Back in the 20's, technology used to be simple. Core functions of the system were not affected by the records management. Every organization has started getting connected to the internet in order to make the lives easier of their workers as well customers. Everyone wants to get access to basic information over the internet as it is an opportunity to learn more about everything which relates to good or bad performance. Even from the customer's side, access to internet helps business with floods of data which leads them to focused marketing. Such information is also spread to the hackers. Hackers then use such individual information to get through government entities or set up robbery attacks. As keepers of the information, companies should hence protect the data and make sure trust is not violated. The exposed information is generally customer information. Determined hackers cannot be stopped from entering into the system. Identities are stolen and more valuable information is lost other than just credit card numbers. Data should be protected by the organization as if it was their own personal information. Apps are a disaster these days as they are gateways to information which directly reach the hackers since consumers unknowingly take such things for granted and provide all their details. Security and privacy experts should be hired and organizations should be very careful with customer information. Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/information-management/protect-information-as-if-it-was-your-own/?pageNum=2

Customers have so many options these days online - to shop, read articles, watch videos and more. A brand or publisher will quickly attract attention of its customers by serving only the most relevant information. There lies the difficulty to figure out what exactly should be the useful information published. Few ways to discover and build better customer profiles are:
Down with static profiles: the building process of better customer profiles never ends. Companies should keep in mind that customers are dynamic and once a macro view of the customer is available, the problem gets sorted.
Why, where and when: context is equally important and information on whether the consumer is on mobile or a tablet or which time of the day it is and other important questions can help companies recognize a clear picture of preferences of the customers.
The customer knows best: consumer choice brought into personalization equation is a positive step for a variety of reasons. This element of choice enhances communication between brand and consumers and provides value to both parties.
Companies which can implement choice, better customer profiles, and context consideration will be able to successfully personalize a user’s experience online.
Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/personalization-give-your-customers-a-choice/?pageNum=2

Companies are today becoming more digital. By digital some mean new technology, for some it is a new way of doing business. Business leaders must have a clear picture of what digital really means and what it means to their business. The term 'digital' should be less seen as a thing and more a way of doing things. There are three attributes to the definition of digital: Creating value at new frontiers: being digital requires being open to new ways of doing business, and understanding where the new value frontiers are. It also means staying closely connected to customer decisions and understanding their expectations in order to keep us with the trend.
Creating value in core businesses: the next element in being digital is to use new capabilities to improve how customers are served. An interconnected set of four core capabilities namely proactive decision making, contextual interaction, real time automation and journey focused innovation can help implement a cyclical dynamic where processes constantly evolved based on inputs from the consumer.
Building foundational capabilities: the final element is about the technology and organizational processes that help enterprises become agile and fast. The two core elements used for such process are mind sets and system data and architecture.
Digital is about unlocking the growth now and also a clear picture of what digital means helps the business to capture maximum value.
Read more at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/what_digital_really_means

The internet of things is a name for the growing network of physical devices which have sensors to collect and exchange data with users or other devices. Such information is used for personal convenience. Collecting such information can help make lives easier. Companies are collecting the data not just for improving standard of living but also form themselves. This helps advertisers know every bit of information about the consumers regarding what they do, when they do and how they do it. The government is way behind in understanding what actually the internet of things is and companies take a more active role in putting security in place before they get ahead of themselves with data collection. The reality is that developers are thinking about what they could do rather than what they should do with it. The main focus should be on user’s privacy maintenance so that their information is never at risk while commercial efficiencies are also realized.
Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/semcasting-emory-paine/332361/internet-things-realities-interconnected-world?ref=popular_posts

It is said that a very small percentage of the retailers are keen on using the customer analysis tool in spite of the retail industry being the most refined tool across sectors for analysis of customer behaviour. Dave Nash(director at consultancy West Monroe Partners), has mentioned that this tool is still not as popular as it should be for the very reason of the dearth of relevant customer data that cannot be assimilated into other operational data and also due to lack of skill and the knowledge to use them appropriately. But Elaneor McDonnell Feit (assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University) believe otherwise. According to her, the percentage of retailers investing in developing their customer data set is high. She is of the view that what is required using these data appropriately to take the right decisions for various functions of the firm and implementing them in the most efficient way. Feit has also mentioned a very innovative and out of the box tool for this purpose: Recommendation engine. The recommendation engine is a mechanized tool to facilitate the buying process of the customers, by guiding them find the thing they need. These recommendation engines are tailored for specific businesses and its customers making it unique as a retailer.
Hence, every firm should have a data driven approach within the retail industry which will help the entire economy to grow progressively and efficiently.
Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/analytics/retail-could-make-better-use-of-customer-analytics/

