What’s the point of having access to “big data” if it takes too long to turn it into actionable data? Retailers today don’t have the luxury of long cycles to collect, share and analyze incoming customer data given the pressure to make quick decisions to boost sales and keep operational costs in check. TIBCO says that it has found a way to crack that code – by creating what they call a “Fast Data” platform that connects apps, data, people and processes. And, they can point to results that allow retailers to optimize multi-channel integration, and reduce supply chain costs by more than 10 percent.
What’s the point of having access to “big data” if it takes too long to turn it into actionable data? Retailers today don’t have the luxury of long cycles to collect, share and analyze incoming customer data given the pressure to make quick decisions to boost sales and keep operational costs in check. According to TIBCO’s whitepaper (found here), they have discovered a way to crack that code by creating what they call a “Fast Data” platform that connects apps, data, people and processes. And, they can point to results that allow retailers to optimize multi-channel integration, and reduce supply chain costs by more than 10 percent.
TAKING BIG DATA TO THE 21ST CENTURY
The stadium is packed and the home team is winning. There’s only one problem: the hot dogs and beer in sections 25 through 35 aren’t selling, but they are flying off the shelves in sections 10 through 23. What’s a concessionaire to do? Well, most of the time, it’s offering those wannabe hot dog consumers in sections 10 through 23 a slice of pizza, and throwing the oversupply away. The result is a lopsided fan experience and a lower-than-optimal ROI.
But what if there was a way to monitor consumption and inventory in real time and better predict the supply of high margin and highly sellable products around the stadium? And to be able to anticipate that based on who’s playing, what the weather is like and what time of year it is? And to bundle promotions and other offers around products in an effort to move inventory that may not be moving as quickly as it should?
That’s the power of big data, delivered fast so that decisions can be made in real time to maximize ROI.
And that, TIBCO says, is the bane of the typical CIO’s existence.
According to TIBCO, the average CIO dedicates 75 percent of their IT spend on maintaining operations, with only 25 percent left for “strategic, opportunity-generating business initiatives.” The problem, TIBCO says, starts with IT infrastructure.
Back in the 20th century, IT infrastructures were connected individually with specific interfaces to get data from system to system. These point-to-point systems made for a complicated mess of connections and prevented high-speed sharing and accurate visibility into business processes.
An alternative to this point-to-point system is an enterprise services bus (ESB) – the basis for a service-oriented architecture. In an ESB, information is pushed into the bus and made accessible to people and systems who need it – a one-to-many or one-to-one information exchange. However, while many companies choose to use ESB, says TIBCO, they don’t take advantage of the “E” – Enterprise. They integrate applications, but not all data. ESB provides value even when it’s only integrating applications, but unless it extends to all data, it’s not doing everything it can do, adds TIBCO.
Architecture that focuses on transactional data, specifically, leaves a lot on the table, including:
But it’s important for businesses to understand and incorporate context into their operations. In its simplest form, “contextual data is a change, something new.” Or, rather, it’s an “event,” says TIBCO. It can be a specific combination of data, or even a lack of it. In order to gain data accessibility and visibility along with the ability to make informed decisions and take action, companies need to capture events and transmit them as soon as they are available. So, for a baseball stadium, that means capturing in real time consumer purchasing behavior in all sections, for all types of food and products, in any weather, at any time of year. And doing so in a way that is effectively organized and easily shared.
HARNESSING RETAIL’S BIG DATA WITH EVENT-ENABLED PLATFORMS
To capitalize in new markets, TIBCO suggests that retailers upgrade their IT systems to more a flexible infrastructure that allows them to share and analyze information in real time — and figure out the next best interaction with their customers. As customers enter their store, they can determine which offers are best to send based on their past online and offline purchase behavior, the store’s inventory and their loyalty level.
The type of platform needed to harness this type of big data, says TIBCO, is an event-driven platform that connects applications, data, people and processes – for example, what a baseball fan is buying, what section they’re sitting in, what mobile device they’re using (if any), how they choose to pay, and so on. This type of platform serves to ensure that events and data from one application are available, reliable and actionable for other applications in real time.
An event-driven integration platform takes all of the information flowing in it and moves it into an event server (or an in-memory data grid). The event server handles transactional data, but also adds in analytics to identify patterns (and context) in real time, and attributes that to describe customers. That is “Fast Data.”
An event-driven platform can also improve overall business for retailers. Today’s market and technological landscape generates an increasing number of events — mobile apps can capture events like user location, and social networks provide user-generated events (and millions of events about topics of interest, like products and brands).
The following are event-enabled solutions for retailers provided by TIBCO:
For more on how retail and other industries can solve their big data problems with fast data, making better decisions and acting instantly, and download the free whitepaper below.
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