Target Black Friday

Brick & Mortar Retail Drives into the Red Zone with Next-Gen Analytics

The following is a guest post from a Data Innovation Day partner.

After sweeping up the debris left by enthusiastic shoppers, brick and mortar retailers around the country are scoring their Black Friday. Traditionally, their measure of success has been a simple one: Did I sell more this Black Friday than I did last year? If so, time to dump the ceremonial Gatorade on the CEO.

But what does a year-over-year change in sales really tell retailers about the performance of their organization – its ability to draw customers into the store, offer a compelling in-store experience, and close a sale? Not much.

After all, macroeconomic factors like the unemployment rate or Superstorm Sandy greatly impact year-over-year sales across all retailers, regardless of how well or poorly they’re run. A big Black Friday could be a sign of organizational excellence – or just dumb luck.

The savviest brick and mortar retailers have adopted a new generation of analytics tools designed to give them a clearer picture of how they’re doing. For instance, retailers can use Euclid Analytics to …

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Bill Day

Five Q’s on Data Innovation with Bill Day

Bill Day is the platform evangelist for RunKeeper, a Boston-based start-up that helps users track and obtain their fitness goals. I asked Bill to share with me his thoughts on how data is changing how people exercise, work towards fitness goals, and monitor their health.

Castro: As a runner myself, I am a huge fan of RunKeeper. Can you tell me how RunKeeper got started?

Day: One of our founders, Jason Jacobs, was training for a marathon and realized that there had to be a better way to track and understand his training and performance than the very limited options available at the time. He pulled together a small team to build an iPhone app to solve that problem, and the timing was great as we were able to launch in the very early days of the App Store.

Castro: RunKeeper recently launched the Health Graph platform. Can you explain what that is?

Day: The Health Graph provides an open platform for health and fitness data portability, available for free to developers everywhere. It allows users to bring …

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Mark Whitehorn

Five Q’s on Data Innovation with Mark Whitehorn

Mark Whitehorn is a professor of analytics at the University of Dundee’s School of Computing in Scotland and the author of ten books on business intelligence. I spoke to Mark about how higher-ed programs are adapting to new demands in the era of Big Data.

Castro: What kinds of skills do data scientists need?

Whitehorn: They need to be intelligent! Oh, I see, you want specifics! They need to be good at designing new analytical techniques and be able to code them. The job also includes general skills (e.g., excellent analytical capabilities, machine learning, data mining, statistics, math, algorithm development, writing coding, data visualisation, and understanding multi-dimensional database design and implementation) and specific skills such as technologies to handle big data (e.g., Hadoop and related technologies, MapReduce and its implementation on differing software platforms, and NoSQl databases) and knowledge of languages (e.g., SQL, MDX, R, and functional and OOP languages such as Erlang and Java).

General characteristics also include an insatiable curiosity, interdisciplinary interests and excellent communication skills. Duncan Ross, the Director of Data Sciences at Teradata, has …

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Data visualizations

Friday Roundup (11/16/2012)

As leaders in organizations strive to make more data-driven decisions, data visualization tools only continue to rise in importance. A nice post this week from Net Magazine highlights the 20 best tools for creating everything from simple charts to dynamic maps to complex infographics. (LINK)

Videos from Techonomy 2012 are now online this week.  There are some great discussions such as “The End of Offline” with Susan Athey (Harvard University), Douglas Gilstrap (Ericsson), and Robert Hormats (Department of State). (LINK)

Finally, Bradley Voytek has a fascinating post on Uber’s blog about how people move from one neighborhood to another in nine different cities (Boston, Chicago, DC, LA, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle). (LINK)

See an interesting “Big Data” story? Email Daniel Castro (dcastro@itif.org).

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Tim Callan

5 Q’s on Data Innovation with Tim Callan

Tim Callan is the Chief Marketing Officer of RetailNext, one of the leading provider of in-store retail analytics. I asked Tim to talk with me about how companies like RetailNext are bringing the type of data analytics traditionally used by online retailers to brick-and-mortar stores.

Castro: How are retailers using in-store analytics today?

Callan: Think of in-store analytics as the equivalent on online analytics offerings like Google Analytics or Omniture, but for brick-and-mortar stores. Some of the common uses of in-store analytics are floor layout optimization, staffing optimization, theft reduction, measurement of marketing and merchandising programs, testing display and fixture effectiveness, optimizing checkout queues, and monitoring for stock-out situations. The bottom line improvements have been quite dramatic. For example, Montblanc and American Apparel have reported that they used the RetailNext platform to improve same-store sales 20% and more than 30%, respectively.  Brookstone used the platform to reduce shrinkage by about a million dollars a year. And Family Dollar remodeled more than 1300 stores in nine months based on the insights it learned from RetailNext.

Castro: What kind of …

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2012-Nate-Silver-2

Friday Roundup (11/09/2012)

No matter where you turn, the media is focused intensely this week on the U.S. election and the data world was no exception.

Of course the big “Big Data” story this week was about how the New York Times statistics wizard Nate Silver accurately predicted the election results in fifty out of fifty states. If you are interested to see how he did it, be sure to read his methodology. (LINK)

And, if you are not already tired of election news, Time has an excellent inside look at the use of data in the Obama campaign. (LINK)

Many organizations will naturally be looking to replicate the Obama team’s success with data in their own operations. Harvard Business Review has an interesting interview with Andrew McAfee, a researcher at MIT Sloan School of Management, on the lessons that the private sector should learn from the campaign’s use of data. (LINK)

Finally, Farzad Mostashari, the national health IT coordinator at HHS, gave an interview with Healthcare IT Now where he describes how this model applies to …

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Lynn Etheredge

5 Q’s on Data Innovation with Lynn Etheredge

Lynn Etheredge is an independent consultant on health care and social policy issues and heads the Rapid Learning Project at George Washington University in Washington, DC. I asked Lynn to share with me his thoughts on how health care research is changing as a result of the increased use of data.

Castro: How will rapid learning health networks change how health care research is performed?

Etheredge: Traditionally, health research has relied on in vitro and in vivo methods—lab work and animal and human experiments. The rapid-learning networks add in silico research—using computerized databases and networks with individual-level, clinically rich, and longitudinal data from millions of patients captured in electronic health records. Francis Collins, NIH’s director, has recently proposed a new national patient-centered research network with 20-30 million patients. As discussed in a recent report—Toward Precision Medicine (National Academy of Sciences, 2012)—this will revolutionize biomedical research, clinical practice, and public health.

Castro: How is this type of in silico research being used to help patients today?

Etheredge: The most dramatic results have been in pediatric cancers. Major …

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Hadoop word cloud

Friday Roundup (11/02/2012)

The DMA recently launched the Data-Driven Marketing Institute (DDMI) to discuss how the data-driven world is reshaping how consumers and brands engage, interact and benefit from one another. Be sure to check out the webinar on November 13, 2012 to learn how to get involved with this group. (LINK)

GreenTechGrid offered an early look at how Opower is not only innovating on the consumer front with home energy data analytics, but it is also developing new tools to deal with the backend big data demands of the smart grid. (LINK)

Derek Elmerick, a VP at First Manhattan Consulting Group, has an interesting article on TheFinancialBrand.com where he digs into some myths about the use of data analytics by financial sectors and offers advice on how banks can more effectively use data to market their services. (LINK)

Finally, ZDNet TechLines posted a video of an interesting discussion on big data use cases with panelists from Ford, NASA, Achimedes and IBM. Be sure to check it out. (LINK)

See an interesting “Big …

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