The idea of using information and data for various purposes is not new and has been there since the first web connection was developed. Computer scientist John McCarthy had developed the idea of cloud computing. The internet has grown at a very small pace since the 70's but got revived in the early 90's when first move towards cloud computing was taken. Heavy investment and development in cloud computing shows it is predicted that cloud computing is soon to go mainstream with 34.1 percent of IT sector already running applications in the cloud and 66.4 percent are looking into the cloud, planning to implement installations. Server performance tuning has become easier and finding query performance is now rapid through database analyser, all due to the cloud where our future lies. Cloud computing has become a global phenomenon and people are choosing it for solution in a hybrid manner. Soon companies have to fully turn to cloud computing as it becomes mainstream and lots of other companies shall create their own unique framework including internal cloud adoption. Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/rick-delgado/324781/foreseeable-future-cloud-computing-explained

Financial managers find it very difficult to reconcile goods received against invoices not received. This issues called 'GR-NI' is time consuming to manage. The problem hence gets reduced to lowest of the priorities and leads to increase of financial liabilities and risk for the business. Without proper automation to monitor the discrepancies, paperwork gets piled up which leads to supplier connections suffering and credits being misused. However, with software based supplier reconciliation process in place, the organization can get rid of this huge task and also improve its audit processes solving several risk issues as they arise. A simple overview of the new 'GR-NI' process says that creation of a database with financial and orders data is to be integrated followed by different other steps. The key elements of this solution are methods to get statements directly into the system regardless of format and source and many others. To maximize the value, operational areas should be looked into that can benefit from better processes. Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/keith-peterson/329860/using-procurement-analytics-simplify-your-supplier-reconciliation

Restaurant businesses have become very difficult to handle recently due to decreased margins, rising costs and ever growing competition. Effectively controlling these variables using modern tools can help the business grow in the right direction. The new tools used in this industry are solving the problems vastly in a cheaper method. Using the tools to their highest potential can give amazing results. • Obtaining customers: the primary goal is to obtain maximum customers so that the restaurant business can flourish and can reap more benefits as well.
• Prioritizing the customer: the customer should always be the first priority for any industry so that the business can maintain its reputation by making sure none of the customers have to wait for their preferences.
• Seamless transactions: a smooth and positive customer experience can be enhanced only by accurately ensuring that no customer has to wait longer for the bill or food and time is not wasted in any way.
• Smart supply: supply should meet demand and the customers should consume all that is ordered to make sure benefits derived are maximum.
• Efficient workforce management: employees define the business and managing them efficiently can help the business maintain its functional peaks.
Customers are why the business exists and hence keeping them happy should be the sole purpose. Such tools can help solve all the problems and acquire maximum gains from it.
Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/peterdavidson/330482/5-best-management-tools-help-your-restaurant-business

Lack of planning and special interest pressure among politicians resulted in failure of building the necessary infrastructure required for adequate water retention which lead to water crisis in the state of California. Governor Brown is trying to control who can use water and for what it can be used efficiently. Charging people for water won’t be of any help but through the use of technology things like underground leaks, non-revenue water loss can be identified specially by using the ‘Night-time Flow Analysis’ solution given from Esri. This analysis works by using an optimal time to analyse for leaks mostly at night when consumption is low comparatively. It is a configuration of ArcGIS platform which includes sample data. The accuracy of leak detection depends on customer’s pipe network. The solution responds in real time and is a freely available configuration used to observe base flow conditions and control water crisis.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/shawn-gordon/325636/where-did-all-water-go

While opening a business, it’s difficult to decide whether the owner should spend money on hiring an accountant to manage the books and keep them balanced or do it on their own which can lead to mistakes causing major problems for the business. Accounting software programs came into existence which helped the owner free such costs and was easy to use. With today’s programs, anyone can be their own business accountant using the right accounting software’s. Accounting software helps the business in the following ways:

• Dealing with multiple datasets: dealing with several datasets together can be very time consuming and expensive for the owner, hence accounting software programs plays the role of an accountant reducing costs involved.

• Accurate numbers: accounting software programs work with precision and accuracy using the data entered and calculates them correctly.

• Access to data: accounting software programs allows the owner to get access to all his data any time he wants as it is stored in the program every time entered.

• Excellent records: using reliable software helps to update accounts on daily basis without paying for it every time.

• Reduced expenses: using such software programs helps the owner to lessen the costs of managing book of accounts and hiring an accountant is also not required anymore.

Accounting software is helpful for a business of any size and it helps the business to grow, cutting down unnecessary expenses required for maintaining records. Using an easy-to-use software has helped the owners save a lot of money and time and provided them with access to all their financial records.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/rehan-sheikh/327759/accounting-software-saves-time-and-money-businesses

A project can fail for several reasons, some of which are under our control and some are not. Every project will have certain factors that are not under our control, but with proper attention we can increase our success. The reasons being:- • No clear goals: projects lack clear objectives and also a clear vision of what is best for the project’s success. We can avoid this failure by setting out distinct goals of the project at the very beginning.

