Cloud computing to store and manage the Big Data

Technology is the marvel of human innovation. It keeps evolving at a rapid pace with the sole aim of simplifying human life. The recent years have been the most remarkable in the history of technology. New innovations have been replacing the old tech and the industry has been in an ever-adapting mode.

Constant up gradation is the only way one can survive and thrive in this competitive Digital Age, especially when one is in charge of running an enterprise. Any organization, big or small deals with a bulk load of data regularly. The popular term used to denote massive volumes of data in an enterprise is Big Data. Now, there was a time when local servers were used to store the data and run it, but that changed with the introduction of Cloud computing.

In simple terms, Cloud computing allows organizations to manage their data in a more cost-effective and efficient manner. This has led many to move on to the Cloud, and it is quite the trend in the tech world.
With more organizations adapting to and adopting cloud services and tools, experts are of the view that very soon Cloud computing will replace the traditional enterprise application platforms. But before we delve any further let’s brush up on the basics of cloud technology and the ones related to it.

Cloud Computing and Big Data

Cloud computing can be defined as a technology that stores, manages and processes bulk load of data on remote servers. There is no use of physical drives or local servers.
Big Data, on the other hand, is the massive volume of structured and unstructured data processed and managed by an organization for further analysis. The smooth running of any organization depends on the successful storing and processing of the data, as it is directly related to the core functions.

Why Do You Need To SwitchOver To Cloud Computing?

Using Cloud computing to store and manage the Big Data comes with its own set of advantages. With the collating, quantifying and processing of the data well taken care of, managing the business becomes easier. Here are a few advantages that you get to enjoy through Cloud computing:

• Cost-Effective: The key benefit of Cloud computing is that it helps in cost-cutting. There is no need to spend money on building and maintenance of infrastructure for managing Big Data. The cloud space needs to be bought from service providers or vendors. So, all data related maintenance, back-ups, disaster management is taken care of. It gives you ample time to focus on the core business and saves your money that otherwise would have been spent on skills and resources.

• Flexibility: Cloud computing gives you sufficient room to adjust and adapt to fulfill your purpose in case it changes with time. It helps you to utilize your resources in the right manner. You can optimize your resources as per your need.

• Accessibility: Unlike the old methods, Cloud technology allows you to access the Big Data from any place at any time from any device. It definitely improves operations and data analytics.

• Integration: Integration is another contributing side of cloud computing. Assimilation of new data sources and managing huge volumes of data becomes very easy. There is no shortage of storage which comes as a boon when you want to keep up with the increase in Big Data.

Anyone Can Achieve Big Data Analytics through Cloud Computing

Setting up and maintaining an on-premise Big Data infrastructure demands skilled resources and a significant amount of money. This becomes an issue for small or mid-level businesses as they don’t have the financial strength to afford that. But with cloud computing, anyone can enjoy the benefits of Big Data infrastructure without having to build or maintain themselves.
Availing cloud technology allows them to pay for the resources that they need at that time. As soon as the purpose is fulfilled you can drop the extra load just like that. Everything happens quicker when you are working in the cloud. Even the expansion of data platforms takes significantly less time.

The Shortcomings of Cloud Computing

The ones who have already spent a big chunk of the finances in building their own Big Data infrastructure might face some difficulty in transferring the data to the cloud. For many, it becomes too difficult to carry the burden of the extra cost.
In other cases, the people taking care of the already existing infrastructure, express displeasure while handing over the duties to the third party service provider. In that case, the heads of the organization need to convey the long term benefits of cloud computing to the employees.
Other concerns related to administration and data security are also deterrent factors that prevent organizations from shifting to cloud technology. However, that should be the least of the concerns for anyone as the majority of the cloud vendors provide cloud platforms that endure total security to data and other company information.

Cloud Computing and Data Analytics

With time there is a high chance that a company will experience a hike in the volume of data. If the infrastructure is not able to match up to the data demand then the analytics takes a direct hit. It causes the performance to falter due to the slowing down of analytics tools. That’s why it is very important that you transfer the analytics to the cloud along with the Big Data.
Building the Big Data analytics platform in the cloud allows the organization to leverage the stored cloud data for analytics. This process enables faster accessibility of the Big Data. That way the user can make use of it easily during the time of need.

