Big data may be defined as extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions. It can also help to improve the market and customer relations. By collecting data on your company, it is easier to know what the customer wants, the services they like and also helps in improving operations and make them more efficient and saves time and cost. Companies, big and small alike should find ways to mine all the information and use it to their advantage. For further information, please visit :

 http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/this-is-it/combine-big-data-and-your-business-75513

Microsoft is illuminating several places with big data and analytics offerings. In Finland, Microsoft along with CGI  developed a data driven smarter transit system, which saw Microsoft utilize the city's existing warehouse systems to create a cloud-based solution that could assemble and analyze travel data. Boston serves as another example where Microsoft is working to spread information about the variety of urban farming programs. Microsoft has also partnered with Athena Intelligence in developing the hill city of San Francisco. As a part of this, Microsoft is influencing Athena's data processing and visualization platform to gather valuable data about land, food, water, and energy.For further information.Read more at:

 http://analyticsindiamag.com/big-data-analytics-now-used-greening-planet/

Too much focus on revenue driving marketing tactics may lead one to overlook the bigger picture, that separates the best marketers from the mediocre ones. In this article, Anna Kayfitz(consultant for StrategicDB), discussed about quick and easy dashboards that measures the marketers against his competitors. First is website performance metrics. The important metrics in this regard are the average number of website visitors, bounce rate, site speed, etc. For instance, if your website has a high page-load time compared with your competitors, that will impact your page rankings, bounce rate, and overall customer satisfaction. Also the percentage of visitors coming from different regions are critical for the company plans to expand beyond its geographical presence. Mining for more data is the next important thing. Carrying out SEO/PPC research and using social media and PR effectively provide powerful insights. Lastly, It is advisable to do a competitive analysis prior to changing strategy, launching a new product, or making tactical plans for the next quarter or year. Read more at:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/29418/how-to-benchmark-your-marketing-performance-against-your-competitions

Marketing Cloud integration assimilates all aspects of marketing in support of a company's market goals.To begin with,security and privacy are the fundamental building blocks of trust between a company and its prospects, customers, partners, investors and employees.Next,finance and monetization are the next most important fundamental to the successful relationship between all stakeholders.Marketing collaboration and marketing analytics also are indespansable for the effeciency of the marketing cloud architecture.Web, Content Management Systems, CRM and eCommerce Platforms are core marketing platforms.Careful evaluation of current capabilities and a realistic assessment of available resources  helps in appropriate  selection of the systems needed to enhance and optimize each of these core platforms and marketing mix tools.In many cases,the task of assessing these capabilities is beyond the focus of many marketers and executives.IT management will be called upon in these instances to implement the integrations needed to optimize marketing cloud operations.Read more at : 

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/integrate-my-jde/marketing-cloud-integration-76575

Cost per Contact includes all costs that are needed to run a contact center, like salaries, facilities, software etc. Divided by the number of contacts handled. In this blog, we go through five possible ways to reduce the cost per contact. First, optimize the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) which can provide telecom usage savings. Second, using a callback feature in the IVR can provide both telecom usage and port allocation savings. Third, overall operations cost savings can happen by utilizing skill-based routing, which can benefit all call center channels - phone, chat, email, etc. Fourth, workforce optimization tools do just that, and can help reduce costs related to staffing and telecom usage. Lastly, since it is cheaper to have a customer help themselves, so if you can provide self-service options, you should.Read more at

http://www.incontact.com/blog/reduce-cost-per-contact-5-tips/

Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services-servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics and the Internet ("the cloud"). In the context of cloud computing, in this blog, we discuss what to expect when you move a business process into a cloud application suite. First, expect to be impressed by the scope of the application, and its configurability. Second, The Cloud, or software as a service delivery model, is much cheaper to execute that an on premise install and upgrade model. Third, expect a fully formed application. This not only means a web based user interface to collect, store, and access your data, but process ware - support for your business processes via workflow, managing processes and states, and "best practices".Read more at

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/coneblog/8-things-to-expect-from-a-cloud-application-suite-76155

Fitness trackers were believed to be the next big thing about consumer accessories after smartphones. As we all know, smartphones have a high range of capabilities that includes their competency to measure basic fitness parameters, like counting of steps, number of calories burnt etc. Several companies took advantage of this growing fitness consciousness by launching bands, watches and other wearable gadgets that in addition to tracking their basic parameters also track the critical measures in activities such as cycling, hiking and swimming. The market of these fitness trackers had seen massive growth until 2015. However, the growth reduced drastically in 2016. Based on this highly staggering drop in sales, analyst purchases downgraded their prediction for 2017. Read more at:  https://www.blueoceanmi.com/blueblog/fitness-trackers-market-analysis/