• No deadlines: without any milestones, team members do not know whether they are on the right track or not which can cause things to go out of control. We can avoid this failure by setting major milestones, and also keep a check on the progress overtime.

• Budget problems: sometimes, budget problems are out of control since leaders create unrealistic budgets on paper that can never be met in reality leading to failure of the project, avoid this failure by making sure every aspect of the budget is looked into carefully to meet expectations.

• Lack of resources: mostly project problems fall into this category because gathering necessary resources for the project’s success is not an easy task. Avoid this failure by researching, thinking through and studying the resources needed for the project from the beginning.

• Weak management: a project with a perfect plan but poor management can fail easily. Avoid this failure by understanding our own role as the manager and actively controlling the team and project work.

• Scope creep: project scope mostly gets diverted from the original objective to several other unnecessary goals leading to failure. Avoid this failure by always keeping in mind the original motive and sticking to it.

These are few such problems which can be easily avoided to prevent project failure.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bernardmarr/329018/why-projects-fail-biggest-pitfalls-you-can-easily-avoid?ref=popular_posts

SME’s have a large number of advantages in using big data technology and it is found to play an important role for them recently. Firstly it is important to understand that what big data is. Big Data is defined as a popular term to describe exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured and is important for businesses. It is a series of combined data lakes used for more accurate analyses. SME’s should move to Big Data storage solutions because storing the new data generated each day is becoming expensive for the companies and its increasing their costs. When SME’s start using such combined datasets, they will have enough data to analyse and improve their decision making. Interest in big data has reached new heights for SME’s as they take their chances of capturing more information from everywhere possible. SME’s can also use big data to attract new customers, tap new markets and reduce costs. Some more ways how big data technology can help SME’s prosper are by using big data tools which increase their ability to use predictive analytics for decision making. It also helps SME’s move unused data into different less expensive places. Hence SME’s should definitely be looking forward to such big data technology for improved performance.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bruce-robbins/329520/big-data-smes

Companies of every shape or size recently have moved to Big Data as they realized how beneficial it is for their organizations. To efficiently use the big data, companies need to collect and process it first, from multiple sources. Some data remains unused in the case of unstructured data mostly, which poses a problem later leading to clogging up data centres. Such unused data has been termed as – Dark Data which needs to be cleaned up or else it increases security risk and costs for the companies. Dark Data firstly needs to be identified. It is the information collected but not put to any specific use. Such data remains unused for years and takes up a lot of space which could have been used otherwise to store useful data. Dark Data remains unprotected for a while and poses risk of security breaches and mishaps. Dark Data is costly and dangerous but still companies keep them to make sure they don't lose any kind of records. Cleaning of Dark Data is time consuming but is important as well. One of the most effective ways of avoiding such data is by filtering the data which prevents data from piling up. Other ways to clean such data is by moving the Dark Data to different repositories using cloud computing. Dark Data can be deadly for organizations and hence it should be avoided before it poses any problem for the business.

 Read more at:  http://www.smartdatacollective.com/rick-delgado/323706/importance-cleaning-your-dark-data

Data scientists are the ones who use sophisticated quantitative and computer science skills to both structured and analyse unstructured data as well as derive intuitions from the data and suggest actions. Data scientists can tackle with problems that are complex, huge in size and disorganized using several coding languages. To identify a data scientist following points are to be taken into consideration:

• Qualifications: Data scientists are required to have an advanced degree usually a masters or PhD in a quantitative discipline such as economics, statistics and their educational background may be diversified.

• Skills: Data scientists are efficient users of different tools used for analytics and are well versed with coding languages such as Python or Java used for writing programs, transformations etc. They are also have expert knowledge about statistical and machine learning models such as R and SAS.

• Dataset size: They usually work with datasets measured in gigabytes up to petabytes.

• Job responsibility: Data scientists are well equipped to work on every stage of analytics life cycle which also include data acquisition, transformation/cleaning, analytics to predict patterns of the datasets, prescribing actions and programming/automations to contribute to a firms data products.

