With tons of data available with marketers to measure the impact of their business, one thing that need to be kept in mind is not to get entangled in measuring everything. Measuring something that does not have the capability to influence your corporate strategy isn’t a good idea. Knowing what your business is trying to achieve and then deciding on marketing metrics is foremost.  Steve Robins, principal of Solution Marketing Strategy, in an article in TechTarget provides the following points of advice to detangle your metrics:
• Separating strategic KPI’s from nonstrategic metrics
• What to measure?
• Operationalizing KPI’s
• Metrics predict the future
• Finally, looking at best practices
For more insights into this piece follow the link:  : http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/feature/Dont-get-tangled-in-marketing-metrics?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_45313060&utm_campaign=20150716_Spend%20management:%20Were%20SAP%27s%20procurement%20acquisitions%20really%20worth%20$15%20billion?_jbiscobing&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1815&ad=901719&src=901719

Decisions on cloud use and spending involves various business units like engineering team, operations, finance etc. Key to cost cloud cost management is to make all the teams accountable for cloud expenditure. This can be done by putting data in hands of people, enacting policies and evangelizing best practices and finally incentivizing good spending behavior and habits. Michelle Boisvert, executive site editor for searchAWS.com in an article talks about cost conscious culture for managing AWS costs. She further talks about the 5 stages of cost management:
• Create visibility into cloud costs.
• Focus on allocating costs so you know who is responsible for what in the AWS bill.
• Promote efficient behavior to drive down the AWS bill.
• Implement cost saving methods
• Focus on unit cost, not overall cost to understand savings.
For more on this follow the link:  http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/4500249787/AWS-cloud-cost-management-The-buck-stops-with-you?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_45439492&utm_campaign=20150720_NoSQL%20cloud%20database%20service%20targets%20developers_msargent&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1839&src=901868

People are increasingly using mobile devices to interact through mobile browsers and apps. As a result mobile analytics is occupying an important position in the analytics world. Jeremy Levy, CEO of Indicative and previously co-founder of Xtify and Meetmoi, in a special guest feature in Inside Big data talks about how mobile analytics is changing and how to navigate in the changed scenario. He believes that the changes in the field of mobile analytics are driven primarily by three factors- access to attribution data, deeplinking and new platforms for some of the largest players in mobile. Again there are 3 factors that will define the success in the changed scenario- 

• Clean attribution

• Tracking deeplinks properly 

• Finally, flexible analytics tools

For more on this hit the link http://insidebigdata.com/2015/07/17/thriving-in-the-new-mobile-analytics-ecosystem/

Big Data appears to be the solution of every problem, especially when it comes to IT. But, one thing we often forget is that the big repository of data is useful only when one is able to generate actionable insights from it. Otherwise, it’s just another stack of data. With organizations becoming increasingly dependent on technology for every aspect of business operations, IT enterprises are finding themselves locked with big data with no useful insights. Raja Mukerji, president of ExtraHop, in an article in Inside Big data talks about IT operation analytics as the most viable solution to this problem and how it has emerged as a framework for a horizontal approach to Big Data in IT. He believes that ITOA will help release useful insights form IT Big data and the horizontal, silo buster approach will transform IT from a mere support system into a strategic business driver. For more on this piece follow the link http://insidebigdata.com/2015/07/18/taking-a-horizontal-approach-to-big-data-for-better-it-and-business-outcomes/

Internet of Things has become the second name for futuristic technology and advancement. Automotive sector has always been the first to absorb sophistication. With increasing propagation of embedded in-vehicle connectivity and smartphone integration platform, connecting automotive technology with phones, watches and computers will be a rage. Connected cars, as we might call them, will be extremely helpful in combating traffic congestion, reducing fuel consumption and road accidents. But, with this huge opportunity comes challenges like affordability, threats like malware, odometer fraud, hacking etc. Todd Franks in a blogpost in CloudTweaks believes that connected cars will definitely be the future of automobile industry. For more insight please click the link http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/07/connected-cars-the-challenges-and-benefits/

Business Intelligence gives business owners an outline of their performance, which is essential to gain important insights and plan for future growth of the company. Often business owners are caught up in dealing with day today operational problems that they forget to look at bigger picture and plan to remain ahead of the crowd. Paul Robertson, in a blogpost in Phocas advices that business intelligence tools are a must to make informed and accurate decision. He puts forth 5 indications that will help you identify if your business need to upgrade its BI:

• Your idea of business intelligence is a spreadsheet.

