Big Data, Big Innovation. Enabling Competitive Differentiation through Business Analytics

Unique insights to implement big data analytics and reap big returns to your bottom line Focusing on the business and financial value of big data analytics, respected technology journalist Frank J. Ohlhorst shares his insights on the newly emerging field of big data analytics in Big Data Analytics. This breakthrough book demonstrates the importance of analytics, defines the processes, highlights the tangible and intangible values and discusses how you can turn a business liability into actionable material that can be used to redefine markets, improve profits and identify new business opportunities. Reveals big data analytics as the next wave for businesses looking for competitive advantage Takes an in-depth look at the financial value of big data analytics Offers tools and best practices for working with big data Once the domain of large on-line retailers such as eBay and Amazon, big data is now accessible by businesses of all sizes and across industries. From how to mine the data your company collects, to the data that is available on the outside, Big Data Analytics shows how you can leverage big data into a key component in your business's growth strategy.

Leverage big data to add value to your business Social media analytics, web-tracking, and other technologies help companies acquire and handle massive amounts of data to better understand their customers, products, competition, and markets. Armed with the insights from big data, companies can improve customer experience and products, add value, and increase return on investment. The tricky part for busy IT professionals and executives is how to get this done, and that's where this practical book comes in. Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business is a complete how-to guide to leveraging big data to drive business value. Full of practical techniques, real-world examples, and hands-on exercises, this book explores the technologies involved, as well as how to find areas of the organization that can take full advantage of big data. Shows how to decompose current business strategies in order to link big data initiatives to the organization’s value creation processes Explores different value creation processes and models Explains issues surrounding operationalizing big data, including organizational structures, education challenges, and new big data-related roles Provides methodology worksheets and exercises so readers can apply techniques Includes real-world examples from a variety of organizations leveraging big data Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business is written by one of Big Data's preeminent experts, William Schmarzo. Don't miss his invaluable insights and advice.

A comprehensive guide to learning technologies that unlock the value in big data Cognitive Computing provides detailed guidance toward building a new class of systems that learn from experience and derive insights to unlock the value of big data. This book helps technologists understand cognitive computing's underlying technologies, from knowledge representation techniques and natural language processing algorithms to dynamic learning approaches based on accumulated evidence, rather than reprogramming. Detailed case examples from the financial, healthcare, and manufacturing walk readers step-by-step through the design and testing of cognitive systems, and expert perspectives from organizations such as Cleveland Clinic, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, as well as commercial vendors that are creating solutions. These organizations provide insight into the real-world implementation of cognitive computing systems. The IBM Watson cognitive computing platform is described in a detailed chapter because of its significance in helping to define this emerging market. In addition, the book includes implementations of emerging projects from Qualcomm, Hitachi, Google and Amazon. Today's cognitive computing solutions build on established concepts from artificial intelligence, natural language processing, ontologies, and leverage advances in big data management and analytics. They foreshadow an intelligent infrastructure that enables a new generation of customer and context-aware smart applications in all industries. Cognitive Computing is a comprehensive guide to the subject, providing both the theoretical and practical guidance technologists need. Discover how cognitive computing evolved from promise to reality Learn the elements that make up a cognitive computing system Understand the groundbreaking hardware and software technologies behind cognitive computing Learn to evaluate your own application portfolio to find the best candidates for pilot projects Leverage cognitive computing capabilities to transform the organization Cognitive systems are rightly being hailed as the new era of computing. Learn how these technologies enable emerging firms to compete with entrenched giants, and forward-thinking established firms to disrupt their industries. Professionals who currently work with big data and analytics will see how cognitive computing builds on their foundation, and creates new opportunities. Cognitive Computing provides complete guidance to this new level of human-machine interaction.

