Big data and big data analytics has been a trend setter in recent years. Unlike the traditional cause-effect analysis, big data analytics generate predictions based on huge volumes of data, using statistical tools and advanced computing techniques. An interesting case study on the use of big-data analytics was the prediction of a flu pandemic in the United States by simply analyzing Google search data. The spread of the disease was detected before any medical organization or national agency, simply on the basis of people frequently searching Google for the symptoms and remedy of flu. Big data analytics enables us to generate reliable analyses, even in the absence of clear links or causes. To know more read:http://www.forbes.com/sites/huawei/2015/02/24/how-do-big-data-analytics-enhance-network-security/

“Radio, television and internet-enables computers in the 20th century created an increase in option of media channels for brands.”- Christopher Heine (Digital Editor for Adweek)
Disruption and fragmentation are causing cracks between those who make platforms and those who hold the purse strings to ad budgets. Five statements from major industry players that help them to build a good marketing strategy:
• People, let's be real here.
• More native may mean more friction.
• The pace of change nowadays can be insane for creatives.
• The good news is that progress is being made.
• Everyone’s bottom line depends on this working out.
Read more at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/5-intriguing-takes-advertising-and-technologys-relationship-status-165409

According to David Loshin (Knowledge Integrity Inc.)," big data and analytics is helping organizations to gather and analyze data in search of valuable business information and insights that can help them improve their products and services." Cost, Simplicity and Performance are the three factors helps to lower the barrier of entry for analytics and motivate organizations to adopt a big data analytics. The organizations which are planning to integrate analytics tools into their organizations need to have a data driven culture, recognize the potential of information. Key stakeholders are aware of the benefits of big data analytics and include agility in making decisions for adopting the technology. Types of big data to analyze:

• Transaction Data
• Human-generated Data
• Mobile Data
• Machine and Sensor Data.

Big data analytics tools help you in managing all these data with a reasonable investment. Helps you in analyzing these applications:
• Customer Analytics
• Sales and Marketing Analytics
• Social Media Analytics
• Cybersecurity
• Plant and facility management
• Pipeline Management
• Supply chain and channel analytics
• Prize optimization
• Fraud Detection

Read more at: http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/feature/How-to-determine-if-big-data-analytics-tools-are-right-for-you

The emergence of analytics in business has also contributed extensively in the field of talent management. Talent analytics has become an important area in both consulting firms and corporations. Not only it helps in acquiring and attracting new talent but also helps in talent utilization and maximization of organizational performance. In earlier days talent management was done by managers who trust their “intuition” or “common sense”, which led to bias and wrong decisions. But thanks to the development of information technology and availability of expertise in the field of data analytics, talent management is following a scientific path and a better system of workforce management.To know more read:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardlawler/2015/05/20/talent-analytics-old-wine-in-new-bottles/

Growing social networks have caused rapid development of tools for understanding the interactions between members of the network. The Department of Computer Engineering, at TOBB University, in Ankara, Turkey used Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools to identify the biomarkers present in patient genomic data. Genomic databases comprise of about 20000 genes. Such an approach dramatically decreased the features that need to be analyzed to find useful biomarkers. The team demonstrated their proof of principle with three types of cancer: lymphoma, colon cancer and leukemia. They combined clustering and classification to help in detecting the links between the various genes to validate the outcome. Now they shall extend it with a view to improve diagnostics and tailoring therapy for individual patients based on their personal Biological Network Analysis. Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-06-social-networking-analysis-cancer-biomarkers.html

Marketing automation a newly developed idea in marketing industry, deals with concepts of data tracking for lead, automate personal marketing activities and generate detailed reports for marketing activities. It embraces three major approaches namely lead tracking, automated execution and closed-loop reporting. At initial stages, foremost entity to consider in marketing automation is to show its value to the people dealing with checks in your company. With its involvement, few beneficiary impacts that it had generated includes, more lead output with same budget, empowered marketers to build and promote cross-channel online campaigns for user satisfaction, helped in financial justification of tracking and reports on ROI leading to no further complications in qualification or handling them onto sales, thus a smoother approach to marketing solutions.

