...A REPORT BY HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES Big Data: The Future of Information and Business Sponsored by Big Data: The Future of Information and Business Executive Summary BIG DATA HAS become a catchall phrase, but at its heart, it offers three challenges for organizations. First, business leaders must deploy new technologies and then prepare for a potential revolution in the collection and measurement of information. More important, the entire organization must adapt a new philosophy about how decisions are made, if the real value of big data is to be realized. The amount of data pouring into organizations through ever-expanding channels is staggering. According to one source, more data have been produced in the past two years than in all of prior history. Not only has the volume of data changed, but so has the variety: information is now collected from multiple channels, ranging from Web clicks to the unstructured data from social media. And the velocity at which organizations can now collect, analyze, and respond to data has added a new dimension. Amazon, for instance, uses a dynamic pricing system that crawls over the Web, checks competitors’ prices and product availabilities, and changes the prices on Amazon, in some cases every fifteen seconds. Amazon can collect data from every visitor, every click, and every interaction, which collectively are known as structured data, and it can also collect reviews or evaluations from consumers or their...
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...introduction and of the internet, business organizations have become much more competitive by introducing new marketing and planning strategies. Internet technologies have continued to improve over the years and competition amongst Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have largely benefited consumers as the ISPs have been forced to reduce their service fees in a quest to attract more customers and remaining competitive. Mobile devices have also become much more affordable increasing their availability and also their usefulness in communication and information access (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2012). As a result, mobile devices have largely penetrated the communication industry and have since overtaken the use of computers in accessing the internet (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2012). Consequently, business organizations have since devised better marketing and planning strategies by utilizing Big Data facilities and technologies whereby businesses are capable of deriving user requirements based on the searches potential users conduct on their mobile devices. From our initial report, we were able to highlight how Big Data is utilized in an organization and the accrued advantages against disadvantages of implementing Big Data technologies. We shall begin this report by first responding to the issues raised by management and then continue to make recommendations on the utilization of Big Data. Addressing Feedback Big Data technologies are fairly new...
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...depends upon how closely supply is managed, demands are forecasted, inventories are optimized and logistics are planned. Supply chain is the heart of the retail industry vertical, and if managed efficiently, it drives positive business and enables sustainable advantage, Matthew A and Stanley E (2013). If we observe carefully, huge amount of data is getting generated at each and every stages of the supply chain. In today’s digital world we are generating around 200 Exabyte of data each year, Silva R, Bogdan F and Marcin R (2013). Organizations are increasingly questioning their own ability to realize full potential from the huge amount of data they have within their supply chain, Steve...
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...translated into a business strategy, which serves to remind a company of its purpose. In an increasingly competitive global economy fuelled by technological advances, there is a seemingly prevalent idea that the customer is key and the use of marketing data is therefore crucial to a company’s success. However, the focal point is how a company can ensure their exposure to data is to be informed, not driven by data; and how the data can be used to the company’s advantage in order to achieve long term goals. Business Strategy Johnson et al. (2008), state that strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term. Without a strategy in place to refer to, it is easy for a business to become overly focussed on the day-to-day business activities, temporarily losing sight of the goals and aspirations they have set for the business. This loss of vision can in turn lead to strategic drift, a concept explained by Handy (1989), as being the cause for businesses becoming uncompetitive in their respective environments and ultimately failing as a result of being too slow to respond to external trends and losing touch with customers. One of the main causes for strategic drift is thought to be substantial changes in technology, which have been rapid across the span of the information age. Narayanan & Fahey (1986), highlight that as the external environment changes, business strategies must be modified to take account of newly emerging opportunities and threats and that...
