“It’s a capital mistake to theorise before one has data”- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Imagine this – There is a very large area which is extremely clean spotless with PVC flooring. There are numerous rows of machine cabinets and monitors there. A few people in uniforms are going from one machine cabinet to another. They are also monitoring the indicator lamps which flash red or green. What I just described here is not a hospital, but it is the factory hall of Siemens Plant in Germany! This plant manufactures PLCs (programmable logic controls) at the rate of 12 million products per year (which means one unit per second!) Welcome to the world of Industry 4.0. Through optimised automation, Siemens has achieved 75% automation of the value chain at this factory.
“Sometimes, reality is too complex. Stories give it form” – Director, Jean Luc Godard
Studies suggest that by 2025, there will be 75.4 billion IoT devices and the global worth of IoT tech will be $6.2 trillion!
With user experience set to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, offering experiences that are easy-to-use, intuitive, and curated is extremely important. Today, tech-savvy users’ demands from user experience is a lot more than just easy navigation and fluidic screen taps. Several new and innovative factors need to be considered including improved in-app recommendations, intuitive search, and personalised experiences.
A lot has been said about digital transformation: about how critical digital transformation is (85% of enterprise decision makers feel they have a time frame of just two years to make significant inroads on their digital transformation before suffering financially and/or falling behind their competitors), about how technology is taking businesses to unimaginable heights, about how Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Machine Learning are turning enterprises into smart businesses, about how digital transformation is essential for competitive advantage (57% of organisations believe that digital transformation is a competitive opportunity), about it is enabling organisations to offer exceptional products and customer experiences etc. Although digital transformation is critical, it’s time we stopped talking about digital transformation and started talking about business transformation.
We are surrounded by data. Everything we consume, buy, and view over the Internet generates data. Then, companies use this data to spot trends in user behaviour and make marketing and sales decisions based on that. Even the eCommerce industry is well-versed with the potential use cases of big data.
Over the years, social media adoption, smartphone penetration, new mobile technologies (think 5G), and online market models have managed to revolutionise how customers buy from the comfort of their homes. Maturing technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, and the Internet of Things further fuel this rapid change in the eCommerce industry. But data lies at the core.
Large datasets and their applications in eCommerce are many. Companies are now able to identify loyal customers and casual visitors when people visit their website. Big data has positive implications on almost all industries, but let’s see how it is impacting the commerce industry- making it more intuitive and smarter.
I don’t blame you for believing that a great career is built in a big, Fortune 500 company. After all, it is years and years of social conditioning that draws us to the big shiny object.
Data Analytics is no more the future. It is here and now. Many people believed that it is just a flash in the pan and will wear off in some time. That fact is settled, and big data and analytics are here to stay. It is estimated that the market will grow at a CAGR of 30 percent between 2017 and 2023. This speedy growth will propel the market size for Big Data to reach a size of $80 billion. Information is no longer power. Processed data is the power as it provides us with the wisdom and insight required to take corrective actions. Most of the companies are in a race to become more data-driven. This has been powered by the fact it has become extremely easy to collect and process data due to technical advances. Data is also coming in from various sources which can be analyzed to get a holistic view of the situation. Data from sensors, devices, etc. are all collected and analyzed. Another important aspect that has given rise to this data-driven culture is the advent of AI and ML which is helping in creating advanced algorithms to further analyze data.
The recently released India’s Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity, a report by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in collaboration with McKinsey & Company has been making waves.