Key decisions determine the success of big data strategy Dynamic Customer Strategy: Big Profits from Big Data is a comprehensive guide to exploiting big data for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing. This complete guide provides a process for rigorous decision making in navigating the data-driven industry shift, informing marketing practice, and aiding businesses in early adoption. Using data from a five-year study to illustrate important concepts and scenarios along the way, the author speaks directly to marketing and operations professionals who may not necessarily be big data savvy. With expert insight and clear analysis, the book helps eliminate paralysis-by-analysis and optimize decision making for marketing performance. Nearly seventy-five percent of marketers plan to adopt a big data analytics solution within two years, but many are likely to fail. Despite intensive planning, generous spending, and the best intentions, these initiatives will not succeed without a manager at the helm who is capable of handling the nuances of big data projects. This requires a new way of marketing, and a new approach to data. It means applying new models and metrics to brand new consumer behaviors. Dynamic Customer Strategy clarifies the situation, and highlights the key decisions that have the greatest impact on a company's big data plan. Topics include: Applying the elements of Dynamic Customer Strategy Acquiring, mining, and analyzing data Metrics and models for big data utilization Shifting perspective from model to customer Big data is a tremendous opportunity for marketers and may just be the only factor that will allow marketers to keep pace with the changing consumer and thus keep brands relevant at a time of unprecedented choice. But like any tool, it must be wielded with skill and precision. Dynamic Customer Strategy: Big Profits from Big Data helps marketers shape a strategy that works.

Lead your organization into the industrial revolution of analytics with The Analytics Revolution The topics of big data and analytics continue to be among the most discussed and pursued in the business world today. While a decade ago many people still questioned whether or not data and analytics would help improve their businesses, today virtually no one questions the value that analytics brings to the table. The Analytics Revolution focuses on how this evolution has come to pass and explores the next wave of evolution that is underway. Making analytics operational involves automating and embedding analytics directly into business processes and allowing the analytics to prescribe and make decisions. It is already occurring all around us whether we know it or not. The Analytics Revolution delves into the requirements for laying a solid technical and organizational foundation that is capable of supporting operational analytics at scale, and covers factors to consider if an organization is to succeed in making analytics operational. Along the way, you'll learn how changes in technology and the business environment have led to the necessity of both incorporating big data into analytic processes and making them operational. The book cuts straight through the considerable marketplace hype and focuses on what is really important. The book includes: An overview of what operational analytics are and what trends lead us to them Tips on structuring technology infrastructure and analytics organizations to succeed A discussion of how to change corporate culture to enable both faster discovery of important new analytics and quicker implementation cycles of what is discovered Guidance on how to justify, implement, and govern operational analytics The Analytics Revolution gives you everything you need to implement operational analytic processes with big data.

Data Science and Big Data Analytics is about harnessing the power of data for new insights. The book covers the breadth of activities and methods and tools that Data Scientists use. The content focuses on concepts, principles and practical applications that are applicable to any industry and technology environment, and the learning is supported and explained with examples that you can replicate using open-source software. This book will help you: Become a contributor on a data science team Deploy a structured lifecycle approach to data analytics problems Apply appropriate analytic techniques and tools to analyzing big data Learn how to tell a compelling story with data to drive business action Prepare for EMC Proven Professional Data Science Certification Corresponding data sets are available at www.wiley.com/go/9781118876138. Get started discovering, analyzing, visualizing, and presenting data in a meaningful way today!