Conclusion

After considering both the advantages and shortcomings of cloud computing, it cannot be denied that positive does outweigh the negatives. The trend of shifting data to the cloud will gradually make all the older methods go obsolete. The benefits of cloud computing are hard to ignore and the evidence is clear in its rising popularity. One can very well say that Cloud computing is the future of enterprise application platforms.

The Importance of Retail Data Analytics

A correct set of retail data is sufficient to figure out if a customer is going to purchase from a store or will visit once again. Whenever folks go out shopping, they want to have an experience which is convenient, informative, and personalized. A retailer cannot provide a personalized experience if he does not have access to retail data analytics technology for obtaining information about particular shoppers and end users.

As compared to traditional retailers, e-commerce retailers find it easier to track and obtain information related to individual shoppers. This is because web technology makes it very easy for these e-tailers to gather data regarding customer purchases.

Web technology is also able to track the device through which customers access the website. What a customer went searching for from the showcased items to the time he spent on the site, every minute detail can be tracked. All this helps to understand customer persona and preferences at a deeper level.

With all this data, e-commerce websites are then able to deliver targeted emails, advertisements and personalized deals for customers, thus luring the customer to check out and make a purchase.

Access to such retail analytics helps in two things-

1) increases customer stickiness on the website with a personalized shopping experience and

2) increased sales from related items based on previous customer purchasing data

Video streaming services like Netflix are great examples where algorithms related to recommended videos drive more user engagement. All these benefits of data analytics are complicated to be derived from a physical store.

In short, the absence of data analytics technology can impact the physical store retailers negatively as they may not be able to provide a great experience to customers.

The use of Beacon Technology in Retail Analytics 

Store beacons are a piece of retail analytics technology which is becoming more and more popular in retail stores all over, mainly because of the multiple uses these beacons provide to the retailers. For instance, the tags can figure out those parts of your store that are busiest with the maximum number of customers.

This is a small detail, but it can help the retailers to a great extent. Such information can help store owners adjust and modify their display with products which they want the customers to be aware of. Promotional goods, for example, can be placed in areas where the traffic of customers is high usually.

The data collected through these beacons can also be used to monitor the traffic at particular hours of the day. A retailer with such a piece of information can plan out the allocation of his workforce and also the best position inside the store to place his items. 

These beacons can also be well-integrated into the mobile phones of shoppers. Once connected, customers can be sent welcome messages. Not only that, even reminders to purchase some particular items or any promotional offers available can be sent to these customers through the in-store beacons.

We are still not done. The beacons also provide help to trace the physical path through which a customer roams in the store while making his purchases. This is again a useful function as it helps to obtain and analyze specific shopping behaviors of particular customers while visiting a retail store. Walmart and Amazon Go stores have already been utilizing this piece of technology to yield significant benefits.

Amazon Go, in particular, has tweaked the use of beacon technology. Because these stores operate in a cashless manner, every customer gets a barcode scanned while entering the store. This barcode is on the Amazon Go app in the visiting shopper’s mobile phone. The customers then shop for their items and leave the store. A countless number of cameras inside the store track customers and their behavior.

It analyses all information such as what items they picked up, what they finally bought, and the items which they left behind, all of this os crucial information which gets recorded with the help of these cameras. Sophisticated computer systems take the data from the weight sensors to evaluate which products have been removed from a rack.

The moment a particular customer leaves the store, they are automatically charged for all the products which they have purchased. This is the closest a retail store can come to an e-commerce website, all of which is possible with the right technology.

Omnichannel Experience with Retail Data Analytics

If new retail analytics and reporting technology are merged cohesively, a considerable amount of data can easily be collected. This data will be capable enough to monitor every little piece of detail related to the behavior and buying preferences of customers. All of this data can be obtained from just one visit from a consumer.

