What is Cloud Security?

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Organizations trust Actian data management and data intelligence solutions to streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Learn more about Actian, the data and AI division of HCLSoftware, at actian.com.

What is Cloud Security?

#Cloud #Data Intelligence

#Cloud #Data Intelligence

Cloud Security refers to the technologies, policies, controls, and services that protect data, applications, and infrastructure in the cloud from both internal and external threats.

Between essential protection and uncompromising lockdown, it is critical to find the best compromise between security practices and the flexibility that is essential for business productivity.

Business applications, data storage, complete virtual machines… Almost everything can be governed by Cloud Computing. According to forecasts and observations made by IDC, it appears that spending on cloud infrastructure will increase by 22% in 2022 compared to 2021. This means that it will exceed the $90 billion mark by the end of the calendar year. A record number as this is the highest annual growth rate since 2018! But the more our businesses become cloud-based, the more the issue of Cloud Security becomes a top priority.

However, behind a concept as vast and complex as Cloud Security, it must be understood that it is based on a set of strategies, technical means, and control solutions that ensure both the protection of data stored, the availability and reliability of applications and infrastructure services essential to the operation of the cloud.

Protection against external and internal threats and vulnerabilities, resilience, and resistance to cybersecurity issues, Cloud Security is a concept intrinsically linked to Cloud Computing.

Private, Public, Hybrid…Each Cloud Has its Own Security Challenges

To fully understand Cloud Security, we must first differentiate the types of Cloud Computing. Public clouds are hosted by third-party cloud service providers.

When you use a public cloud, you get a turnkey cloud and have no latitude to configure and administer it, and the services are fully managed by the cloud provider.

If, on the other hand, you move to a private cloud service, you have a more secure and potentially more customizable space.

Finally, hybrid cloud services combine the scalability of public clouds with the greater resource control of private clouds while offering lower pricing than private clouds.

In all cases, whether you choose a public, private or hybrid cloud service, it is critical to ensure Cloud Security.

Why is Cloud Security Important?

The more your company leverages the cloud, the more agile it becomes. Even better: the cloud enables small and medium-sized businesses to have the same tools and functionalities as very big companies. The downside is that the power at your disposal increases the cloud usage of your teams and, consequently, increases your exposure to threats that in the past only concerned larger companies.

That’s why Cloud Security is more important than ever. Unleashing usage and productivity through the cloud mechanically increases your dependency on the cloud.

Without the cloud, nothing is possible. Therefore, Cloud Security becomes a priority issue, especially when it comes to data protection. Preventing data leakage and theft is essential to maintaining your customers’ trust. Cloud Security, by guaranteeing data protection, makes it an element of trust between you and your customers.

The Challenges of Cloud Security

The availability of the cloud is a major issue for companies. In this context, the first challenge of Cloud Security is to guarantee maximum availability, particularly by protecting infrastructures from Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Analysis of traffic on cloud servers, and detection of suspicious packets, are all practices that are essential to Cloud Security. The fight against data breaches and by extension, against data loss, are two other prominent challenges of Cloud Security.

Finally, the last key challenge of Cloud Security is user identity verification. As employees become increasingly mobile, they connect to cloud services from anywhere in the world, making identity verification more and more complex. This is why multi-factor authentication is highly recommended by cloud players.

Anticipation, visibility, transparency, reactivity, and proactivity are the levers to be used on a daily basis to guarantee Cloud Security.

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7 Obstacles to Democratizing Data Access in an Organization

By Anthony Corbeaux

#Data #Data Catalog #Data Security

7 Obstacles To Democratizing Data Access

By Anthony Corbeaux

#Data #Data Catalog #Data Security

Many organizations have the objective of becoming data-driven, i.e., basing their strategic decisions not on hunches or trends, but on accurate, reliable data and analysis. This implies a process of storing, documenting, and making available this data to make the most of it. If these companies equip themselves with modern tools to democratize access to data, they are faced with a multitude of difficulties that can slow down the process. This article is based on our experience with the Actian Data Intelligence Platform users from organizations of various sizes and sectors to describe 7 obstacles frequently encountered on the road to data democratization.

Tools are not Sufficient

Among the users of the Actian Data Intelligence Platform solutions, the democratization of data and the desire to switch to a data-driven decision-making model are, of course, major priorities. Moreover, access to the data of these organizations is partially democratized since they are all equipped with dedicated tools like data lakes and data labs. Naturally, the deployment of a Data Catalog in these companies is also an illustration of this, with the use of a unique platform capable of centralizing an entire data ecosystem that is shared with all employees.