To know more about marketing automation, please follow the link:http://www.business2community.com/marketing-automation/what-is-marketing-automation-01247668

In 2012, analytics was applied in the presidential election of USA. They employed a strong analytics team who used a strong analytics database and prediction was predicted with R and SPSS. The presidential team made a mega file to find potential voters, get their attention, predict specific appeals to persuade people etc. Consumer Data determined people who funded for the campaign as fundraising was an important aspect of the victor. Read more about this article by Euan Hunter (Global Delegate Sales Executive) at:  https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/taking-political-control-with-digital-analytics

When it comes to risk management, it is often observed that the companies either implement blanket management programs applying the same strategies to all employees, or use the "squeaky wheel approach" focusing primarily on at-risk employees. However, both the approaches result in inefficiency. Thus, a strategic employee-specific management program can be adopted to identify the at-risk employees. Such a program monitors the employees for subtle and almost undetectable changes that are indicative of risky behavior and this is where predictive analytics model is of immense help. Predictive modeling enables the manager to identify not only the high-risk employees, but also the cause behind a particular incident.  Predictive modeling is fast becoming an indispensable tool for mitigating risk, retaining top talent, and building long-lasting relationship with the employees. Read More:- http://www.natlawreview.com/article/mitigating-risk-predictive-modeling

Data analytics with its growing importance is now used to plan mergers and acquisitions which require a well thought game plan. Throughout the buying process, data analytics can be used to see how market will respond to a deal being made. While merging with another company, data gets doubled and so it is important for employees to analyze all sets of data thus allowing business users to make better decisions. All through the M&A process employees must be trained to possess analytical process, needed to survive in this data-driven economy. Organizations must be aware of how effective and intelligent data management and analytics can help drive Mergers and Acquisitions win. Thus Big Data can offer success to M&A. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7467-the-big-data-game-plan-in-mergers-and-acquisitions

Data visualization or infographics allows us to see results in a simple manner without putting in much effort to analyze vast amount of data. The key to making visualization easy lies in making infographics that can easily convey complex data to a wide audience. People can easily relate to infographics as these graphics follow certain conventions. Deviating from these conventions can lead to confusion, making data visualization complex. Trying to fit too much information in a single infographic will make it complex to interpret. In such cases, only the important piece of information should be conveyed or maybe one can put together a series of visualization. Use of proper annotations, labelling the axes and using data wherever needed is crucial. In case of data comparisons, graphs can be made differentiable using contrasting colors. Arithmetic errors should be avoided else the infographic becomes next to useless. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/5-common-mistakes-in-data-visualizations

In the past two years, many organizations have undergone a complete change in terms of their organizational structure. Disruptive innovations have led these changes. But, not all these changes have been successful. In fact, many organizations have even undergone through such drastic changes more than once in search of a perfect organizational structure.

But, why is this perfect organizational structure important and how can it be achieved? These questions have been answered by Steven Aronowitz, Aaron De Smet, and Deirdre McGinty in their article at McKinsey Insights. With their research, they have identified nine golden rules that must be followed for a successful organizational redesign. Some of them are:

• Focus first on the longer-term strategic aspirations
• Be structured about selecting the right blueprint
• Be rigorous about drafting in talent
• Establish metrics that measure short- and long-term success
• Manage the transitional risks

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/getting_organizational_redesign_right

Every organization plans to launch new a product or service, but only few of them get success. The main reason for failure is they won't able to target the right customers or they won't able to explain their product or service to customers. Jennifer Lonoff Schiff (Business and technology writer and a contributor to CIO.com) talks about steps that can help you to reduce the risk of failure:

• Make sure the product or service works – before you start selling it.
• But don’t worry if your product isn’t absolutely perfect at the get-go.
• Create a dedicated landing page with an email opt-in.
• Build and/or join a community
• Cultivate influencers in your industry or niche.
• Ask people to spread the word – and give them free product or pay them to talk about it, if necessary.
• Notify top customers and followers in advance of your release.
• Use social media to get the word out.
• Advertise on Facebook.
Read more at: http://www.cio.com/article/2937141/startups/9-tips-for-launching-a-new-product-or-service.html

“Social media is a pivotal element in the healthcare marketing, and an essential tool for patient education and relationship development.”- Anne-Marie Montague (Senior Writer/Strategist PCI)
Consumer digital expectations and patient privacy protections are inversely related. This makes important for health care organizations to invest in the strategy, governance and vigilance deliver a good social media presence to its customers. Tips to manage customer’s privacy and customer’s digital expectations:
• Realistic and Proficient Social Team Staffing – and Authority
• Clear Internal and External Social Media Policy
• Staff training
• Contingency Planning
• Internal Partnership for Timely Response
• Continuous Review and Assessment
Read more at: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/252221/social-media-considerations-for-healthcare-markete.html

