SigmaWay Blog

While some industries are beginning to see the transformational capacity of big data and predictive analytics, these methods haven't quite panned out for supply-chain managers. The reason is that the largest obstacles happen to be the cost of hiring experienced employees. Researchers Matthew Waller and Stanley Fawcett write in a paper that the convergence of predictive analytics and big data has the capacity to change the way in which supply-chains managers lead. The goal is to increase the understanding of how to utilize big data efficiently and develop a new breed of supply chain leaders that are experienced in using data and analytics judiciously. A recent Wall Street Journal article quoting a survey by The Economist points out that while most companies see the value in using predictive analytics and big data to eliminate increasingly complex issues within their supply chains, they still perceive the cost of deployment as too high.Read more at: 

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/are-predictive-analytics-transforming-your-supply-chain/

Over the past two years, one of the seminal issues regarding Big Data was storage, especially with respect to the exponential growth and size of unstructured data that did not fit into databases. Today, however, the competitive landscape is very different. Proper storage is merely a pre-condition to finding the real jewels in Big Data-turning data from massive streams into knowledge, and thereby actionable intelligence in real time as events unfold. The following five steps are imperative to master Big Data and drive business growth:

1. Infer, Infer, Infer- Inferences transform data into knowledge, which results in greater process transparency and improvements.

2. Empower a C-Level Data and Predictive Analytics Champion. - With big data analytics changing rapidly and straining information structures, corporations and governments need “executive horsepower” behind its data initiatives.

3. Assess And Modify Your Supply Chain In A Multidimensional Global Context. - Analysis of supply chain will ultimately include relationships with parties such as customers, manufacturer, etc. 

4. Give Your Data Time-Critical Situational Awareness. - Analytics help a business line identify potential points of improvement.

5.   Rely On a Core Platform That Creates Derivative Intelligence and Knowledge in Real Time -statistical inferences can turn data into actionable intelligence that supports reasoned decisions. Read more at: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkerschberg/2014/01/03/five-steps-to-master-big-data-and-predictive-analytics-in-2014/

Sales and marketing platforms can easily be combined to generate a closed-loop approach to marketing analytics whereas business analytics understands the structure of the past to estimate what might happen in the future. Through marketing analytics, marketers can easily measure all aspects of their marketing efforts. Business Analytics can measure everything from warehouse efficiency and manufacturing. Business Analytics typically incorporate high level data from each department to gain knowledge of how the organization works. What makes marketing analytics different from other business analytics, is its concentration on real market output. Marketing analytics go beyond measuring strictly online performance and provide representatives from sales, customer service and senior business management with real market feedback that helps guide decisions on where to invest and how to prioritize. Thus marketing and business analytics are really a two way street - without marketing data business analytics wouldn't tell the whole tale, and vice versa. Read more at: 

http://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-analytics-vs-business-analytics

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There are many parts to a customer service strategy. The benefits of social media is overlooked. In today's world, an existence on social media is as important as having a toll-free phone number. Here are just a few of the reasons why. The benefits of two-way brand engagement. Customers like it when commerce shares information, instructions, thoughts, and humor across social media.  Social media an addition of contact data: clients remain for  reply to their comments or distress fast. Pinch complaints in the sprout with ease: ignoring  social media won't discontinue clients from talking on Twitter or Facebook.  Spot trends as -- or before -- they occur: Responsive brands pay close notice to what consumers are discussing about in order to mark movement before it's too late. have additional admission to customers: Social media conduit shouldn't be measured an publicity prospect. . Read more at:

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-social-media-impacts-customer-service

 Amazon CloudWatch Logs is a service that  helps us to watch, accumulate, and access our system, application, and practice log files from Amazon EC2 instances. e.g., we can monitor request logs for specific literal terms  or calculate the number of occurrences of a literal term at a particular location in log data (such as "404" status codes in an Apache access log). When the term we are penetrating for is found, CloudWatch Logs reports the data to an Amazon CloudWatch metric that we specify. We can then recover the linked log data from CloudWatch Logs if, for example, the count of "NullReferenceExceptions" exceeds its normal range. Following are the steps to arrange Amazon CloudWatch Logs with AWS OpsWorks. Step 1: Create Recipes. Step 2: Extend the AWS IAM Role.Step 3: Create an OpsWorks Stack. Step 4: Add a Layer. Step 5: Add an Instance. Step 6: View your Logs. Read more at: 

http://blogs.aws.amazon.com/application-management/post/TxTX72HFKVS9W9/Using-Amazon-CloudWatch-Logs-with-AWS-OpsWorks

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Data analysts want data in their data warehouse. When transaction-optimized databases were used for warehousing analysts would replicate data from manufacture systems into the data warehouse at the cost of change throughput. Analytics data warehouses are usually loaded numerous times each day, but often clients want to revive data every hour, every minute. This post outlines best practices for using Amazon Redshift for micro-batch loading and is planned for data architects, data modelers, and DBAs. Any data model can be laden via micro-batching, but data prepared as a time series is often ideal for this type of loading. To make the COPY command as capable as probable, ask it to do as little as promising . Read more at:

http://blogs.aws.amazon.com/bigdata/post/Tx2ANLN1PGELDJU/Best-Practices-for-Micro-Batch-Loading-on-Amazon-Redshift