These tools are essential building blocks for any data-driven approach, but they do not, on their own, make access to data more democratic. If we take a data catalog, for example, the tool becomes especially effective when it is used by the largest number of people in the organization. It is the multiplication of use cases and the documentation of data assets by as many employees as possible that allows the value of the company’s information to be unlocked. Everyone at their own level can then benefit from the work of their colleagues, a virtuous circle in short. To encourage this, a cultural change is necessary.

Shifting Corporate Culture

There is sometimes a lack of awareness of the value of the data available in the organization and a lack of commitment to the process of documenting and sharing data. The challenge lies in the use of the tools mentioned above, with data often remaining in silos between the different departments and teams. This mindset is even more difficult to change at the business level, whereas IT teams are culturally more aware and inclined to document and share data.

Governance units were created to promote this awareness, but the lack of legitimacy within the organization complicates their work of raising awareness of the central role of data for the company. In data mesh literature, it is recommended to federate/decentralize data governance. Business teams must be integrated into this process, at the risk of creating a language gap: governance teams must work with data owners, data engineers, data analysts, etc. The democratization of data access must involve both data producers and consumers.

The notion of changing the company’s mindset is a necessity to complement the tools in place to democratize data. Research published by Gartner shows that historically, organizations have evolved into a defensive culture of “never share, except” for good reasons to share it. The research institute insists on the need to switch to an “must share, except” philosophy. Tools (data lakes, data labs, data catalogs, etc.) are not enough to democratize data if they are not supported by this cultural shift.

Documenting After the Fact

Many projects are primarily driven by costs and time, and in these cases, data governance and data quality are typically not priority topics from the start. There is a tendency to document after the fact, making sharing and documenting data more difficult. Data quality, and even more so its documentation, is all too often the last task to be executed.

The Lack of Time

The lack of documentation is a bias that is heightened in organizations whose products and value are created through the exploitation of data – where the obstacle to democratization is more related to the lack of time for documenting than a lack of data culture as mentioned above. If we go back to the example of a data catalog and focus on the data scientist profession, we can see that this type of population has more or less the desire to document its activity but does not take the time to do so, since the completeness of the data catalog is not a priority.

Furthermore, documenting and making data available is not always part of the employees’ mission. There is therefore also an HR dimension to data democratization. The documentation mission can be added to the scope of the employees’ responsibilities to promote democratization and accountability.

The Volume of Data

A form of fear sometimes arises when contributors are asked to share their own business data within a large common container (a data lake or data catalog). This is the fear of finding oneself drowning in an ocean of data added by other entities of the organization, and of not being able to find one’s way around.

The data catalog is a valuable tool to alleviate this fear among data producers. Indeed, the tool offers them the possibility to not only easily explore their own data, but also to use data produced by others for their own use cases.

Data Security

The security aspect regularly comes up as a pretext for not sharing data within the company. However, there are effective systems for managing user permissions, such as the one integrated into the the Actian Data Intelligence Platform data catalog, for example, which, coupled with a culture of sharing and accountability, can make it possible to overcome this barrier.

Data Ownership

As far as the notion of ownership is concerned, we too often observe ownership of datasets at a local level. Yet data is a corporate asset, a common heritage, and only regulatory aspects should justify local ownership. In other cases, this ownership quickly becomes an obstacle to documentation: the corporate culture must favor making data available to the greatest number, under the responsibility of an entity or individuals.

If you would like to discuss the obstacles to the democratization of data described in this article, or if you would like a presentation of the Actian Data Intelligence Platform solutions for data-driven companies contact us.

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About Anthony Corbeaux

The Benefits and Challenges of Data for the Banking Industry

#Data #Data Scientist #Financial Analytics

#Data #Data Scientist #Financial Analytics

Banks and insurance companies have one thing in common: they collect massive amounts of customer data. Due to rising customer expectations and increased competition from Fintech players, the financial services industry simply cannot afford to let the data collected go unused. Explanations.

The financial services industry has invested heavily in data collection and processing technologies for over a decade. This reality is expected to grow even more with the growth of digital consumer habits and the emergence of new forms of competition. Banks and insurers must leverage existing and future datasets to maximize their understanding of customers and gain a competitive advantage.

The Impact of Digital Transformation in the Banking Industry

Disciplines such as Finance Data or Finance Data Analytics are widely employed in the banking industry to calculate risks, detect fraud, limit losses, and maximize gains. According to a study conducted by IDC, by 2025, the volume of data to be analyzed in the banking sector could reach 163 billion terabytes. Payment card use, multiplication of banking services, online transactions, dematerialization of salaries, online consultation of personal accounts, identification of customers’ consumption habits…banks have a considerable amount of information about their customers. The banking world is undergoing massive digital transformation efforts.