Thus, with retail data analytics, stores can create an omnichannel shopping experience for customers. With smart stores, customers can have easy and cashless checkouts. Amazon Go is a great example. It gives customers the same online experience with its high-tech offline store.

Challenges with the adoption of Retail  Data Analytics

A lot of innovative products are there to help retailers who wish to have a better understanding of the customers visiting their stores. The issue is that only huge companies have financial resources where they can test and put the new technology-driven solutions to use.

The progress of these latest tools for retail analytics and reporting technology is pretty slow. What cannot be denied though, is the fact that technology is essential for any retailer today. If a customer does not receive an experience which is according to his expectations, no retailer will find the customer coming back to his doorstep.

Retailers should consider technology as an investment through which they can offer customized options according to customers’ preferences. Brick and mortar stores need to have the best retail technology possible without which retailers will not be able to provide the desired customer experience. 

If you are looking for data analytics solutions for your business, then GoodWorkLabs can help! Send us a short message with your requirements and our data analytics team can help you with a free consultation on the best data analytics solution for your business.

Data Analytics Tools for Business

Got your hands on millions worth of data, but can’t find ways to monetize it?

You aren’t alone! There are thousands of businesses experiencing the same issue.

With the advancement in technology, and better IoT and machine learning models, modern businesses are bound to deal with big ounces of data that require a lot of curating before it can be put any good use.

Knowledge was power, today data is power! With this powerful weapon, you definitely require guidance on how to curate this data and make it relevant. We first built the cloud, then data visualizations and business dashboards crashed their way in, thus replacing spreadsheets for analyzing and observing data insights.

But now, data analytics isn’t just for the sake of analyzing, it is much more.

Business Intelligence is also finding its way to enterprises. It has been a focus light throughout 2018, and now it’s time to continue its reign in 2019 too. Businesses, whether small or large are now looking for expanding their business intelligence and seeking solutions from the huge canopy of BI.  

Today, every businessman’s focus is on how to manage their increasing data this year. So, here are the top 5 data analytics tools to help you drive business growth in 2019!

Let’s see how these great tools can help using the era of multi-cloud accessibility and business intelligence, let’s see how these tools help:

1) Sisense for Artificial Intelligence and Business Intelligence

AI is helping machines to synthesize the functioning of a human brain. We need to know how our business is performing every day and every week. But with the help of artificial intelligence, we can understand the live performance of our firm. It means, we can see the insights every second!

Sisense is a great tool for building an intelligent AI system. The AI algorithm is supported by high-performing neural networks and is completely accurate. A lot of tech giants are using AI in many ways to keep themselves in the forefront. So, in 2019 it’s no surprise that this trend will keep growing. 

It is highly customizable and it transforms your complete data into dashboards and elastic tubes. You will come across a lot of statistical tools and features in this tool. You can create customizable dashboards for each team member in your company.

By maintaining and managing your data levels properly, the companies get leverage to compete in the global market and uphold their business intelligence principles.

2) Click tale – Track and View Data Insights the right way

To know how your business is doing online, you will have to trust web analytics tools such as Google analytics. But to give a tough competition to the Google Analytics itself, you have the Click tale that also provides an in-depth analysis of your website. This is becoming very popular amongst the businesses and website owners due to its amazing features.  

The Click tale tool also makes it easy for assisting business. This tool also offers you insights on behavioral analysis along with web analytics. It offers data optimized tools so that you can improve the inward flow of business. You can also check the path analytics of your website with this tool. With this platform, you can reach the required goals and formulate a good customer acquisition strategy.

3) SEMrush for Marketing Analytics

SEMRush is the right data analytics tool for examining your marketing strategies. They offer features which help you track KPIs and also the analysis of how your content or business is doing online. Also, this tool helps you analyze according to the search engine visibility of your website.

SEMRush is a one-stop shop for all your SEO and Digital Marketing Analytics. It also gives insights on keyword performance, backlinking data and other website analytics. With SEMRush, you can also review and track the performance of your competitor’s website and use that information to bid for keywords to improve your digital marketing efforts.