• Your business intelligence process is largely manual.

• It takes few days to draw insight from your data.

• You can’t perform in-depth analysis of your data.

• You don’t know how well your business is performing. 

If any of them is affirmative for you then it’s time for better BI. For more insights click on the link http://www.phocassoftware.com/5-Signs-Your-Company-Needs-Better-Business-Intelligence

Mobile Apps have been at the center of customer based marketing. With the sea of options to choose from, retention of customer is not only about the attractive feature but also about the user experience it creates. Bryn Adler, content marketing manager at Localytics, has a piece of advice, which will help grow your app experience and reduce churn. Here are 7 points to keep in mind:

• No misleading Ads

• Lead with value

• User experience is paramount 

• Use data to track usage, retention and engagement

• Targeted marketing is smarter marketing 

• Feedback is the holy text

• Predicting churn 

For more on this click the link http://www.business2community.com/mobile-apps/making-customers-happy-in-the-age-of-options-reduce-churn-retain-app-users-01271973

There is no doubt about the revolution that big data has brought to the way business is done. But, most of the talk has been around the structured data. It has been increasingly becoming clear that the potential of big data can be truly understood if we take up the challenge of harvesting unstructured data. Jonathan Buckley, senior vice president of marketing at Qubole, in an article in Smartdatacollective emphasizes that if businesses want to remain relevant and profitable then it’s the right time to turn their attention to text analytics. The most important advantage that text analytics have is that it provides with a much larger sample of customer sentiment and extract data which is otherwise not quantifiable. But all of this boils down to having the right technology. For more on this follow the link http://www.smartdatacollective.com/jonathanbuckley/329383/text-analytics-next-frontier-big-data

The huge demand of predictive analytics has led to various trainings been sprung up to impart or at least promising to impart the kind of skills required for developing an analytics model. But more often than not it forgets the primary ingredient. Geert Verstraeten, managing Partner and professional trainer of Python Predictions, feels that understanding the main project phases is the most important thing. He explains these phases with an interesting analogy- developing analytics model is as simple as making soup in a soup bar. Here are 5 phases of model building: 

• Taking the order- Project Definition 

• Mise en place- Data Preparation 

• Cooking the soup- Model building 

• Tasting the soup- Model Validation

• Serving the soup- Model Usage

This makes learning more engaging. To keep enjoying the analogy, click the link http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/patimes/how-to-manage-projects-in-predictive-analytics0710151/

Annual marketing data benchmark report reveals that around 84% of marketing database are non-functional, 64% of records do not include a phone number and only 35% of emails were identified to be functional. Undoubtedly, this will take the profits on a downward flight. Larisa Bedgood in her post on Datamentors tells us 4 ways we can bring the data to shape and extract higher revenues.

• Begin with Data Assessment

• Establish Business Processes to ensure data quality

• Establish an ROI to fund new marketing database initiatives

• Implement a data management solution 

For more on this click the link http://www.datamentors.com/blog/dont-lose-revenue-bad-data-4-tips-whip-your-marketing-data-shape

Make way, its drone landing on your terrace with your favorite pizza. That’s how your favorite pizza outlet might advertise in a few years down the line. IoT based drones for pizza delivery is going to be the buzz for both pizza vendors and consumers. You get your pizza faster, it’s not soggy and sizzling hot direct from oven to your home. Scott Andreson, Director of consulting Services at CGI, in a post on Cloud Tweaks give us fascinating insights about this new possibility, the challenges which are likely to occur and of course there will be a few solutions too.  All you pizza lovers and technology aficionados hit the link to know more http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/06/hot-emerging-trends-the-pizza-delivery-drone/

With the marketers trying to woo customers with all their grit, it's customer data that has proved to be their friend indeed. Data driven marketing increases the ROI to many fold. This is now a well-documented fact. Larisa Bedgood (author) in an article in the blog Datamentors talks about the following 3 ways to extract more revenue from data driven marketing:

• Break Down the Silos

• A 360-degree customer view

• Personalized experience is what customers want. 