According to a study conducted by the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), there are several reasons for these efforts. First, there is a need for easy-to-access, multi-channel digital tools that allow for seamless and perfectly secure customer paths. Secondly, there is a need for immediacy and flexibility in customer relations. And finally, there is a need to personalize the service delivered to the customer, allowing them to become autonomous. All of these needs can be met through the use of data.

The Benefits of Data for Banks

The urgency to carry out this digital transformation, however, is amplified by various structural elements that affect the banking market. Between the evolution of crypto-currencies, the emergence of NFTs, and the appearance of new models favoring new forms of competition with open-banking and Fintech, traditional banks must not only rethink their offers, methods, and organization but also their territorial network, to maximize proximity with customers, minimize operating costs and offer a differentiating customer experience.

However, the use of data in the banking sector is not limited to customer relations.

Through data science, the financial services industry is undergoing a real disruption. By analyzing data, companies can extract valuable information through mathematical and statistical techniques. Finance Data not only allows companies to better understand their customers in order to deliver better service offers but also optimizes the profits of the banking sector – at a time when their business model is being challenged by the emergence of new players such as digital banks and fintech. Data is also used in activities such as high-frequency trading.

The Stakes of Data for Banks

According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigation Report, 95% of data compromises identified in the report are motivated by greed. In this context, the financial services industry is, by its very nature, a target for criminal organizations. As a designated target for cyber threats, the banking sector is also the object of particular vigilance on the part of the authorities, particularly with regard to compliance with the provisions of the RGPD. The first challenge of the banking sector in relation to data is indeed that of security and compliance. But it is not the only one.

Indeed, the very nature of banking activity allows the collection and aggregation of large volumes of data that can be of a heterogeneous nature. The banking world is therefore faced with major challenges in terms of data governance, data quality, and the continuous optimization of data assets.

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Power Up the Enterprise With Data – ‘Gas’ for Your SaaS

#Cloud Data Warehouse

Digital environment with hand touching a virtual screen

#Cloud Data Warehouse

The faster an organization can innovate and scale its technology to adapt to changing market conditions and economic uncertainty, the better positioned it will be as a market leader. Data insights fuel organizations but adding that “gas” to your organization’s SaaS is easier said than done.

Be it analyzing customer data, running and maintaining a CRM, handling payroll, or any other essential task, organizations regularly use countless cloud applications and services to handle daily business processes. Running these applications in the cloud helps free up on-premises storage and allows for data to be accessed from anywhere. SaaS usage is exploding, too. A recent report found that on average, businesses are using over 100 SaaS-based applications and systems in their enterprise.

To ensure these applications and systems are fully functional and provide the proper insights needed to inform business decisions, enterprises must power SaaS efforts with real-time analytics that extract maximum value from data pipelines.

SaaS Alignment – Easier Said Than Done

The tricky part for enterprises is ensuring their SaaS-backed systems work with one another to enable real-time insights and access to fresh data. Businesses can often get bogged down with too many systems, which can create silos that operate disparately from one another and cut off information pipelines across the organization. This is problematic, as the data generated by these systems can be difficult or impossible to access for proper analysis.

SaaS sprawl can hinder organizations’ transparency, workflows, and interdepartmental communication and jeopardize enterprise security. Organizations can also find themselves overpaying continuously (based on a cloud subscription cost) for services that are inefficient at providing critical business insights – a lose-lose situation. An abundance of SaaS applications also means that systems can be harder for users to access and understand how they feed into the bigger picture, which can make employees feel disconnected from other departments and create unintentional data silos.

A lack of connectivity across SaaS applications can put businesses a step behind their competitors. This makes the data pipeline harder to access, slowing down an organization’s decision-making and productivity. Doing it right means having fresh data insights in real time in a simple way.

How to Unlock the True Potential of Enterprise Data

Data analytics is critical for ambitious companies that rely on data. Like gasoline in a car, businesses need a tool that can extract the maximum value of the data being stored, and power the insights needed to drive decisions forward. The Actian Data Platform provides this fuel for SaaS users with line of business (LOB) management and easily accessible real-time data across enterprise functions to boost business operations intelligence.

Industry shifts happen. That’s why tools that enable this type of analysis are critical for meaningful innovation and scaling of operations. Having this scalability and business insight helps organizations reduce costs on SaaS tools that aren’t operating efficiently across silos. It also reduces up-front investment costs associated with additional IT resources, CAPEX, training and more.

Proper insights offered by this type of tool can help businesses analyze what systems are working and which aren’t, to better inform their digital transformation journey, reduce costs, prove their value proposition, and increase revenue. By turbocharging organizations with real-time insights, organizations can do more with stronger, more valuable data.

