SigmaWay Blog

In 2012, analytics was applied in the presidential election of USA. They employed a strong analytics team who used a strong analytics database and prediction was predicted with R and SPSS. The presidential team made a mega file to find potential voters, get their attention, predict specific appeals to persuade people etc. Consumer Data determined people who funded for the campaign as fundraising was an important aspect of the victor. Read more about this article by Euan Hunter (Global Delegate Sales Executive) at:  https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/taking-political-control-with-digital-analytics

When it comes to risk management, it is often observed that the companies either implement blanket management programs applying the same strategies to all employees, or use the "squeaky wheel approach" focusing primarily on at-risk employees. However, both the approaches result in inefficiency. Thus, a strategic employee-specific management program can be adopted to identify the at-risk employees. Such a program monitors the employees for subtle and almost undetectable changes that are indicative of risky behavior and this is where predictive analytics model is of immense help. Predictive modeling enables the manager to identify not only the high-risk employees, but also the cause behind a particular incident.  Predictive modeling is fast becoming an indispensable tool for mitigating risk, retaining top talent, and building long-lasting relationship with the employees. Read More:- http://www.natlawreview.com/article/mitigating-risk-predictive-modeling

Data analytics with its growing importance is now used to plan mergers and acquisitions which require a well thought game plan. Throughout the buying process, data analytics can be used to see how market will respond to a deal being made. While merging with another company, data gets doubled and so it is important for employees to analyze all sets of data thus allowing business users to make better decisions. All through the M&A process employees must be trained to possess analytical process, needed to survive in this data-driven economy. Organizations must be aware of how effective and intelligent data management and analytics can help drive Mergers and Acquisitions win. Thus Big Data can offer success to M&A. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7467-the-big-data-game-plan-in-mergers-and-acquisitions

Data visualization or infographics allows us to see results in a simple manner without putting in much effort to analyze vast amount of data. The key to making visualization easy lies in making infographics that can easily convey complex data to a wide audience. People can easily relate to infographics as these graphics follow certain conventions. Deviating from these conventions can lead to confusion, making data visualization complex. Trying to fit too much information in a single infographic will make it complex to interpret. In such cases, only the important piece of information should be conveyed or maybe one can put together a series of visualization. Use of proper annotations, labelling the axes and using data wherever needed is crucial. In case of data comparisons, graphs can be made differentiable using contrasting colors. Arithmetic errors should be avoided else the infographic becomes next to useless. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/5-common-mistakes-in-data-visualizations

Every organization plans to launch new a product or service, but only few of them get success. The main reason for failure is they won't able to target the right customers or they won't able to explain their product or service to customers. Jennifer Lonoff Schiff (Business and technology writer and a contributor to CIO.com) talks about steps that can help you to reduce the risk of failure:

• Make sure the product or service works – before you start selling it.
• But don’t worry if your product isn’t absolutely perfect at the get-go.
• Create a dedicated landing page with an email opt-in.
• Build and/or join a community
• Cultivate influencers in your industry or niche.
• Ask people to spread the word – and give them free product or pay them to talk about it, if necessary.
• Notify top customers and followers in advance of your release.
• Use social media to get the word out.
• Advertise on Facebook.
Read more at: http://www.cio.com/article/2937141/startups/9-tips-for-launching-a-new-product-or-service.html

“Social media is a pivotal element in the healthcare marketing, and an essential tool for patient education and relationship development.”- Anne-Marie Montague (Senior Writer/Strategist PCI)
Consumer digital expectations and patient privacy protections are inversely related. This makes important for health care organizations to invest in the strategy, governance and vigilance deliver a good social media presence to its customers. Tips to manage customer’s privacy and customer’s digital expectations:
• Realistic and Proficient Social Team Staffing – and Authority
• Clear Internal and External Social Media Policy
• Staff training
• Contingency Planning
• Internal Partnership for Timely Response
• Continuous Review and Assessment
Read more at: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/252221/social-media-considerations-for-healthcare-markete.html

According to the H.O. Maycotte (Austin Tech), Success in real time means collecting, assessing and acting on real-time customer data.” Ability to collect data and respond towards that data separates successful brands from the crowd. Steps to make real-time data and real-time response part of your operations, especially in marketing and customer service:
• Collect and consider real-time customer data in context.
• Look for context beyond the customer.
• Give mobile and social the central roles they deserve.
• Act fast.
• Anticipate your customer’s next move.
Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/homaycotte/2015/06/16/5-ways-improve-customer-service-with-real-time-data-and-real-time-responses/

