A company’s success is often determined by the targets achieved and the profit accrued. So how do you grow year on year and stay ahead of the competition? The simple answer is by unlocking the value in your data.
Data is the new oil and information is the new currency. Knowing what, where, when and how your customers are purchasing provides insight into why and extrapolates into enhanced customer experience, stream-lined processes and cornering the market with new product lines. Understanding fraudulent behaviour and identifying criminal syndicates strengthens risk mitigation measures and reduces loss. Improving demand planning and route optimisation increases efficiency and the cost effectiveness of shipments from farm to table or factory to outlet, all adding to your bottom line.
Clearly, data has become increasingly important in fuelling today’s businesses and shaping the commercial structures of the future. To be competitive and ultimately survive, it is no longer enough to just collect and store it departmentally. To thrive now depends on how effectively you analyse and mine this new wealth or, as the current lingo calls it, data activation.
The benefits of maximising your data are abundant and the key to unlocking its potential is by using advanced analytics.
Step 1: Identify the issue
Whilst each business environment is unique, the central problem is not actually the quantity of data, which is immense (3.5 quintillion bytes are created each day), but its increasing complexity. The volume, variety, veracity and velocity of data bombarding businesses presents serious challenges in accessing interrelated real-time insights, which require far more flexibility and processing power than legacy technologies provide.
The general consensus is that approximately two thirds of this data is never activated. Even for those using cloud storage, there are contributing factors that inhibit its effective use, such as delays in uploading to the cloud and the time it takes to analyse. All in all, it’s a vast amount of untapped value within your reach.
There are two significant factors that determine how beneficial this data is:
- Interconnectivity
- Advanced analytics
We all know that connecting disparate data sources and breaking down departmental siloes is essential for optimising operations. However, the relationships between the data points themselves are just as important to derive those vital higher order insights, which is where graph powered analytics comes in. Is that customer buying online more than in store because they’re working from home or because your business hours preclude a quick visit after work? How many of those fraudulent transactions occur because your system can’t detect the indicators of suspicious behaviour? Is that lost shipment always from the same supplier or is the trucking company letting you down?
A graph database connects your data points, emphasising relationships, to provide greater insight into what’s going on in your business environment. However, the real value comes from in-depth analytics that make sense of the relationships between these data points. And don’t forget the capacity to run complex queries in real-time. For example, knowing which product a consumer buys is useful, but being able to perform higher order analytics and to micro-segment upsell and cross sell opportunities provides an extra dynamic for your sales and marketing teams.
So, the need for advanced analytics to derive business value from this data is a given. But where do you start?
Step 2: Investigate your options
As we know, legacy systems struggle to process large volumes of connected real-time and batch data in a meaningful way. There are a few options to resolve this:
- Build your own solution
- Use point solutions
- Take a next generation approach
Building your own solution is time consuming, costly and requires a high level of complex skills and can cost up to 90% more (though if you’re already travelling this road, we discuss challenges and solutions here). So, this is generally dismissed as an option early on and point solutions come under the microscope. These are often adopted as an interim fix, perhaps because your longer-term digital plan requires more funding or just won’t deliver the desired results in the given timeframe. But is this really your best choice?
Point solutions are usually pushed by a department desperately in need of an information boost to meet their targets. Often, these are not customisable or configurable and can be complex to integrate with other systems. In reality, what it does is create another silo. That means as each department acquires their relevant point solutions the complexity of your architecture increases – as does the number of vendors to liaise with and the cost of subscriptions and maintenance. All of which puts additional strain on your resources – and your budget. So, whilst the immediate problem is resolved, what you’re actually doing is kicking the can down the road. So, are you after a short-term quick fix or are you willing to take a next generation approach?
Step 3: Plan for the future
If you’re looking ahead, it makes sense to choose a platform that can deliver various customer driven point solutions and grow with your business. Platforms can seamlessly ingest data from disparate sources, are scalable and configurable, which allows the creation of a customer 360 view. This is required to derive insights efficiently from the same dataset for various solutions to deliver faster insights and rapid ROI.
But that’s not all.
Platforms that make use of graph take your insights to the next level of advanced analytics. However, they require a range of supporting tools and technologies to ingest and enrich your data to fully unleash the power of graph.
Step 4: Choose the best
In a world’s first, Locstat have built a unique ecosystem that optimises the power of graph. Using graph enabled AI, and complex event processing Locstat LightWeaver® delivers advanced analytics for customer driven industry and point solutions.
Our next generation, graph intelligence platform thrives in complex data environments, ingesting multiple data sources through our data fabric approach and processing high volume, connected data efficiently and cost effectively. As a light touch implementation, our novel application of advanced analytics technologies enables our clients to improve efficiencies beyond the results achieved with traditional solutions.
Step 5: Reap the rewards
Say goodbye to expensive investments and lengthy implementation times. We deliver quick time to value so you can start reaping those rewards within 8 to 12 weeks.
Our success in the financial, retail and supply chain sectors speaks for itself.
Next step?
If you’re ready to ease the pressure of those KPIs and deliver rapid ROI, contact us now.
Locstat: Seize the competitive advantage!