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Intern Summer Snapshot #4

#Internships

Get to know the members of the Actian intern summer series 2022 in depth

#Internships

Written By: Madeline Heath, Marketing Intern

The fourth week of August signals the final week of our 2022 summer internship session. Our interns have spent the last 11 weeks contributing in engineering, finance, technical course development, marketing, and people. For the fourth and final installment of our Intern Summer Series, we take an in-depth look at what our interns, Nikita Gaurihar, Linson Miranda, and Riya Singla have been working on!

Nikita Gaurihar
Department Vector Engineering Intern

As an intern in the Vector Engineering department, Nikita has spent her summer designing a Data Pipeline solution by performing quality checks and ingesting the processed data using the GRC approach into the Data Vault schema using Actian Products. As a result, Nikita is well versed in SQL, Unix Shell scripting, Lucid Chart, and Database management.

From such hands-on experience within such a dynamic environment, she has learned three skills she believes are essential to navigate any workplace: Managing the action items in terms of priority for the sake of efficiency, communication and networking being the key, and yearning to maintain the technical competencies in the ever-changing technology-driven industry.

As the primary reason she pursued her position at Actian was the potential of real tangible experience, this internship has reinforced her aspirations of working as a Data Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, etc., and motivated her to keep going using the first principles thinking. Although her time at Actian is dwindling, Nikita is incredibly grateful for Actian being her first international professional experience and will always remember how Actian treated her like a real engineer.

Linson Miranda
Business Intelligence and Analytics Intern, Revenue Operations & Customer Enablement

This summer, Linson worked as a Business Intelligence and Analytics Intern for the Business Development team at Actian. His capstone project revolved around building a Customer 360 Demo for the Sales team using the Actian Data Platform and sharing his findings and feedback with Actian Leadership. Despite the remote setting, Linson felt empowered to reach out to seniors within the company and was happy to find a tight-knit community that was spread across the globe.

Looking forward, Linson would love to explore his career further with Actian and sees this internship as a milestone in his analytics career. From such an incredible and rewarding experience, he is confident in his pursuit of opportunities in data science and engineering with companies like Google and Adobe.

Although his time at Actian is coming to an end, Linson is happy to have participated in the Summer Internship program and is grateful to his peers and other Actian employees for encouraging him and sharing their experiences and insights in such a brief time. He has thoroughly enjoyed the people-first culture of Actian and believes the retention rate speaks for itself!

Riya Singla
IT Development Operations Intern

As the IT Development Operations Intern, Riya works alongside Engineering IT to create a script which automatically deploys Terraform templates to the cloud. From such hands-on experience, she is well-versed in many developmental operations technologies such as Terraform, Jenkins, and Kubernetes.

Although Riya has extensive personal coding experience, she has enjoyed coding in a professional environment and believes it is important to know how to make code production ready. As Riya wants to pursue a career in software engineering, she believes her internship has helped her develop instrumental developmental operations skills that make her a more well-rounded engineer.

With insight from her manager, Riya now maintains the mindset that when interacting with new technologies you “learn a little about a lot.” This means when interacting with different programs, you can dive into different technologies with just enough knowledge that you need to piece them together to build something bigger.

If you are a student interested in gaining real-world experience and tangible skills and want to foster your own professional growth in a flexible virtual setting, we encourage you to submit your resume for consideration for our Actian Summer Internship Program!

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Holistic Data Sources to Optimize Marketing Budgets and ROI

#Data Analytics

#Data Analytics

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 what happens when the ROI dries up? If target audiences are not accurate, businesses will lose money from creating irrelevant content for the wrong stage of the buyer journey. Creating content that produces effective engagement with customers is one of the biggest hurdles that ambitious businesses face today, so it is crucial to get the strategy right from the beginning.

Organizations often undertake content marketing strategies without a full, 360-degree view of who the customer truly is. As a result, marketing teams are held back from launching their campaigns off the ground because they fail to get the full picture of who to target and how. Time is of the essence for marketers, and every minute (if not second) when a campaign is not being acted on can result in wasted marketing spend.

Diversify Your Data Sources

Marketing teams may source exclusively from internal data or use data generated from a single system within a single department. While internal data can provide color as to who the personas are that the organization is trying to reach, it is just one brush stroke of paint in the picture. You need to pull from diverse datasets to create the full image of customer personas.

Now that you know you need to understand your customers more meaningfully, how do you make that happen? To get a truly holistic image of who the customer is, consider the following.