According to Narendra Mulani (senior managing director of Accenture Analytics), to survive in this competitive world organization need analytics to analyze opportunities and threats to their business. But now the question arises how to use analytics into their organization. Most of the organizations get stuck in applying analytics. So, the author discussed about the steps to simplify their analytics strategy and generate real outcomes. Some of them are:

• Accelerate the data.
• Delegate the work to your analytics technologies.
• Recognize that each path to data insight is unique.
Ways to delegate the work to your analytics technologies are: Next-Gen Business Intelligence (BI) and data visualization; data discovery; analytics applications; machine learning and cognitive computing. Read more at: https://hbr.org/2015/06/simplify-your-analytics-strategy

A specific kind of data may be important for a few seconds or sometimes even a few years. Changing times catch up with all kinds of data. So what to do when data reaches its golden age? Archive! But it isn't enough to dump old data in a traditional data warehouse. We must think not only of data's immediate analytical value, but also at how to retain the value of data as it ages. This requires a new approach to archiving. We must ensure regulatory compliance and follow policies of data governance. We must provide access to data while preserving immutability of it or its metadata. Data should query enabled when needed, to generate new insights. Archives must be cost-efficient, enabling you take advantage of advances in data compression. Read more at : http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/05/22/archived-but-accessible-retirement-planning-for-your-big-data/

Currently consumers are distracted by visual storytelling which enables the marketers to cut through the clutter thereby engaging customers over a wide range of digital channels. Data visualization tools acts as a way for the marketing leaders to generate optimal results from their organization's visual storytelling. It helps the marketers to determine the types of media that generated the highest engagement levels with different customers. It further enables to spot key consumer trends by segments and to project the best media type which would generate desired results. The use of visual storytelling combined with visualization of data will continue to gain much more importance because it makes the visual story more realistic with more prospective customers.

Read more at: http://www.tibco.com/blog/2015/06/08/2015-the-year-of-visual-storytelling/

Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, whitepapers, e-books, photos etc. It is hard, time consuming and expensive. Angela Hausman (marketing professor at Howard University) in her article in business2community.com, discussed about the steps to create a successful content marketing plan. They are:

• Start with goals.
• Audit existing content and determine where the holes are.
• Develop your business.
• Target customers.
• The Sales funnel.
• Understand your purpose.
• Develop an editorial calendar.
• Develop content.
• Promote your content.
• Measure.
• Optimize.
• Rinse, repeat.

To know more about the steps required for creating a successful content marketing plan, please follow the link: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/12-steps-how-to-build-a-successful-content-marketing-plan-01 

Nowadays the basic motive is substantial growth of the app thereby providing value to the end user. This can be equally simple or difficult depending on the analytics and marketing platform one chooses.  However it might often seem that a system of point solutions offers the best of each system, although it limits our capability to: 

*  Create a new user acquisition strategy.

*  Collect the most accurate data about the users.

*   Use of analytics to drive marketing.

*  Track the success of app messaging.

*  Tackle issues such as user abandonment and churn ratios.

The basic things which can be done with Integrated App Analytics and Marketing are:

1. Sophisticated user attribution.

2. Personalized app marketing.

3. Remarketing to users outside of the app.

4. Omni-channel app marketing.

5.  Predicting churns.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/mobile-apps/5-things-you-can-only-do-with-integrated-app-analytics-marketing-01244986                                                                                                                     

Though underestimated at times, social media marketing is fast becoming a vital necessity for success of business. Due to complexity of the nature of data analysis and increasing number of social media platforms available, the task of adopting the best social strategy may appear confusing. For more productive use of social media for marketing, the author suggests the following: 1) Creating outstanding and attractive content like images, text documents, etc. 2) Adopting social marketing instead of impersonal digital marketing.  3) Developing two way communication channels with the customers.4) Doing proper research. 5) Monitoring social media 6) Being genuine Read more:-  http://www.business2community.com/social-media/key-to-mastering-social-media-marketing-01248568

