March 17, 2023 How Banks Can Use Analytics to Stay Out of the Headlines Financial institutions are making headlines around the world. There’s no shortage of press coverage on the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York, and there seem to be mounting fears about the overall health of the banking industry. While it is too early to know how these failures will… Read More
March 17, 2023 How to Use Data to Get More Visibility into Your Supply Chain Supply chains have undergone—and continue to experience—major changes and disruption. Worker shortages, rapidly changing customer demands, logistics problems, transportation bottlenecks, and other factors have all contributed to challenges. Even sales patterns that used to be easy to predict, such as those based on holidays and seasonal buying, have become much harder to understand, amplifying… Read More
March 17, 2023 Data Analytics for Supply Chain Managers If you haven’t already seen Astrid Eira’s article in FinancesOnline, “14 Supply Chain Trends for 2022/2023: New Predictions To Watch Out For.” It provides great insights into current supply chain developments and challenges. Eira identifies analytics as the top technology priority in the supply chain industry, with 62% of organizations reporting limited visibility. Here… Read More
March 9, 2023 Data Analytics for Supply Chain Managers If you haven’t already seen Astrid Eira’s article in FinancesOnline, “14 Supply Chain Trends for 2022/2023: New Predictions To Watch Out For.” It provides great insights into current supply chain developments and challenges. Eira identifies analytics as the top technology priority in the supply chain industry, with 62% of organizations reporting limited visibility. Here… Read More
March 7, 2023 How to Use Data to Get More Visibility into Your Supply Chain Supply chains have undergone—and continue to experience—major changes and disruption. Worker shortages, rapidly changing customer demands, logistics problems, transportation bottlenecks, and other factors have all contributed to challenges. Even sales patterns that used to be easy to predict, such as those based on holidays and seasonal buying, have become much harder to understand, amplifying… Read More
February 28, 2023 6 Predictive Analytics Steps to Reduce Customer Churn Keeping customer churn in check is dire, as it typically costs more to acquire a customer than to retain customers. To help businesses retain their customers, data scientists and IT analysts should consider customer churn analysis to better predict customer behavior. Here’s a quick overview of the tools necessary to predict customer churn. Calculate… Read More
February 21, 2023 9 Essential Blog Articles to Help You Know Your Customer Better Competition for customers is more intense than ever. And landing customers is only half the battle. Keeping them happy is the other half. Creating customers for life entails nurturing relationships and predicting changing needs, or risk losing customers to competitors. Innovative marketers understand the importance of knowing their customers so they can meet their… Read More
February 16, 2023 5 Tips to Transition from Multichannel to Omnichannel Customers want outcomes and consistency as they move across their preferred channels. However, many organizations are struggling to transition from multichannel marketing strategies to omnichannel marketing strategies. What is Multichannel? A channel is any place where a customer interacts with the company. Most businesses rely on a mix of channels to interact with their customers… Read More
February 7, 2023 5 Important Customer Experience Scoring Methods After reading “Forrester 2023 Customer Experience Predictions”, it was surprising to see one of its projections – 20% of customer experience (CX) programs will disappear this year. Forrester explains that companies for which great CX is not part of their brand identity will demand proof that CX spending is necessary. Unfortunately, 54% of CX… Read More
January 31, 2023 Ventana Research Analyst Perspective, Actian Manages Avalanches of Data Matt Aslett, VP & Research Director at Ventana Research, just wrote an Analyst Perspective called Actian Manages Avalanches of Data. He gives the Avalanche Cloud Data Platform a positive review and concludes by saying, “I recommend that organizations migrating to the cloud and looking for a cloud data platform with integration and management capabilities… Read More
January 17, 2023 A Beginner’s Roadmap for Adopting and Using Cloud Data Analytics Data managers have their hands full when it comes to their data analytics strategies. Datasets are growing in complexity and are generated at record volumes. Processing, analyzing and putting this data to use is mission critical for businesses to drive revenue and scale in the future. To help process these new and complex datasets… Read More
January 12, 2023 Three Critical Best Practices for Utilizing Customer-Centric Data Today’s customers have high expectations when it comes to customer experience and making purchasing decisions. Consumers are looking for high-quality shopping experiences, both online and in-store. They expect companies to provide a clear shopping interface, visually appealing websites and store fronts, easy access to customer support, and simple checkout processes when interacting with brands.… Read More
January 5, 2023 Do You Have Big, Fast, Jumbled, Useless, or Ugly Data? Here’s What to Do It has been more than 20 years since Meta Group (acquired by Gartner) introduced the 3Vs of data, Volume, Velocity and Variety. Gartner later expanded the 3Vs to 5Vs by adding Value and Veracity. To this day, these remain important considerations in data analytics. However, their size and complexity continue to increase. Here’s a… Read More
December 27, 2022 The Power of Real-time Supply Chain Analytics There are many areas where real-time data analytics helps businesses increase revenue and operate more efficiently. Manufacturers, for instance, can use real-time supply chain analytics to reinvent their supply chain across sourcing, processing, and distribution of goods, so they can adjust to changing conditions quickly and effectively. Manufacturers can get the visibility they need… Read More