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...DATA You May Not Need Big Data After All by Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath, and Anne Quaadgras FROM THE DECEMBER 2013 ISSUE C ompanies are investing like crazy in data scientists, data warehouses, and data analytics software. But many of them don’t have much to show for their efforts. It’s possible they never will. What’s the problem? To begin with, big data ARTWORK: CHAD HAGEN, GRAPHIC COMPOSITION NO. 2, 2009, DIGITAL has been hyped so heavily that companies are expecting it to deliver more value than it actually can. In addition, analytics-generated insights can be easy to replicate: A financial services company we studied built a model based on an analysis of big data that identified the best place to locate an ATM, only to learn that consultants had already built similar models for several other banks. Moreover, turning insights from data analytics into competitive advantage requires changes that businesses may be incapable of making. One retailer, for example, learned that it could increase profits substantially by extending the time items were on the floor before and after discounting. But implementing that change would have required a complete redesign of the supply chain, which the retailer was reluctant to undertake. The biggest reason that investments in big data fail to pay off, though, is that most companies don’t do a good job with the information they already have. They don’t know how to manage it, analyze it in ways that...
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...Strategies…………….…………………………………………………….. 9 VI. References 1. Rijmenam, M….……………………………………………………………………... 10 2. Hirson, R…………………………………………………….……………………….. 10 3. K.N.C. ……………………………………………………………………………..… 10 4. Hattem, J. .……………………………….………………………………………….. 10 Local restaurant recommendations, personalized ads, enticing offers that seem to be the perfect suggestion. It is fairly common for these types of scenarios to take place and it all is thanks to Big Data. Big Data allows companies to catalog and mine through huge amounts of web files to help them understand their clientele, competitors, and even in Google’s case the web itself. Most large companies seem to love it; it makes their lives easier, marketing simpler and their suggestions more meaningful, however that isn’t always the case with the general public. Before delving deeper one needs to understand why a company needs this type of data, the two companies to be analyzed will be Uber and Google. Uber has recently been growing into a very large contender in the Big Data market. Their first use benefits themselves directly,...
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...HOW FUTURE IT TRENDS WOULD IMPACT ORGANIZATIONS BUSINESS STRATEGIES TO DRIVE INNOVATIONS, ADD VALUE AND GAIN COMPETITIVE EDGE? Chamika Waidyalankara (ECU ID: 10217155) ACBT – Semester II MBA5709 - Information System Challenges in Management Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction 3 2.0 Future IT Trends 4 Internet of Things 4 Cloud Computing 4 BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) 5 Enterprise Mobility 5 Big Data 6 Enterprise Social Networking 6 3D Printing 7 Wearable Computing 8 3.0 Uses and Impact of future technology on organizations 9 4.0 Published case studies and Observations 15 5.0 Key Findings 16 Changing customer landscape 16 Rise of collaborative models 16 Personalization of products and services 16 6.0 Conclusion 17 7.0 Bibliography and References 18 1.0 Introduction Information technology (IT) is an area in which new developments are taking place more and more rapidly. IT has gone through many evolution cycles and today we are in the era of Web 2.0 and 3rd Platform of IT. Technology we used during last decade has become museum exhibits and what was then showcased in Science fictions has become more reality today. Consumer and business tech are merging, where the two going to be barely separable. The 3rd Platform is changing the way we interact with everything. Speculating on what's going to happen over the next few years is of course entertaining. The future of business has always been driven by developments in technology, and the digital revolution...
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...The New Frontier: Data Analytics CIS 500: Information Systems For Decision-Making Anywhere we travel on the internet we have been bombarded with seemingly codependent requests to, “Like US!”, “Follow US!”, “Watch US!”, “Share US!” from businesses of all types. If you think about it, this is exactly the dynamic. Businesses are in a dependent relationship, relying on the consumers for their survival. If a business wants to engage and remain in a viable relationship, it has to have a product/service the consumer desires and be able to deliver it in a manner that the consumer perceives as valuable. Even if a business has the “next greatest thing”, the consumer will not engage/continue in the relationship if the business does not or cannot provide it in a valuable way to the consumer. Amazon is one company that has been able to successfully develop this dynamic relationship. So then how does a business become and remain successful in the relationship? They need a better understanding of what the consumer wants by improving their Business Intelligence (BI). For decades, businesses have used statistics to analyze data to obtain information and insights for improving BI. With the advent of the computer, data analysis moved from statistical based inferences about the data to a more scientific method based on empirical results. This was the foundational begins of Data Analytics. Data Analytics, as defined in our course text is, specialized software, capabilities, and...