Move your business past the traditional CRM and data warehouse systems. These legacy systems cannot handle all the datasets needed to accurately portray target audiences, which make it more difficult for your content marketing strategy to be successful. If you do not have a clear picture of your ideal customer personas, you cannot create optimized content for them – let alone close a sale. Pivot to external data sources that can help you paint a better picture – think datasets like searches, social networking, mobile web impressions, and history with inbound and outbound campaigns. This type of data gives the best insights into things like buying patterns and habits that can offer true, actionable next steps to meet your customers, nurture them, and recommend what else they may need along their journey with you.

After all data is unlocked and collected from internal and external sources, it is then up to businesses like yours to combine that data in a way that can be viewed in a single pane. Why is this important? Because unconnected data is hard to interpret and analyze properly, leading to even more dollars being wasted on irrelevant marketing content generated from disparate data sources.

From there, organizations can rapidly personalize the customer experience through micro-segmentation, next best action, and market basket analysis, while improving customer acquisition and retention through campaign optimization, and churn analysis to increase customer loyalty.

Don’t Wait for Later. Act Now for Best Results.

It sounds simple but given how quickly consumers get their information in today’s mobile-first world, it is imperative to stay on top of this data and implement it into marketing campaigns as quickly as possible. The ability to build, test, deploy, and assess campaigns quickly is a key consideration, if you want to maximize your campaign revenue.

What else makes an effective campaign?

Understanding your buyer persona, where they research to learn more about what they are looking for, and who they turn to and trust when they’re making their buyer decisions.
Understanding where your customers are geographically, where they congregate, and where they socialize – both digitally and in-person. This could include where they shop online, where they are in-person, what mobile apps they use, including social selling platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Quickly assess the current state of your campaign and leverage available datasets to pivot appropriately. Access to these real-time analytics gives marketers like you the best possible chance to refine and optimize your campaigns and generate higher ROI.

Content marketing campaigns are made more robust and effective if quality, timely, and secure data are fed into them. Want to stand out in a crowded market and get the best bang for your buck? Ambitious businesses like yours can deploy targeted and highly personalized campaigns using relevant data to perform deep analysis on your customer types. Acting quickly to capitalize on a variety of data sources to paint a 360-degree view of customers makes all the difference between optimizing and squandering your marketing budget.

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Intern Summer Snapshot #3

#Internships

#Internships

With August in full swing, our 2022 summer internship is coming to a close. Our interns have spent the last 10 weeks contributing to different teams throughout Actian. For the third installment of our Intern Summer Series, we take an in-depth look at what our interns, Madeline Heath and Gabrielle Kray, have been up to this summer!

Madeline Heath
Marketing Intern

Maddie has spent her summer working as the Marketing Intern for the Marketing department where she is primarily responsible for managing the Actian blog and tagging all Actian content with keywords in Uberflip – a marketing software for which she is now certified. She also is responsible for managing other supplemental projects such as content organization, industry market research, and website content for the executive team.

She is most grateful for the continued development of her project management skills and aptitude for efficient processes. She also realized how much she appreciates the “little parts” of the team experience especially when working remotely like good morning messages and gifs that make Actian such a community.

While her time as an intern is ending, she will never forget how wonderful it was meeting making friends with such bright-minded peers in her intern class and the mentorship she received from all members of the Actian team -most specifically her manager Kimmah Shah and buddy, Mollie Kendall.

Gabrielle Kray
Employee Experience Intern

Gabrielle -Actian’s very own Employee Experience Intern- has spent her summer working within the Employee Experience team renovating the New Hire Orientation process. Gabrielle conducted extensive research and utilized the software Camtasia to build an Asynchronous New Hire Orientation.

This orientation, soon available on Actian Academy, expanded upon the content of the initial curriculum used for orientation, allowing for more detailed and digestible information. A lot of care was also put into ensuring that the information is presented in a way that is much more interactive, flexible, and provides new hires with easy to reference materials to be used in the future. Working on such an essential part of the onboarding process has equipped Gabrielle with an understanding of what to look for when joining a company, how to map out a vision prior to execution, and some slick video editing skills!

Gabrielle has enjoyed her internship and is grateful to her Manager, Sara Lou, and Buddy, Rae Coffman-Bueb, for providing her with a comfortable and invigorating work environment. The passion they bring to their work and the people of Actian is inspiring!

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How to Create a Perfectly Tailored Customer Experience

#Customer Experience #Data Analytics

#Customer Experience #Data Analytics

Summary

This blog delves into strategies for crafting personalized customer experiences in the competitive e-commerce landscape, emphasizing the importance of unified customer profiles, data integration, and predictive analytics.