December 12, 2022 Building the Bridge From Cloud to Edge for Superior Operational Analytics Data and analytics are the heartbeat of any business looking to drive revenue and innovate - especially during volatile and uncertain times. Businesses have gradually transitioned away from traditional data centers in favor of cloud data storage and analytics solutions to access data and unlock business insights more easily. We expect more enterprises will… Read More
December 9, 2022 Vector 6.3 Delivers Easier Administration, Greater Automation and Better Productivity for Data Analytics Did you know that Vector is one of the world’s fastest analytics databases? We’re excited to announce that a recent Enterprise Strategy Group evaluation found that Vector can outperform its competitors by up to 7.9x. Adding to this momentum is the release of Vector 6.3 in early December. Key highlights of the release include… Read More
November 23, 2022 Telling a Great Data Story What is a Data Story? A story is a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the listener or reader. A data story can be like any story, but its narrative is focused on data insights designed to teach and motivate an audience to act. Why… Read More
November 14, 2022 The Best Ways to Deliver on the Promises of Real-Time Data Analytics In my recent eBook called How to Maximize Business Value with Real-Time Data Analytics, I summarized some of the key capabilities that businesses should look for to meet the demands of real-time analytics. I’d like to expand upon these key questions that may directly impact the success of your organization. How do we scale… Read More
November 7, 2022 Four Ways Your Analytics Journey Can Help You Respond Effectively to Pandemic Impacts on Customer Behaviors We all thought, or at least hoped, that the COVID-19 pandemic would be history by now. Conditions are certainly better, but the end isn’t in sight. We still don’t know if COVID-19 will evolve into an endemic disease that we can more easily live with or if there’s a more deadly mutation just around… Read More
November 2, 2022 Don’t Rely on Outdated Advice for Digital Transformation The road to digital transformation is not straightforward, and has not rapidly accelerated over the past few years. As businesses modernize systems and processes to keep pace with technology innovation, they’re looking for insights and road markers to help guide them along their journey. When seeking advice, business leaders often turn to industry peers… Read More
October 31, 2022 How to Make Your Analytics Journey More Data Driven Your future as a successful business depends on being more data driven. A successful analytics journey transforms an organization from using its data to understand what happened in the past, to using real-time data to help users decide on the best course of action in the moment. To complete this journey, your culture, your… Read More
October 27, 2022 Digital Transformation is a Journey, not a Destination Enterprises have had to adjust their business strategies to account for the rapid pace of change and transformation of the last few years. Factors such as technological innovation, decentralized work, and data volume have triggered an acceleration of digital transformation (DX) plans. For many, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns also sped up the… Read More
October 25, 2022 How to Increase Loyalty and Brand Sentiment Through Data A great customer experience (CX) can lead to more customers choosing you over your competitors. However, getting CX right can be a tricky task, especially as buyer personas and behaviors rapidly evolved because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumers have pivoted the way they shop, and, given the uptick in digital selling options businesses are… Read More
October 17, 2022 What Exactly is Data Visualization? Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data are created worldwide – giving businesses access to new sources of information that they can use to create better experiences for their customers and confirm for many that big business knows pretty much everything about you. Last week, I was in Boston for sales training and… Read More
October 13, 2022 Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Healthcare Data Platform? Healthcare organizations now require insights that are only possible to gain by bringing together diverse and disparate clinical, financial, and operational data from across the organization, as well as outside it. Without access to these insights, improvements in outcomes and operational efficiencies that value-based care models promise to deliver will be harder and more… Read More
October 10, 2022 Why is Customer Experience Strategy So Important? Use the Good to Outweigh the Bad Instead of reacting to negative customer experiences and feedback once damage has already happened, an organization is more successful when it takes a proactive approach. It may seem obvious, but the time and effort it takes to overcome a negative experience is much greater than that of… Read More
October 4, 2022 Big Data and Data Analytics in the Finance Domain Big data is revolutionizing virtually every industry, perhaps none more than financial services. It is giving finance firms the ability to do things they never could before – like roll out new payment systems, deliver data-driven offers and use AI to combat fraud. Banks, investment firms, stock traders, and others have more data at… Read More
September 13, 2022 Reflecting on the Customer Data Analytics Tactics of 2022 and Planning for the Future Customer relationship managers have the difficult task of knowing where customers are in their lifecycle and knowing exactly what their shifting needs are. With the first half of this year in the rearview mirror, now is an important time to take stock of customer data analytics priorities, and how far we’ve come since the… Read More
