

• Erasure coding in HDFS support

With the rapid growth in data and the data center hardware, erasure coding support in Hadoop 3.0 is a critical feature. This technique lets any random piece of data be recovered based on another piece of data.  This technique is like an advanced RAID technique that automatically recovers data when hard disks fail. The HDFS in Hadoop 2.0 inherits a 3-way replication from Google File System (GFS) to replicate each piece of data thrice for the purpose of reliability. Hadoop 3.0 will cut physical disk usage by more than half, and the fault tolerance also increases by more than 50%. This new feature in Hadoop 3.0 will save customers a lot of money on hardware infrastructure.

• Shell script rewrite

The previous versions of Hadoop had many bugs and compatibility issues. With this, the new version of Hadoop shell scripts have been rewritten to resolve bugs, compatibility issues, and installation problems. Some of the critical areas that have been updated include all the shell script subsystems, which now execute Hadoop-env.sh, allowing all environment variables to be in a single place. With this new version, daemonization has been moved from -daemon.sh to the bin command. The updated scripts test and report error messages better. These are just a few of the updates.

• Support for opportunistic container

The Execution Type notion has been introduced in the new version to allow applications to request containers that can be of an opportunistic type. The update allows containers to be dispatched for execution in the Node Manager even without any resource. Containers are queued at Node Manager, waiting for resources before it can start. The new opportunistic containers are of low priority and are preempted. As such, cluster utilization has been improved in the new version significantly.

• Port changes for various services and the addition of new of new default ports

There have been notable changes in default ports such as the movement of Secondary NameNode, NameNode, DataNode, and KMS to Linux ephemeral port range (32768-61000) to avoid any potential bind errors on startup due to conflict with other applications. With this feature, there is enhanced reliability with regard to rolling restarts on larger clusters of Hadoop.

Although these are just a few improvements that have been made on Hadoop 3.0, the updates are a major advancement in the big data space. With the above features and others that were not covered and others that are likely to be announced in the coming days, Hadoop will remain a competitive platform for the unforeseeable future.