Stay Informed and Act With Confidence
New events and technologies change how we approach our day-to-day, and we are always on the watch for ways that data analytics continues to shape the business world. From restaurants to financial services, and everything in between, the importance of data and analytics continues to expand as a market and as a strategic asset.
Actus Data keeps tabs on the latest news and provides commentary here.
The Only Call You Need to Make for Big Data
Bernard Marr writes in Forbes that there are four things every business needs to consider when building Big Data infrastructure – data collection, storage, analysis, and visualization.
All of these components working together enable businesses to get value out of their Big Data projects, but each has its own challenges.
As Marr points out, building the individual components internally requires resources and capital. If a company chooses to go with a service provider, there are many vendors to pick from, but most address only one piece of the puzzle.
This can leave the buyer with a hodgepodge of purchased and built components that need to be integrated and managed, resulting in more costs.
The solution is find a partner who can service the entire lifecycle. Companies like Actus Data provide infrastructure requirements like collection and storage, as well as analytic and visualization capabilities within a single subscription offering. This makes management and implementation simple.
If you want to make Big Data work for your business, you don’t have to consider four things, you only need to make one call to Actus Data.
Big Data Challenges? Data Science as a Service Can Fill the Gap
InfoWorld’s article Businesses harbor big data desires, but lack know-how addresses many challenges companies face today with Big Data, but is short on solutions.
As the article points out, the unsolved problem of the past few years remains that “most companies struggle to define a strategy, determine how to get value from their data, and find the skills necessary to do so.” This is compounded by the increasing volume, velocity and variety of data. The continued growth of data creates confusion, and heightens the need for experts to extract value from large and disparate data sets. This is best summarized by the closing statement: “we don’t need more data — What we need is more people who can understand the data we already have.”
With all of these challenges, it would seem that most Big Data initiatives are doomed to failure, but it does not have to be that way.
Data Science as a Service businesses can meet the needs of companies that struggle to find the resources, skills, budget, or strategic clarity to tackle Big Data on their own. This can be especially valuable for the SMB, where money and resources are tighter. Working with the right partner can mean lower overhead and risk, and ultimately a shorter timeline to achieving results.
While most businesses continue to harbor Big Data desires, many still have a long way to go. To achieve their objectives, they would do well to investigate Data Science as a Service as an option to fill the gap.
Restaurant Technology Adoption Creates Data (and Opportunity)
Hospitality Technology’s article and survey results about the ways restaurant technology can improve operations offers some good insights, but overlooks biggest opportunity that is created by increasing technology adoption within the industry– and that is the preponderance of data that is produced by all of this technology. From the POS to the back office, new technologies create reams of data that when intelligently organized and analyzed, can drive even further improvements and higher profits.
The obstacles that restaurant operators see in the way of broader technology adoption are also noteworthy, but should not stop restauranteurs from investing in technology. With 39% citing security concerns, 36% citing the time it takes to fix problems, and 35% highlighting a lack of IT expertise, it is clear that operators would benefit from a partner to help navigate technical waters, and not simply a vendor who will sell a product and move on to the next customer.
Actus Data helps meet this need, and provides the expertise required to bring data from disparate systems together, and transform data into action. With best-in-class security as well as an affordable subscription model, restaurant operators do not need big IT budgets or technical know-how to get advanced analytics. And, with Actus Data’s flexible Smart Restaurant Solution, the types of technology and data that can be analyzed are almost limitless.
Regardless of the tools and tech that restauranteurs use to improve operations, it is important to remember that there is an even bigger prize waiting in the data, and selecting the right analytics partner can be the difference between capitalizing on that opportunity and missing the boat.
Getting help with data literacy on the path to invincibility
In the article Data Literacy Will Make You Invincible, Shelly Palmer offers some great insights into why it is important for executives to become data literate, and get into the game of understanding how to transform data into action.
First, we certainly agree with the assertion that as the velocity of data is increasing and will always increase, so too will the need for data literacy. It is critical that business leaders stay ahead of the curve to maintain competitive advantage, and Palmer rightly advises that they jump headlong into the game.
Second, he is also correct that business leaders do not necessarily need to know everything about “how” to transform data into action through the processes of data Transformation, Learning, and Prediction.
There are tools, partners, and services that can help executives jump the curve on data literacy and move immediately into transforming data into action. Actus Data combines technology, expertise, and professional services to deliver outcomes quickly, and minimizes the requirements for data fluency and technical know-how. This enables business operators to use industry-specific knowledge to achieve data-driven results, best the competition, and ultimately, become invincible.
Restaurant Intelligence: Reporting versus Analytics at the NRA Show
North Building Technology Pavilion, Booth 6383
What if you could know how closely your beer or ice cream sales are related to the weather? How about knowing that you could increase sales if you offered soda rather than wine with a certain entrée? Maybe you would send different promotional emails if you knew how sales were impacted by one offer versus another? All of these insights are available right now.
Sound complicated? It is, and the legacy reporting tools used by many restaurants today are not up to the task. Sure, it is nice to know what happened yesterday or last week, and it is even nicer to get that info presented on something better than a spreadsheet. However, it takes a comprehensive analytics solution to do the heavy lifting necessary for a restaurant operator to get real, actionable insights. Fortunately, there are options that do not require a team of data scientists or an expensive infrastructure.
Comprehensive solutions, like the Actus Data Smart Restaurant Solution, orchestrate data from multiple sources into a single view that can be used to improve decision making right away. Individually, data from POS, finance, labor management, and inventory systems can only go so far. When this data is combined, powerful analytics can uncover unique relationships that will improve results. Add automated tasks and notifications to the mix and an operator will gain increased efficiency as well.
There will be a wide variety of reporting tools and technologies on display at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago later this month, but it is important to remember that reporting is not the same as analytics. Although reporting tools can make data easier to consume, what really matters are the insights derived from that data and how operators can use these insights to take action.
If you going to be at the show, please stop by booth 6383 and say hi!
When Big Data Should Be Smart Data
It has been well documented that using data effectively is critical for businesses of all shapes and sizes to be competitive. In the Forbes article, Big Data Overload: Why Most Companies Can’t Deal With The Data Explosion, Bernard Marr makes the key point that:
Rather than worrying about “big data,” companies would do well to instead focus on Smart Data — in other words, defining the questions they need answered, and then collecting and analyzing only that data which will serve them in answering the question.
This more focused approach allows for the specific needs of a business to be met, while eliminating the noise that usually goes along with big data projects.
He also addresses the practical matter of executing a ”Smart Data” strategy, and this is where Data Science-as-a-Service companies like Actus Data come in. For example, if a business is interested in how weather and social media sentiments are impacting their sales, they can either build the capability to answer this question themselves, which requires time, expertise, and a big budget, or they can engage with a partner like Actus Data to implement their “Smart Data” strategy immediately without the cost or risk of starting from scratch.
It is true that the “Smart Data” approach described in the article is a better fit for many companies than traditional big data initiatives, but we think Marr buries the lede: Data Science-as-a-Service companies often provide the best option when it comes to quickly and effectively executing a Smart Data strategy.