Integrate big data into business to drive competitive advantage and sustainable success Big Data MBA brings insight and expertise to leveraging big data in business so you can harness the power of analytics and gain a true business advantage. Based on a practical framework with supporting methodology and hands-on exercises, this book helps identify where and how big data can help you transform your business. You'll learn how to exploit new sources of customer, product, and operational data, coupled with advanced analytics and data science, to optimize key processes, uncover monetization opportunities, and create new sources of competitive differentiation. The discussion includes guidelines for operationalizing analytics, optimal organizational structure, and using analytic insights throughout your organization's user experience to customers and front-end employees alike. You'll learn to “think like a data scientist” as you build upon the decisions your business is trying to make, the hypotheses you need to test, and the predictions you need to produce. Business stakeholders no longer need to relinquish control of data and analytics to IT. In fact, they must champion the organization's data collection and analysis efforts. This book is a primer on the business approach to analytics, providing the practical understanding you need to convert data into opportunity. Understand where and how to leverage big data Integrate analytics into everyday operations Structure your organization to drive analytic insights Optimize processes, uncover opportunities, and stand out from the rest Help business stakeholders to “think like a data scientist” Understand appropriate business application of different analytic techniques If you want data to transform your business, you need to know how to put it to use. Big Data MBA shows you how to implement big data and analytics to make better decisions.

The best-selling author of Big Data is back, this time with a unique and in-depth insight into how specific companies use big data. Big data is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Everyone understands its power and importance, but many fail to grasp the actionable steps and resources required to utilise it effectively. This book fills the knowledge gap by showing how major companies are using big data every day, from an up-close, on-the-ground perspective. From technology, media and retail, to sport teams, government agencies and financial institutions, learn the actual strategies and processes being used to learn about customers, improve manufacturing, spur innovation, improve safety and so much more. Organised for easy dip-in navigation, each chapter follows the same structure to give you the information you need quickly. For each company profiled, learn what data was used, what problem it solved and the processes put it place to make it practical, as well as the technical details, challenges and lessons learned from each unique scenario. Learn how predictive analytics helps Amazon, Target, John Deere and Apple understand their customers Discover how big data is behind the success of Walmart, LinkedIn, Microsoft and more Learn how big data is changing medicine, law enforcement, hospitality, fashion, science and banking Develop your own big data strategy by accessing additional reading materials at the end of each chapter

Creating Business Agility: How Convergence of Cloud, Social, Mobile, Video, and Big Data Enables Competitive Advantage provides a game plan for integrating technology to build a smarter, more customer-centric business. Using a series of case studies as examples throughout, the book describes the agility that comes from collaborative commerce, and provides key decision makers the implementation roadmap they need to build a successful business ecosystem. The focus is on Business Agility Readiness in terms of the five major changes affecting the information technology landscape, and how data-driven delivery platforms and decision-making processes are being reinvented using digital relationships with a social business model as the consumer world of technology drives innovation and collaboration. Cloud computing, social media, next-gen mobility, streaming video, and big data with predictive analytics are major forces now for a competitive advantage, and Creating Business Agility provides leaders with a roadmap for readiness. Business leaders tasked with innovation and strategy will find that Creating Business Agility provides important insight from an informed perspective.

Enhance business performance by using sustainability for competitive advantage The Future of Value reveals what it takes for companies to grow and outperform the competition in today's growth-constrained, sustainability conscious world. The author shows leaders how to use sustainability as a powerful, pragmatic lens to enhance business performance. He also explores how to craft and oversee a portfolio of effective tools, develop competitive strategies, and adjust value chain activities, talent management practices, and corporate policies to help organizations execute powerful sustainability strategies. He provides a systematic, yet instantly familiar, model all companies can use to connect sustainability with their growth and competitive strategies. In this way, the author shows leaders how to shape, color, and own The Future of Value. Outlines the keys to implementing sustainability in organizations to achieve business success today and tomorrow Reveals how to engage stakeholders in day to day sustainability management as a means to shape and fuel efforts to continuously renew their sustainability strategies The author is a 15-year veteran of sustainability and strategy management consulting, having worked with clients in the US, Japan, Australia, and Europe. He has an MBA in Strategic Management from The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and writes a regular column for Sustainable Life Media and GreenBiz, two of the world's most heavily trafficked sustainability news and thought leadership portals The author draws useful and accessible conclusions from a rich, diverse set of corporate interviewees. A core part of his research was the selection and interrogation of more than 25 Global Fortune 500 companies' sustainability, strategy, and finance leads.