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...Business Analytic System enables the organizations to operate more efficiently, discover new insights fast, predict the business atmosphere quickly and help executive managers to make better decisions. There is no doubt that the created value is increasing through the big data and business analyst. However, to answer the question “does increasing analytical capabilities change the business radically or just in a manner of incremental improvement”, divergent views have been held by as regards the academic researchers, and as regards the leading practitioners. In my option, I agree with both of them, because they portray the opportunities or practical challenges the IT-enable system facing. The academic view is supported by Aral and Mithas. Aral believe the nano-data on human behavior rather than data volume itself is the key to create value. He suggests that data scientists should take a good understanding of multi-discipline, like human behavior, biology, and economics. Apple, the most creative company in the world, shows the ambition of dealing with big data. Apple Watch, the new product, keeps track of user’s body information, how much food you take, how much you walk, how many hours you sleep. With the help of experts in health or other domain, generated data can make immense economic income. Another example is Nike Company. Rather than a famous sport band company, Nike+ makes it more like a technology company. Nike+ enables users to track their activities, set personal goals...
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...era of ‘big data’? Brad Brown, Michael Chui, and James Manyika Radical customization, constant experimentation, and novel business models will be new hallmarks of competition as companies capture and analyze huge volumes of data. Here’s what you should know. The top marketing executive at a sizable US retailer recently found herself perplexed by the sales reports she was getting. A major competitor was steadily gaining market share across a range of profitable segments. Despite a counterpunch that combined online promotions with merchandizing improvements, her company kept losing ground. When the executive convened a group of senior leaders to dig into the competitor’s practices, they found that the challenge ran deeper than they had imagined. The competitor had made massive investments in its ability to collect, integrate, and analyze data from each store and every sales unit and had used this ability to run myriad real-world experiments. At the same time, it had linked this information to suppliers’ databases, making it possible to adjust prices in real time, to reorder hot-selling items automatically, and to shift items from store to store easily. By constantly testing, bundling, synthesizing, and making information instantly available across the organization— from the store floor to the CFO’s office—the rival company had become a different, far nimbler type of business. What this executive team had witnessed first hand was the gamechanging effects of big data. Of course...
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...SPECIAL ISSUE: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS: FROM BIG DATA TO BIG IMPACT Hsinchun Chen Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 U.S.A. {hchen@eller.arizona.edu} Roger H. L. Chiang Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0211 U.S.A. {chianghl@ucmail.uc.edu} Veda C. Storey J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302-4015 U.S.A. {vstorey@gsu.edu} Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) has emerged as an important area of study for both practitioners and researchers, reflecting the magnitude and impact of data-related problems to be solved in contemporary business organizations. This introduction to the MIS Quarterly Special Issue on Business Intelligence Research first provides a framework that identifies the evolution, applications, and emerging research areas of BI&A. BI&A 1.0, BI&A 2.0, and BI&A 3.0 are defined and described in terms of their key characteristics and capabilities. Current research in BI&A is analyzed and challenges and opportunities associated with BI&A research and education are identified. We also report a bibliometric study of critical BI&A publications, researchers, and research topics based on more than a decade of related academic and industry publications. Finally, the six articles that comprise this special issue are introduced and characterized in terms of the proposed BI&A research framework. Keywords:...