The main idea behind this is that whether you are a data scientist, analytics professional or programmer you always need to be well versed with the new languages coming in the market each day just as big data has been gaining importance and keep up with the new technology.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/lburtch/320541/more-just-title-how-identify-data-scientist

The term Big Data has become popular recently and is used to define exponential data development and availability, both structured and unstructured. Big data is crucial to businesses since more data implies precise analyses which results in efficient decision making, reduced risk and cost reduction. Big Data is used for more complex datasets and refers to application of predictive analytics and other advanced application tools to derive the results and seldom to the size of datasets. The three V’s of Big Data are namely: Volume, Velocity, and Variety. Apart from increasing varieties and velocities of data, data flows are very challenging. Variability, complexity are some other factors of Big Data. Data flows in from different sources and it’s difficult to connect them which has become a huge task these days. Big Data has become necessary for companies which helps them stay updated with the new technologies. Processing the Big Data smartly and accurately is worth a lot of income for the companies. Big Data demands amazing technologies to efficiently process such datasets in given deadlines. There were companies who spend a lot of money on data analytics and other management systems to increase their efficiency. Recently Big Data has increased the need for information organizations. Big Data also helps to grow and continue increasing the number of servers used which only adds to expenses of the company.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/anandsrivastava1988/328749/what-big-data-and-how-useful-it

A company must protect itself from viral attacks and hackers. Such hackers have been in existence for as long as the internet has existed and they make a living out of stealing important business information by selling them in the market to the highest bidders online which can cause terrible damage to the reputation of company in question. The appropriate way to go about this is to install malware removal software’s on all the computers and also ensure protection of their private business and assets. Some other ways to ensure this protection are:

• Sufficient disaster recovery layouts: since virus and malwares on the computer can wipe away important data and ruin the business in seconds, efficient systems for disaster recovery should be in place so that information back up is restored at that very moment after the attack ensuring no loss is incurred. Professionals should be hired for such tasks.

• Effective virus protection should be installed since sensitive information about the business as well as of the employees once leaked can lead to several other problems and regular security checks should be done to ensure everything is updated and new viruses are detected instantly.

• It’s always necessary for the company to regulate the employee’s access to the computers so that information is not mishandled. Every employee must have his own work station and not mingle with others work which ensures no personal information exchange.

Such practices can definitely help the business data stay protected in the long run if followed properly.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/peterdavidson/320351/how-ensure-protection-critical-business-data

Like other conservative industries, chocolate industry is also interested in applying smart marketing techniques for their business. Companies need to be more scientific in their marketing ways and by now it's proven that future growth of the chocolate industry also depends on data-driven consumer marketing. Vosges Haut-chocolat company used the method of predictive analytics solution to reach its buyers. The difficulty in this task was to figure out how price sensitive were the consumers. With newly discovered software's and AgilOne predictive marketing cloud, Vosges tried to target all its customers who had left shopping carts and also found all different reasons for their - not purchasing the chocolates. Predictive analytics made it possible for the company to provide heavy discounts to the people segmented into proper user-groups and increase their sales so that consumers who would never buy any chocolates ever could be differentiated from the rest.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/socialmktgfella/326221/even-chocolate-needs-smart-data

19000 students across 340 countries around the world have chosen GOOGLE as their top choice when asked where they wanted to work according to a study. The other companies where they also liked to work in the ascending order were Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. This particular study was conducted by Piazza, a discussion platform used by several students and teachers around the world. Pizza has been doing a great work in the market for recruiters and is an attractive tool. Piazza has also stated that women and men have different opinions in choosing their workplace. Hence, such a software helps the companies know how students see the world right now.

Read more at : http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/where-computer-science-engineering-and-math-majors-want-to-work/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1730_-7001745546600563025#.mzgrdo:U5OR

Many business have been extracting the benefits that come from applying big data as years go by. But there are still a few start-ups left who haven’t yet reaped its benefits. It’s crucial to know that now is the correct time to get into big data as it has considerably improved in the past few years. The reasons why big data should be employed now are:

• It keeps the data secure and all the sensitive data stay well protected in the system.

• It opens up brand new revenue sources and gives us a clear perception about the market which is very valuable.

• Big data provides an advantage of supplying better data which helps compete against others in the market when trying to innovate.

• It provides better visuals as well as it is very easy to set up big data in the business of any size.

• It helps the business expand and can efficiently cut down on maintenance costs.

• With big data employment, it’s easier to analyse the risk and create better improved products in the market.

• Lastly, big data improves company-customer relationships helping the business in every possible way.

Read more at: http://www.smartdatacollective.com/rick-delgado/323981/10-reasons-why-now-time-get-big-data

Manufacturers, logistics companies, pharmaceutical companies and other energy companies have been using supercomputers to push the limits of research and discovery and answer questions that were not possible using other means. Companies are using cloud to solve problems which were once solved by supercomputers. Cloud computing has encircled high performance computing or HPC and supercomputers along with cloud solutions continue to advance. Companies in the auto industry, airlines, energy are willing to work with supercomputers to solve their big questions. Along with wide range of hardware, optimised software’s run efficiently on supercomputers. Such computing also helps companies to improve their state of art. The six different reasons which encourage companies to use supercomputers are that they have amazing computational capacity, the datasets fit properly into the memory, the interconnect is analytical, advanced modelling power, expansion, and speeds discovery.

Read more at: http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/supercomputers-unleash-big-datas-power/d/d-id/1321013