With the help of predictive analytics, marketers can predict future sales. With this prediction information, companies can now decide on their campaigns. Analytics is mainly used for correlation and causation. A lot of vendors pay maximum attention towards correlation but causation underlying a pattern is important to predict a customer’s purchase behavior. Thus predictive analytics analyzes customer behavior and offers them promotions according to their behavior so as they intake those. Hence if used properly, it can be of great importance. Predictive analytics can help marketers across the entire customer lifecycle, said Fern Halper, director of TDWI Research for advanced analytics. Read more about this article by Katherine Noyes (IDG News Service) at:  http://www.computerworld.com/article/2934086/business-intelligence/marketers-are-betting-big-on-predictive-analytics.html 

Marketing has undergone transformation over years. Marketers can now measure every aspect of what customers do with a variety of metrics. Engaging with my audience to convert to sales is the key to marketing. While promoting products and services, marketers should be aware of how their brand is perceived by the audience which indicates how to communicate with them. Knowing how demographics react to different promotional strategies will help marketers formulate targeted marketing campaigns. Marketers should use social media to check what people are saying about a particular campaign and thus capture the customer sentiment. Thus the best marketing campaigns are those that are edgy and experimental. Read more about this article by Gabrielle Morse (Global Events Director) at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/the-4-golden-rules-for-collecting-marketing-data

Predictive analytics make use of statistical or machine-learning techniques to analyze current and past facts to predict the future. Companies, by using predictive analytics, can make better and decisions at low-cost. Predictive analytics can help companies to get an idea of every possible event, thus allowing for risk management and calculating potential ROI. Using predictive analytics, companies can remove politics from the decision-making process. There is a growing awareness among companies about predictive analytics and companies that adopted this method have reported success and increased ROIs. Optimizing predictive analytics to produce better choices leads to decision modelling. Through decision modelling companies can gain insight into how predictive analytics can add value and how ROI can be measured. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/making-faster-decisions-with-predictive-analytics  

Movies are big businesses where a lot of money needs to be spent so that box office hits. Prediction of this hit is an impressive science. So studios nowadays depends on its blockbusters by making early prediction to carry their less profitable films. So, companies uses a number of different metrics to predict the sentiment towards a movie. Analytics has spread its arms from Hollywood towards the World’s Biggest Film Industry, Bollywood. Social Sentiment Index (SSI) reveals measures about successful films. It is argued that it might hamper creativity and risk-taking factor in the movie industry. Thus it might affect small films to even take a chance. Read more about this interesting article at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/can-social-media-analytics-help-end-box-office-flops

When it comes to Data Analytics, failure is a very important part of the innovation process. A part of the data scientist’s job is trial-and-error and assumptions to vet data for new insights. Pushing the analytical process to uncover new uses of data and new ways of applying analytics necessarily involves risk and failure. Leading websites embrace this by testing hundreds or thousands of both minor and large scale changes to their site daily. Nothing is rolled out broadly on a major website today unless it has gone through rigorous testing. An organization based on rapid experimentation, exploration of new ideas and educated in doing analytics right is one destined to succeed. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/05/27/why-being-wrong-is-the-best-way-to-get-your-analytics-right/ 

The developments in data storage and analytics, combined with advancement in technology and medical research will completely change the future of healthcare and medicines. With the evolution of modern genomics along with analytics, healthcare sector will undergo a complete metamorphosis. According to a famous doctor, this change is being driven by three factors. Digital revolution- the use of mobile devices and apps through which information about actual human behavior can be obtained. Genetic revolution- which has identified large number of genetic variations which contribute to a large number of human traits and risks of various diseases. And finally Data revolution- which allows to get insights not only into individual patients but also the entire population. To know more read: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/03/20/the-promise-and-challenge-of-health-analytics/?KEYWORDS=analytics

The evolution and advancement of modern technology has led to a remarkable development of how business is done. With this rapid progress, the complexities in terms of how these technologies are used, has increased largely. Often the names and terms are clubbed together, and it becomes difficult for non-technical business leaders to understand and identify the independent usage of these technologies. "Big data analytics", "marketing analytics", "social media analytics", "audio stream analytics", etc. are some of them. It seems that analytics are often clubbed with other words, many of which are associated with storage and inflow of large volumes of data. If the volume of the sample is adequate enough to give a statistically valid output, then analytics can be executed without resorting to big data .To know more read: http://www.mytechlogy.com/IT-blogs/7973/does-analytics-need-big-data/#.VXE5WM-qqko