Unified Customer Profiles: Integrating data from various touchpoints to create comprehensive customer profiles enables businesses to understand individual preferences and behaviors, facilitating personalized interactions.
Predictive Analytics: Leveraging data analytics to anticipate customer needs and behaviors allows businesses to proactively offer relevant products and services, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Real-Time Data Integration: Implementing platforms that provide real-time data integration ensures that businesses can respond promptly to customer interactions, maintaining a seamless and personalized experience across channels.

E-commerce 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 on the retail brand is essential for retailers to build as close to a complete picture of their customers as possible. In doing so, their marketing campaigns and sales channels are shaped in ways to make this achievable. However, many companies do not have access to a comprehensive view of their customer data. This is unsurprising, as customer data tends to be scattered, lying across various channels and sources. It would be challenging for a true 360-degree view to be sourced exclusively from internal data, and even harder to be found in a single system or business team.

To make the most of customer analytics and better serve customers, businesses need a platform that provides a unified view of the customer profile so businesses can optimize the shopping experience and improve customer retention levels.

Why are Unified Customer Profiles Important?

Customers expect companies to draw them in and entice them to make a purchase. Businesses want to delight their customers, but before that’s possible, companies must be familiar with who their customers are and what types of content they are engaging with. As one example, research by McKinsey & Company shows new consumer groups are trying out digital products and services for the first time. And when it comes to business-to-business consumers, according to the McKinsey article from spring 2020, “our recent customer-behavior research shows that digital interaction with B2B customers is now two times more important than traditional channels—more than a 30 percent jump since before the COVID-19 crisis hit.”

In order to stitch together disparate data and get a complete customer profile, companies need a single SaaS customer analytics cloud platform. Once customer data is easily accessible, it’s much simpler to combine data from each customer touchpoint. This includes accessing historical transactions, data stored across CRM, ERP, and operational systems, and verifying a customer’s identity across multiple channels under various personas – aggregating all this into a comprehensible profile. A holistic customer profile allows you to understand your customers at each stage of their journey. From this, you can deliver personalized experiences for them and help increase customer satisfaction and grow customer loyalty over time.

How to Optimize the Shopping Experience

When shopping online, customers want to quickly and efficiently make purchases. Companies can meet these expectations and increase sales when they understand their customers well – and even better when they are able to create personalized experiences based on their buyer journey.

One way to optimize a customer’s experience while improving sales and customer satisfaction is to use data and market basket analysis to determine which products are commonly purchased together. With this insight, you can optimize product placement on your site or in-person, offer special deals, and create product bundles, which will encourage additional sales of similar product combinations.

Don’t Wait Until it’s Too Late: Learn to Improve Customer Retention

Losing customers has a huge impact on businesses, and most companies don’t know which customers are considering leaving until it’s too late. This leads to more than just a loss of revenue; it can also impact a company’s future growth. A study by Bain & Company found that increasing customer retention by only 5 percent opens up the potential for an increase in profits anywhere from 24-95 percent.

Existing customers are valuable assets and are more likely to purchase from you than new customers, so it’s crucial to develop strong customer loyalty. If you want to hold onto your customers and continue to build a stronger view of who they are, you’ll need to identify triggers and events that might influence them to make purchases elsewhere, thus increasing the accuracy of your customer churn predictions. With the right data, you can have insight into who’s most likely to leave. For example, once you’ve identified potential lost customers, you can send a promising retention offer to high-value customers, while deprioritizing the more unprofitable customers – exposing them to consider other competitors.

In a competitive market, businesses must find ways to stand out from the rest and deliver a memorable customer experience. How do you do that? You can accomplish this by using a platform that simplifies combining cross-channel data and sources in real time, giving your team a complete view of up-to-date customer information. Try this and you’ll see personalized customer experiences come to life and optimized ROI.

The Actian Customer Data Analytics Hub, powered by the Actian Data Platform, combines data integration and real-time analytics, making it easy to have a comprehensive view of your customer data across multiple channels and sources. You’ll be able to access, analyze, and unify buying behaviors while building valuable customer insights in real-time. More importantly, you’re building important relationships with customers, growing customer loyalty, and increasing sales along the way.

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Intern Summer Snapshot – #2

#Internships

Rae Coffman-Bueb is Director of Employee Experience at Actian, dedicated to enhancing organizational culture. With a background in People Operations, Rae has implemented global best practices that empower teams and streamline HR processes. She provides guidance on talent development, onboarding, and cross-functional collaboration. Rae's blog posts focus on employee engagement, internal communications, and HR innovations. Check them out for tips on boosting workplace satisfaction.