For an extensive account of these 3 keys to higher ROI hit the link http://www.datamentors.com/blog/3-ways-data-driven-marketing-drives-higher-roi

Today, enterprises have come a long way dealing with the big data challenges. But there are more to go. Revisiting a few of them would help understand the task ahead. Timo Elliott, innovation Evangelist for SAP, in his blog Business Analytics talks extensively about the following 5 challenges:

• There’s still a lot of technology to learn

• The right people are still hard to find

• The right business case is key

• Integrating with existing systems is more important

• New business models are the next big opportunity

For an enriching account of each of them follow the link http://timoelliott.com/blog/2015/05/top-big-data-challenges-revisited.html

ITOA or IT operations analytics is a recent entry to the field of analytics. ITOA automates the process of collecting, organizing, and identifying patterns in highly distributed, diverse and fast-changing service and application data to identify problems faster and improve IT system performance. IT Operations Analytics can be applied to the modern IT Infrastructure and Operations environment. What it exactly does is that it Collects, index and monitor logs and events for abnormalities, perform ad-hoc searches of all log data across the entire IT environment from a single console and correlate log data with events and service models, or application groups. This helps in detecting and resolving service issues more quickly than ever before. Read more at: http://insidebigdata.com/2015/06/09/it-operations-analytics/

It's technology on the rocks for whisky lovers. Diageo using new technology to improve its customer experience. They have created a label (read sensor) that will create smart bottles for their whisky. Laura Denham, International Events Director at Innovation enterprise, enlightens us with the smartness of smart bottles. 

• Well, it gives specific information about the whisky helping the customer to select their best fit.

• It helps detect any kind of tampering with the bottle. Fake products will be a history.

• These sensors can’t be cloned. 

• Help track the journey of the bottles and reduce supply chain wastage. 

For more, follow the link http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/whiskey-the-internet-of-things

Security remains a chief inhibitor to enterprise adoption of cloud computing resources. The most significant risk in using the cloud is that sensitive data can be leaked. The macro trend is that more data is going to more end-user devices, which makes controlling the data more difficult and creating more vulnerabilities. With a data classification scheme, organizations can prioritize which data needs to be heavily secured.  David Canellos, President and CEO of Perspecsys, points out 7 cloud security mistake that can be avoided. What more you get 7 safety tips too. To know more follow the link http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/07/7-cloud-security-mistakes-bound-to-bite-you/

Cloud has changed the dynamics of data analytics. It is believed that in the coming five years, organizations will be spending more on cloud based big data and analytics solutions than on the on premise solutions. Dave Wang, senior product marketing manager at Databricks, lists down 5 major reasons why data analytics in cloud is becoming a top priority for organizations trying to build a competitive edge through analytics. To know which among them has an upper hand and why, follow the link http://insidebigdata.com/2015/05/08/5-reasons-data-analytics-in-the-cloud-will-take-center-stage-in-2015/

BYOD (bring your own device) refers to the policy of allowing employees to bring personally owned devices to workplace and access the company's information and application on it. This practice has made major inroads as it helps save cost and ensure productivity gains especially with the variety of devices like tables, smartphone, tabs, laptops etc. at the disposal of the employee. However, BYOD is fraught with security concerns. Such security breaches can outweigh the gains one expects from it. Keith Poyester in an article elaborates on the challenges with BYOD policy and suggests 8 best practices for BYOD security. To know more follow the link http://www.itproportal.com/2015/06/28/great-debate-to-byod-or-not-to-byod/

Imagine your treadmill turning into a wonder machine which knows your fitness goals, takes inputs from you every morning and then suggests the best workout for you. Seems too good to be true. But not that dreamy for Sunil Koduri CEO of Zsolutionz, who believes that fuzzy logic will lie at the helm of realizing this dream. In simple words, fuzzy logic deals with approximate rather than exact reasoning and is most useful where computers are required to make decisions like human. Mr. Koduri, in his special guest feature in Inside Big data talks about how fuzzy logic technology can combine with the huge data generated by wearables to provide personalized fitness experience. No stopping here, all this data from wearables, health history information, and cloud data can be combined to create a huge ecosystem which is user centric to enhance user experience and also keep the healthcare providers in loop. To read the original piece of article, follow the link http://insidebigdata.com/2015/01/12/fuzzy-logic-key-connected-health/

Is your CRM system making you work but isn't working out for your company then here are some tips that will come handy. Oliver Lopez, founder and CEO of Structsales, in his blogpost on Hubspot Blogs puts down 5 points thinking along which one can make for a great CRM system for their organization.

• The relationship between sales process and CRM 

• Find your key performance indicators

• Give Reps clear and compelling guideline

• Link sales process to buying process

• What you need in CRM 

For more takeaways from this piece of information follow the link http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-make-crm-work-for-your-organization-and-not-the-other-way-around