4) DataMelt Tool

Data Melt helps in power analytics. It comes to your rescue when there is a need for intense analysis. Also, if you are thinking this comes with a set of tools, then you are mistaken. You can customize it according to your will.

Also, you can use it for decoding fields like mathematics, financial marketing, engineering, and statistics. Also, it has a great number of tools and is available over 500 Python modules. DMelt or Data Melt is in various languages. This tool can also be applied for any kind of business analysis.

5) Kissmetrics for Predictive Business Analysis & Social Media Marketing

Kissmetrics is used especially for understanding the whole route of customer’s behavior. For a business to grow, there is a need for understanding what the customer wants. By studying his/her searches or predicting what he/she usually looks for, we need to strategize in a way that our product is reaching them and striking a right chord with them.

Also, Kissmetrics will be of huge help if you are making any digital marketing strategies. The tool, which was founded by the famous SEO strategist and Guru Neil Patel, offers an exclusive and holistic marketing analytics solutions for all business challenges. This tool also helps in engaging more customers.

The Kissmetrics tool easily integrates with your already existing analytics tools and also provides constructive criticism on the insights you drive. Also, you can execute smooth digital marketing initiatives with the help of its customer behavior- based automation features.

With these tools in hand, you can now do social media marketing in the right way. Thus, with such data analytics, it can help restructure your marketing approach and also attract more paying and prospective customers.

Conclusion

There are many factors for a business to flourish. You have to cater to your customers, their expectations, and in a similar way, you have to look at growing your sales funnel too.

If you are turning towards being a more data-driven organization, then understanding the data triggers of your business is crucial. Deploying or using any of the above tools will really put your company in high fame, or if you are looking for a custom-made data analytics tool for your business, then drop us a quick message here.

Influence of Data Science on Web Development

The whole ideology behind technology is that it is subject to constant change. It has to be dynamic so as to pave way for something more optimized, beneficial, and less demanding. It is an inevitable path of progress, which has undoubtedly led us to where we are right now. The internet has been one of the turning points of this century. Its implications via technologies like data science are rippling through every sector conceivable including web development.

Enter the concept of data science in web development

Our reliance on web apps has increased over the years. This is because of the ease and convenience they bring to us in the long run. Web apps are software-applications that run with the help of the internet. They do things for you so that you can cut down on doing them manually.

So far, web apps have had a certain way of functioning. Apps were based on focus groups, surveys, and specific educated guesses. This would help programmers have an idea what the masses want. But this traditional method of web app development is soon going to belong to the archived files of modern day technological history.

Developers now have zettabytes of data at their disposal, owing to IoT (Internet of Things). People are constantly plugged in to the net and this generates data every second of every minute. This generated data is carefully analysed which then transforms into precious insights that can be acted upon. Here are some ways applying data science would transform web development for the better

1. Software production

Traditionally, which is also how things happen currently, a software development programmer would decide what goes on in the app menu, based on his or her understanding of what the users would like and appreciate. Data science, on the other hand, would generate data from similar apps and would then suggest what seems to be opted by the users more. Imagine it to be the Autocomplete feature going industrial, in terms of web development.

2. Upgrades would be automatic

Upgrades would no longer be something commanded by a team of programmers. Machine learning would compile the data generated by users using a certain app and introduce version upgrades as and when it seems appropriate. It is like the app learns from you and betters itself to help you better.

3. Personalization to the max

Apps will now have a more accurate AI (Artificial Intelligence) system integrated into its functionality. This would mean that your apps understand you better. Already, your smartphone gives you suggestions based on your location, previous searches, past likes, etc.

Your apps will now interact with you in a more customized manner as it will learn, based on the information collected from the other apps. How users use an app and would contribute to how you use it and the data generated from your usage would improve your user experience even further.

4. Foreseeing the impact

It is hard to estimate how far-reaching the impact of Data science would be in our day to day lives, but one thing remains of certainty that nothing would be the same as it is now. Factors like speed and functionality and security would perhaps remain the same, but what would be interesting to see is how an app ends up adapting to your interests.

These are some of the interesting ways in which data science is expected to transform the web development sector.