August 23, 2022 Holistic Data Sources and the Art of Optimizing Marketing Budgets to Optimize Your ROI In the current economy where businesses are entrenched in a hyper-personalized world, it is more important than ever to ensure your marketing dollars are spent on realizing value for your business. Businesses are investing heavily in personalized content strategies to meet the needs of their customers at each stage of the customer lifecycle. But… Read More
August 16, 2022 How to Create a Perfectly Tailored Customer Experience eCommerce is a competitive field. Businesses are living in an era of hyper-personalization and omnichannel engagement, constantly vying for limited customer attention in a saturated market. As a result, optimizing marketing campaigns and driving qualified sales leads continues to be a challenge. Having insight into each individual’s unique preferences, buying behavior, and expressed sentiment… Read More
August 2, 2022 How Retailers can Keep Pace Alongside Dynamic Customers The rapid pace of change and acceleration of digital transformation brought on by the pandemic isn’t news anymore; hybrid working environments and limits to in-person commerce forced businesses across diverse sectors to modernize the way they work, and their tech stacks to keep up with demand. However, one side effect of this rapid pace… Read More
July 19, 2022 How the Right Data Platform Approach Unleashes Competitive Advantage For some time now, we at Actian have been focusing squarely on making the Avalanche Cloud Data Platform the most trusted, flexible, and easy to use data platform on the market. These, of course, are traits that anybody in any industry would want to trumpet. But they’re especially important in the world of data,… Read More
February 17, 2021 Data Lakes, Data Warehouses and Data Hubs – Do we need another choice? Data Lakes, Data Warehouses, and Data Hubs - Do we need another choice? There’s a long-standing debate, dating back to the early days of Hadoop, about what kind of data repository is best for a given data analytics use case. A Data Lake? A Data Hub? A Data Warehouse? Despite Hadoop’s fall from grace,… Read More
January 22, 2021 Data Analytics is a Core Element Creating Business Value Valued assets Organizational assets are defined as capabilities and resources. To be valued strategic assets, they have to contribute to the success of the organization. There is no business value contributed to an asset that does not have an understood return on investment (ROI) for the organization. Capabilities can be defined as the ability,… Read More
December 28, 2020 Four Data Analytics Predictions for 2021 – A Year to Recover and Accelerate In a year dominated by the dark cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tragedies that ensued, we seem to be ending on a hopeful note. We saw the incredible power of human ingenuity, as not one but several vaccines have been developed at breakneck speed, surpassing even the most optimistic of expectations. We… Read More
April 8, 2020 Financial Services Companies Need all the Data Analytics They Can Get There are times when financial markets trend up. There are times that markets trend down. And then there are times that the markets go crazy and the only thing predictable is volatility. When markets encounter these volatile periods, financial services companies become highly reliant on data analytics to determine where the real market forces… Read More
October 24, 2019 Optimizing Cloud Compute and Data Storage for Data Analytics When architecting your data warehouse solution, separating compute and data storage is extremely important for both operational sustainability and economic efficiency. Different things drive the technical needs for each of these, the capacity demands of the organization are different, and the best solution requires optimizing compute and data storage separately. Storage capacity is a… Read More
September 26, 2019 Observations from Strata Data Conference Looking around at Strata this morning I observe that the folks here fall into three broad categories: The t-shirt wearing techie who proudly wears their favorite logo'ed t-shirt e.g. "Data is the New Bacon" and who is here to reassure themselves that there isn't much that they don't know about what is happening in… Read More
July 29, 2019 Exploiting Analytics in the Cloud Without Moving All Your Data There Your company has competing data needs. You need IT systems optimized for real-time transaction processing to serve as the engine for digitally transformed business processes. You also need your data aggregated and optimized for analytics to generate both real-time insights and perform deep data-mining activities. It can be difficult to balance these competing needs… Read More
February 19, 2019 Use real-time data to achieve better business optimization. Here’s how. With increasing competition in the marketplace and shrinking profit margins in many industries, companies are increasing looking for ways to achieve higher levels of business process optimization throughout their supply chain. This isn’t a new challenge, but it is one that has recently taken on greater importance with the acceleration of the speed of… Read More
July 12, 2022 How to Use Customer Data Analytics in Your Business: What You Need to Know Whether you are a business leader or a marketing professional, you know that a company’s most valuable asset is its customers. Today, data analytics is the new competitive advantage. Customer data analytics is about more than just an increase in revenue and customer satisfaction levels. It is about your entire business ecosystem. In fact,… Read More
June 9, 2022 You Know You’re a “Citizen” Data Scientist If … Data collection and analysis have become increasingly important as multiple industries continue to drive their digital transformation initiatives. Whether it’s to improve customer experience, target marketing efforts, or just better understand how their business is performing, data is at the heart of it all. However, to make data work for you, you need the… Read More