Many healthcare executives consider that, due to the insightful nature of remedial care, patients don’t desire to apply digital services apart from  a few exact circumstances; conclusion makers frequently quote data that indicate to reasonably small use of digital healthcare services. The consequences of their survey disclose something quite unlike. The cause patients are reluctant to accept digital healthcare is primarily since accessible services don’t meet their wants or because they are of deprived quality. All the countries in the survey, more than 75 percent of like to use digital healthcare services, till those services meet their requirements and supply the level of superiority they anticipate . Of course, no digital channels will keep on to be significant and essential, so digital channels will have to be fixed through multichannel idea. Read more at: 

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/health_systems_and_services/healthcares_digital_future

Market Research explains what customers and target market participants are thinking, doing and why. But, the question is: is it worthwhile, or a waste of time and resources? Three reasons why Market Research is a waste of time and resources: First, we already know our customers, prospects, channel members, industry pundits and even competitors. Second, research is too vague and directional. Third, research is often flat wrong. These are the most prevalent or compelling reasons to doubt the efficacy of market research. But a question that arises is why does market research is favored, in spite of this well-deserved criticism? The answer is because some knowledge is better than none. Second is serendipity: the focus on the critical market assumptions supporting a decision break down into subtle sub-questions that get answered in unexpected and unanticipated ways, and are both exciting and useful. Any good research answers a lot of questions, but raises even more questions to be answered; some are answered in the process unexpectedly. Last reason is being wrong is career-threatening. Read more at: 

Strategic Focus report analyses drivers, current trends and inhibitors, outlines the evolution of BI technologies, identifies and assesses the best performing vendors in the market. The BI market is going through a transformational phase where vendors are looking to develop analytical tools for broader market usage and not just for power users. BI vendors are striving to enhance the functionality of their mobile. The top ten BI vendors constitute a significant share of the total market. The reasons to buy are: It helps the reader to understand the BI market landscape, drivers, the recent trends and inhibitors shaping the BI segment, provide an assessment of business intelligence vendors and their relative performance in the business intelligence market. The most exhaustive and up-to-date report providing revenue opportunity forecasts in the business intelligence market from 2014 to 2018 and extensive technology growth predictions based on adoption indicators, end-user technology demand, and macroeconomic factors. Read more at: 

There are two myths that need to be disproved about Marketing Research: Expensive and time intensive. The internet has two important sources of information: Firstly, the websites which companies, organizations and individuals have created to promote or communicate their products, services or views; secondly, user groups that are made up of people who have an interest in a particular industry or subject. A few tips work well for internet market research. One should draft a list of questions and ask the same questions of every customer, to obtain better comparisons and validate the data. There are many free online survey cloud options to collect information. One should look for a free package that provides a link to the survey which he can post the link on social networks and email out to the customer or subscriber base – ensuring to get a feedback from people. He may offer an incentive prize that will be appealing to the audience, if he wants to improve survey response rates. Read more at: 

There are many CRM packages, the best ones linked to accounting software systems, that provide easy storage of customer and supplier information to answer the questions of who, what, how much, where and when your customer buys. Internet technology today has reduced costs and shortened time frames by using online surveys. A major criticism of internet surveys is that that they don't represent an accurate sample of the population and so a skilled marketing research person really adds value that is worth paying for. There are two tests for accuracy and soundness of the marketing research results: A skilled marketing research person ensures validity and reliability by accurately defining the problem to be solved; the correct questions to ask; and whether there are other cost-effective ways to get the result. After gathering the information from the correct primary sample; a skilled marketing research person adds value by being able to spot differences, draw conclusions and make recommendations.To know more, follow the link: 

Instead of conducting traditional in-person focus groups with these difficult to reach audiences, webcam-enabled online focus groups engage the audiences in real time group discussions. These tools have improved our ability to collect in-context consumer feedback and it is easy to conduct research with participants that are more difficult to recruit, widely geographically dispersed, or otherwise challenging to engage in research. Respondents seem to be more relaxed and are thus more open and willing to share their true thoughts, because they are participating from their natural home or work environment. Online focus groups participants seem willing to disagree with one another because there is not an in-person social pressure to conform to group opinions. Online focus groups also eliminates the need for research teams and clients to travel providing further benefits of convenience and travel cost savings. Read more at: 

A survey reveals that moving to a new home may damage more than your personal belongings and scars personal relationships. It is found that of those in a relationship, more than one third say moving has scarred their relationship due to decreased intimacy, increased fighting and financial strain. 46 percent of respondents say they disagreed over where to move and 42 percent say they fought over the reason for the move. Those with children say the stress hit the whole family with "choosing the right school" and "helping the kids find new friends". Nearly one in three respondents admitted they had "accidentally" lost one of their partner's prized possessions. More than half of the respondents said that today's neighbors are not as friendly as the neighbors they remember as a child because they "seem too busy" where nearly half of respondents also voted "meeting new neighbors" as a top three requirement to feeling comfortable and settled in a new home. Today's movers need a helping hand to feel comfortable and learn more about their brand new surroundings. Read more at:

Consultants and pharmaceutical companies alike control the market intelligence channels to better understand their target patient population. Big Data offers a lot of opportunities to optimize commercial strategies from helping to identify opportunities for new therapies to assessing the success of current products. Surveyed companies are using Big Data initiatives to better target products or to assess the performance of products already on the market. Pharmacy companies are more likely to focus Big Data initiatives on current products, mainly on the success of drugs on the market. Many surveyed consultant companies use Big Data to assist in developing new therapies compared to the pharmaceutical companies. As data become more useful and the benefits more obvious, the prevalence of Big Data-driven market intelligence initiatives will continue to increase. A decision on regulations guiding social media marketing in particular also help companies decide which market intelligence strategies to attack. From the earliest to latest stages of drug marketing, companies are working quickly to discover the opportunities posed by Big Data. Read more at: 

One of the marketing questions is: "Is there a pattern to how best customers are acquired, and if so, how to repeat it?" If customers' interactions are tracked prior to their first purchase, and track which ones remain good customers and which ones we never see again, then we much more informed decisions can be made about spending precious customer acquisition marketing budget. Three things we should consider are:  Firstly whether you're an online-only or a multi-channel retailer, think about how to collect pre-purchase activity data, even if the data is anonymous. Secondly, think about how you can correlate this data with your customer purchase history. Thirdly, look for repeatable acquisition patterns among your customers, and don't forget to look at timing patterns as well as the usual sources and marketing types. Read more at: 

A research suggests that people still think charities are spending more than double the acceptable amount on administration costs also think only around a third of income is actually spent on the cause. People think charities spend 37% of their income on administration costs, more than twice the 15% they feel would be acceptable. The public overestimate how much is spent on fundraising and 'admin' and underestimate how much is spent on the cause. The public is much stricter than charities when it comes to defining spending on 'the cause'. To close the gap between public perception and charity reality, charities will have to work much harder if they are. Charities must start talking to donors, volunteers, public to help people understand not only what their money is being spent on, but also why it is money well spent. 65% people see a charity's chief executive as an admin cost and 45% think a director managing several medical research projects is admin, the same as paying volunteer expenses. Read more at: 

Big data is very much in rage these days and social media networks are some of the largest sources of big data. There are billions of posts, connections and shares which can be analyzed. Buried in this social data are insights that can help to progress advertising and give the aggressive edge. It can be expensive and take a lot of time to analyze social data.What are the benefits we are looking to achieve- Improving audience, positive feedback and praise, more engagement in conversations, better understanding of our target audience,converting people to customers and doing better than our competitors. Read more at: 

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-use-social-analytics-improve-your-performance

According to research iOS users constitute the majority of the mobile commerce market across iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry devices in UK. Apple's domination is even greater in case of tablet users, with iPad owners representing a higher proportion of the user base and also being more likely to shop. Apple's dominance is also for purchases made via apps. Windows users are also more regular shoppers than those on Android for both Surface tablet and Windows Phone users. The variety of purchase choices in the top five suggests that it is convenience rather than price that drives mobile purchases, as users are opting for high-value items such as hotels, train tickets and clothing alongside less expensive items. When it comes to location, mobile does not necessarily mean 'out and about' as 64% of mobile device owners say 'at home' is the primary place where their mobile website browsing takes place, and 80% for tablet browsing. The overriding lesson from the study is that commerce must be increasingly Omni channel in order to meet customer demand. Read more at:

Having the right market intelligence tools, talent and processes is the key to success. The programs help companies manage this increased uncertainty by taking a greater responsibility for strategic analysis. B2B brands achieve world class market intelligence in the following ways: Firstly, create external networks by identifying low value and time-consuming intelligence deliverables, encourage the involvement of investment relations teams in market intelligence, participate in market intelligence conferences and workshops Secondly, link to business strategy like conduct an intelligence needs survey and analysis to show how the market intelligence team can better support the business. Thirdly, become a trusted advisor. Fourthly, tackle sidetracking issues. Market intelligence needs to be put into the decision-making process in key areas such as innovation, strategy, sales and marketing. Read more at: 

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Social media changes and news are annoying, customs to conquer them. Here’s how:1. expand an incorporated marketing plan. Social media shouldn’t be our only online promotion conduit.  Balance our merge with actions such as electronic mail marketing, guest blogging or search engine marketing. Along with digital marketing, leverage conventional advertising approaches such as networking, product demos ,seminars, and tradeshows. 2. employ it as a produce catalogue. Utilize communal media to give clients an appropriate guide. As per  to  marketer, 37% of US buyers use societal media to explore brands or services that they're trading. This regards that clients be going on companies’ Facebook, Pinterest, or LinkedIn pages to study about the profit and features of their gifts and balance them with opposing brand. 3. Leverage to stay in regulars remind sets. 44% of Twitter users not at all tweet or most LinkedIn users don’t interrelate with brand on LinkedIn.

Read more at:http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-overcome-social-media%E2%80%99s-most-frustrating-challenges-1