According to the H.O. Maycotte (Austin Tech), Success in real time means collecting, assessing and acting on real-time customer data.” Ability to collect data and respond towards that data separates successful brands from the crowd. Steps to make real-time data and real-time response part of your operations, especially in marketing and customer service:
• Collect and consider real-time customer data in context.
• Look for context beyond the customer.
• Give mobile and social the central roles they deserve.
• Act fast.
• Anticipate your customer’s next move.
Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/homaycotte/2015/06/16/5-ways-improve-customer-service-with-real-time-data-and-real-time-responses/

According to Narendra Mulani (senior managing director of Accenture Analytics), to survive in this competitive world organization need analytics to analyze opportunities and threats to their business. But now the question arises how to use analytics into their organization. Most of the organizations get stuck in applying analytics. So, the author discussed about the steps to simplify their analytics strategy and generate real outcomes. Some of them are:

• Accelerate the data.
• Delegate the work to your analytics technologies.
• Recognize that each path to data insight is unique.
Ways to delegate the work to your analytics technologies are: Next-Gen Business Intelligence (BI) and data visualization; data discovery; analytics applications; machine learning and cognitive computing. Read more at: https://hbr.org/2015/06/simplify-your-analytics-strategy

A specific kind of data may be important for a few seconds or sometimes even a few years. Changing times catch up with all kinds of data. So what to do when data reaches its golden age? Archive! But it isn't enough to dump old data in a traditional data warehouse. We must think not only of data's immediate analytical value, but also at how to retain the value of data as it ages. This requires a new approach to archiving. We must ensure regulatory compliance and follow policies of data governance. We must provide access to data while preserving immutability of it or its metadata. Data should query enabled when needed, to generate new insights. Archives must be cost-efficient, enabling you take advantage of advances in data compression. Read more at : http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/05/22/archived-but-accessible-retirement-planning-for-your-big-data/

Currently consumers are distracted by visual storytelling which enables the marketers to cut through the clutter thereby engaging customers over a wide range of digital channels. Data visualization tools acts as a way for the marketing leaders to generate optimal results from their organization's visual storytelling. It helps the marketers to determine the types of media that generated the highest engagement levels with different customers. It further enables to spot key consumer trends by segments and to project the best media type which would generate desired results. The use of visual storytelling combined with visualization of data will continue to gain much more importance because it makes the visual story more realistic with more prospective customers.

Read more at: http://www.tibco.com/blog/2015/06/08/2015-the-year-of-visual-storytelling/

Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, whitepapers, e-books, photos etc. It is hard, time consuming and expensive. Angela Hausman (marketing professor at Howard University) in her article in business2community.com, discussed about the steps to create a successful content marketing plan. They are:

• Start with goals.
• Audit existing content and determine where the holes are.
• Develop your business.
• Target customers.
• The Sales funnel.
• Understand your purpose.
• Develop an editorial calendar.
• Develop content.
• Promote your content.
• Measure.
• Optimize.
• Rinse, repeat.

To know more about the steps required for creating a successful content marketing plan, please follow the link: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/12-steps-how-to-build-a-successful-content-marketing-plan-01 

Nowadays the basic motive is substantial growth of the app thereby providing value to the end user. This can be equally simple or difficult depending on the analytics and marketing platform one chooses.  However it might often seem that a system of point solutions offers the best of each system, although it limits our capability to: 

*  Create a new user acquisition strategy.

*  Collect the most accurate data about the users.

*   Use of analytics to drive marketing.

*  Track the success of app messaging.

*  Tackle issues such as user abandonment and churn ratios.

The basic things which can be done with Integrated App Analytics and Marketing are:

1. Sophisticated user attribution.

2. Personalized app marketing.

3. Remarketing to users outside of the app.

4. Omni-channel app marketing.

5.  Predicting churns.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/mobile-apps/5-things-you-can-only-do-with-integrated-app-analytics-marketing-01244986                                                                                                                     

Though underestimated at times, social media marketing is fast becoming a vital necessity for success of business. Due to complexity of the nature of data analysis and increasing number of social media platforms available, the task of adopting the best social strategy may appear confusing. For more productive use of social media for marketing, the author suggests the following: 1) Creating outstanding and attractive content like images, text documents, etc. 2) Adopting social marketing instead of impersonal digital marketing.  3) Developing two way communication channels with the customers.4) Doing proper research. 5) Monitoring social media 6) Being genuine Read more:-  http://www.business2community.com/social-media/key-to-mastering-social-media-marketing-01248568