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...Individual Case Pilot Response: Big Wind 1. What type of research should URS do? Urs should use exploratory research to begin her new Big Wind project (Kotler & Keller, 2012, p.46). This type of research will allow her to define problems with using existing sources of energy and suggest a solution to the problem through the usage of her windmill system idea. She will be able to explain to her potential customer base the benefits associated with transitioning to her windmill system through the use of exploratory research. Once Urs has defined the problem and identified possible solutions she will be able to determine the best research plan, data collection techniques and all the other data needed. The outcome of the exploratory research will provide her with significant insight into the best way to present her idea. This initial research can be used to establish the why, how, when and any other secondary and primary data behind the adoption and implementation of her windmill system. 2. What different research methods should be required to assess the demand for farmers versus small business? Developing an alternative source of energy will benefit both farmers and small businesses because it would reduce energy costs. In order to communicate the impact of her Big Wind project, Urs needs to apply the most effective research approach to sell her idea to these target markets. By using a more qualitative approach, she can gather the data she needs from the farmers. Through...
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...Big Data is a type of new era that will help the competition of companies to capture and analyze huge volumes of data. Big data can come in many forms. For example, the data can be transactions for online stores. Online buying has been a big hit over the last few years, and people have begun to find it easier to buy their resources. When the tractions go through, the company is collecting logs of data to help the company increase their marketing production line. These logs help predict buying patterns, age of the buyer, and when to have a product go on sale. According to Martin Courtney, “there are three V’s of big data which are: high volume, high variety, high velocity and high veracity. There are other sites that use big volumes of data as well. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are among the few. There are many sites that you can share objects to various sources. On Facebook we can post audio, video, and photos to share amongst our friends. To get the best out of these sites, the companies are always doing some type of updating to keep users wanting to use their network to interact with their friends or community. Data is changing all the time. Developers for these companies and other software have to come up with new ways of how to support new hardware to adapt. With all the data in the world, there is a better chance to help make decision making better. More and more information is becoming available at the click of a mouse, which can help...
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...WHITE P APER Big Data: Trends, Strategies, and S AP Technology Sponsored by: SAP Carl W. Olofson August 2012 Dan Vesset THE DAWN OF THE INTE LLIGENT ECONOMY The intelligent economy has arrived. The convergence of intelligent devices, social networking, pervasive broadband communications, and analytics is redefining relationships among producers, distributors, and consumers of goods and services. The growth in volume, variety, and velocity of data has created new challenges and opportunities. The information access, analysis, and management challenges of the intelligent economy can overwhelm organizations unprepared for the emerging changes. In this environment, it is not only access to data but the ability to analyze and act upon it that creates competitive advantage in commercial transactions, enables sustainable and secure management of communities, and promotes appropriate distribution of social, healthcare, and educational services. It is not only access to data but the ability to analyze and act upon it that creates competitive advantage. www.idc.com P.508.872.8200 F.508.935.4015 In This White Paper This IDC white paper discusses the emerging technologies of the Big Data movement. It breaks out these technologies according to their most effective roles and use cases. It also discusses why Big Data has become so important at this time and how Big Data can help enterprises reach their business goals. It considers the challenges created by Big Data and how they can be...
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...Summary This article “Big Data” is talking about how data could improve the company’s performance and competition. That means we should measure the business with more data at first, and then involve the knowledge to improve our decision, which I do agree with. Big data gives traditional businesses chances to transform their old way to newer, profitable way, like on-line business, which is much more powerful than the past. And analyzing of big data will also change long-standing ideas about the value of experience, the nature of expertise, and the practice of management, which is very meaningful for developing business in the future---the high technology world. What’s more, the article points out that there are three major differences between analytics and Big data. Firstly, Big data’s volume is much bigger than analytics, which will give companies information about the decision. Secondly, the speed of spreading of data in these days is a more important criterion for a company to be much more agile than its competitors. Finally, Big data could spread through a lot different ways, such as social networks, sensors, and even cell phones. All the data in each way will update every second to everywhere. In sum, these differences make big data become a huge, fast and variety resource for business, even everyday life. So we should take big data seriously. This article also figures out that the importance to be a data-driven company, which will perform better on objective measures of...
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