#Internships

For the month of August, we will be sharing a weekly post about our interns, their insights into the program, and how they’ve been developing their professional skills. For the second installment of our Intern Summer Series, we take an in-depth look at what our interns, Andi Wagner, Ashwin Ramakrishna, and Josh Reyes have been up to this summer!

Andi Wagner
Software Engineering Intern

Andi has spent the summer working as a Software Engineering Intern for the DataConnect Development Department where she has been developing an Apache Camel Extension for Actian DataConnect. Their work will allow for consumer use of Camel routes without extensive knowledge of the Apache Camel rules and framework making Actian DataConnect even more user-friendly and efficient.

Andi is happy to have developed proficiency in both DataConnect and Apache Camel, both of which they were unfamiliar with prior to her internship. She has also gained great insight into how software development occurs in a company and what it means to code professionally.

Andi will always be grateful for her Intern Orientation. She believes nothing could top that “best week” of fun activities and getting to know one another!

Ashwin Ramakrishna
Revenue Operations Analyst Intern

While at Actian, Ashwin works within the Business Development Team as the Revenue Operations Analyst Intern where they are developing an automated sales recommendation engine through Excel to simplify the pursuit and acquisition of leads. From hands-on experience, Ashwin now maintains a better understanding of what it is like to work within Revenue Operations and is well-versed in the lead-to-sale conversion process.

Ashwin has learned so much from the consistent feedback and collaboration within the Development Team and credits the entire team for his growth, as they have been extremely welcoming and eager to share their thoughts and professional insight. This internship has also furthered Ashwin’s interest in revenue operations -they believe it to be an essential aspect of all industries- and would like to use their experiences at Actian to get further involved in this field. #ShoutOutRevOpsTeam!

Joshua Reyes
Finance Intern

Josh has spent his summer working as a Finance Intern for the Finance Department where he has primarily worked on developing forecasting models for the future yearly costs for each of Actian’s cloud service providers. He has enjoyed furthering his collaboration skills and his understanding of forecast model building.

Working full-time in a professional finance setting has given Josh hands-on experience in the flow and function of a working finance team. This experience has supported his passion for developmental financial planning and analysis, and he has enjoyed furthering his understanding of the tech industry and prowess for finance.

Josh is most grateful to have worked with such skilled professionals and to have learned from their mentorship and experiences. He would like shoutout his manager, Mike Laquian and Buddy, Chris Saulsbury, for their guidance and support!

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Lesbians Who Tech – Key Takeaways and What Actian is Doing Next

#Company Culture

Actian is a proud sponsor of Lesbians Who Tech

#Company Culture

In true LWT fashion, we have to start out this blog with a ✋! As part of Pride Month, I had the honor of attending one of tech’s most highly anticipated annual events, Lesbians Who Tech #PrideSummit2022, which was held virtually from June 6 – June 10.

Actian is a proud sponsor of Lesbians Who Tech, as they embody what it means to hold space, amplify underrepresented voices, and shine a light on crucial issues the LGBTQIAP+ community faces as it relates to the tech industry and beyond. As an early attendee of the LWT Pride Summit, I realized Lesbians Who Tech and Actian would be a perfect pairing as Actian looks to expand our own diversity and inclusion efforts to support our large base of LGBTQIAP + employees.

Lesbians Who Tech Pride Summit is an event I look forward to all year, and this year was no exception. With a stacked lineup of speakers discussing topics ranging from political issues to creating inclusivity within the tech industry, I was excited to dive in and learn how to best advocate for positive and impactful change for the LGBTQIAP + employees within Actian.

This year, with the main conference held virtually, I was able to attend a wide variety of sessions and workshops. Without further ado, here are my highlights from Lesbians Who Tech Pride Summit 2022 and key takeaways on how we can all become more involved!

Implementing Gender-Affirming Care Offerings

Due to the current political climate, many speakers focused their sessions on advocating for trans rights in the workplace.

Heidi Schriefer, Vice President of People & Places at Grindr, delivered a superb presentation on how Grindr developed its Gender Affirming Care Benefits program, which is one of the most progressive and inclusive benefit packages for trans and queer employees I have seen. Grindr has committed itself to providing expanded access to Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to their transgender employees as well as establishing a Gender Affirmation Fund, which eliminates financial obstacles to surgical, social, and legal care.

What stood out most about Heidi’s presentation is how strong of an ally to the LGBTQIAP + community she is, and how she feels empowered through her allyship to enact momentous change within her company – allowing trans employees to receive the care they need and deserve, as well as often overlooked disparity of benefits for LGBTQIAP+ employees. Grindr is an excellent example of how companies can be doing more to support trans employees as they embark on their transition journey.

How to Own Your Career Authentically

Another standout session I attended was that of Keshona Lawrence, Platform Support and Experience Manager at Twitter. Kenosha’s speech focused on “only-ness” that many minority queer employees can experience in the workplace.

She explained how oftentimes minority and queer employees can feel as though they are the only person in the room, with no other employees who can relate to the struggles of being an intersectional queer employee. Dealing with this “only-ness” can cause many to minimize, tone-down, or shy away from their authentic selves in the workplace.

Kenosha shared her own personal struggles with “only-ness” and detailed that by holding her employers accountable and requiring them to create space and inclusive policies for those who feel underrepresented, she finally gained the courage to step into her own power and make her voice heard.

Learning Your Work Love Language in the Workplace

One thing I love about the Pride Summit are the engaging workshops offered throughout the course of the conference. A workshop I found extremely interesting was held by Brittney Aston, Community Manager at NextDoor, which explored employees’ different love languages within the workplace. We learned how to identify a person’s love language and develop effective cross-functional communication methods based on each love language category. This workshop was a great learning opportunity for myself, where I discovered tangible solutions that I can apply in my future work at Actian.

Key Takeaways

With so many amazing discussions, workshops, and networking events, Lesbians Who Tech #PrideSummit 2022 left me feeling well-equipped and ready to apply what I learned to future DE&I policies at Actian to better support our employees. With this in mind, here are a few things I took away from the conference and how we’re looking to implement further change at Actian in the future:

Have more informed conversations with our insurance brokers on how we can address some of the key areas noted across discussions on trans healthcare
As we continue with forming our DEIB Council, things to keep in mind to ensure equitability
Review opportunities create more inclusive naming policies and practices – decades old language defaults in tech are problematic and can introduce harmful microaggressions.

With the benefit of sponsoring the event, Actian had the opportunity to meet a number of qualified candidates. We are excited to have been able to onboard following those connections and look forward to supporting and enabling their success here at Actian!

One reason I love working at Actian is their continuous commitment to better themselves as a company and to always provide their employees with a work environment where they feel safe and supported. I am thrilled to work for and partner with a company committed to supporting our LGBTQIAP + employees to ensure their utmost success and happiness while working at Actian.

Are you ready to make an impact on the world and change the face of data management and integration? Join our team of enthusiastic, talented minds in a diverse, collaborative environment where you can thrive and grow. Learn more about our career openings at https://www.actian.com/company/careers/.

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Intern Summer Snapshot – #1

#Internships

#Internships

The first week of August kicks off our Intern Summer Series! For the month of August, we will share a weekly post about our interns, their insights into the 12-week virtual program, and how their internship has helped develop professional skills. First up, we have our wonderful Cloud Operations Analyst Intern, Henry McKinney, and Zen Engineering Intern, Matt Jackson! Gain insight into their intern experience below!

Henry McKinney
Cloud Operations Analyst Intern

Henry has spent his summer as the Cloud Operations Analyst Intern on the Cloud Operations team where he works to streamline workflow and create greater efficiency within his team’s projects. His primary responsibility –analyzing and assisting the operations of his team- consists of specific tasks such as: project designing, project management, team management, workload analysis, ticket analysis, and security analysis.

Henry describes his experience working on a cloud operations team as exciting and innovative and has developed an appreciation for the Agile mindset in tech. His experience working with AWS, GCP, Azure and Atlassian at Actian combined with his passion for technology and data have further strengthened Henry’s ambitions to pursue a career in the cloud space.

Henry has enjoyed the opportunity to add value to his cloud operations team and admires the collaborative culture they present. He believes it is a privilege to work alongside such seasoned veterans in the cloud space and is grateful for how friendly and helpful his team members -especially his mentor, Bobby- have been.

Matthew Jackson
Zen Engineering Intern

Matt has spent his summer working as the Zen Engineering intern where his time has been split between two major projects. He first worked on CM Wiki Migration where -through scripting- he migrated old Zen wiki content to Confluence in the cloud. Following the early completion of this project, Matt transferred his focus to the Btrieve Databases where he now utilizes BRestfulAPI to make an app that will be used to share Actian product implementation.

From personal coding projects to working as a JavaScript Instructor for children, Matt considers himself to be a certifiable “language jumper” and is grateful to have learned about source control and how to further coding proficiency in a professional setting.

By working with people involved in quality assurance, Matt has gained a deeper understanding of the value of a big picture approach while furthering his appreciation of the small tasks that make big picture ideas possible. He has developed his own understanding of the importance of integrating business and computer science by coding with a purpose and has an even greater passion for collaboration within a professional coding environment.

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