Big Data: New Insights Transform Industries: White Paper
Big Data: New Insights Transform Industries: White Paper
Big Data: New Insights Transform Industries: White Paper
White Paper
8 Innovate new products at speed and scale Leading organizations in financial services, telecommunications,
retail, healthcare, digital media, insurance and other industries
8 Gain instant awareness of fraud and risk are adopting advanced technologies to generate new, actionable
10 Exploit instrumented assets insights from big data that can help them dramatically reduce
financial risks, increase operational efficiencies, enhance
10 The IBM platform for big data customer loyalty and improve healthcare outcomes (see Figure 1).
These organizations are tapping into big data to transform
12 Transform business with big data
not only their businesses but also their industries.
57%
54% 54%
31%
26% 26%
For most organizations, there is no shortage of customer data Many organizations already use data management solutions
available. Banking customers provide financial information on to integrate customer information from multiple sources
credit applications and discuss banking problems during and create a single, holistic view of each customer. New
customer service calls; telecommunications subscribers solutions designed for understanding big data can now push
continuously generate smartphone usage data; and retail those capabilities further. Organizations can use advanced
customers enter information for online transactions and analytics to provide near-real-time trend analysis and
register their “likes” on social media networks. The challenge anticipate future outcomes. These solutions can produce
lies in handling the volume and velocity: businesses must insights that help organizations create targeted marketing
efficiently analyze that data in order to generate timely insights promotions, optimize ad campaigns, avoid churn and
that can help them enhance the customer experience. improve cross- and up-sell opportunities.
According to the study, these leaders identify solutions Human resources 43%
that can generate customer insights as by far the most Supply chain 40%
critical investment area for future success (see Figure 2).
Risk management 38%
By implementing solutions that analyze the increasing
volume and variety of customer data available, including Financials 32%
data generated through social media, organizations intend
Source: IBM Global CEO Study 2012
to connect pieces of data into more complete profiles;
empower staff with predictive analytics to better Figure 2: CEOs and business leaders identified customer-insight solutions
as the most important area for new investments.
understand the individual customer’s needs; respond to
demands with focus, precision, relevance and speed; and
blend the physical and digital worlds to offer value
independent of the customer’s location.
Smarter Analytics 5
Communication service providers are also leveraging predictive Run zero-latency operations
analytics to reduce customer churn. By gaining insight about While many organizations have experienced the benefits that
customers with a high propensity to change services or move to analytics and business intelligence solutions can provide for
competitors, they can proactively engage and service those specific back-office functions, advanced solutions for in-depth
customers’ individual needs and retain their business. (See the analysis of big data are providing important new opportunities
sidebar, “Anticipate customer behavior with predictive analytics.”) to change the way businesses operate. Analyzing streaming data
from instrumented operational systems, deeply analyzing
At the same time, banks are using analytics solutions to mine data from inventory and supply-chain operations, and
big data for insights that help them create more customer- analyzing data streaming from financial systems can help
focused enterprises that foster lasting relationships. They are organizations significantly increase operational efficiency,
moving beyond customer surveys and the review of customer boost revenues and ensure service availability.
service logs to analyze a variety of structured and unstructured
information. For example, leading banks are analyzing Internet For example, leading telecommunications organizations are
feedback and social media posts to address negative comments performing real-time, root-cause analysis on data streaming in
and build on positive ones to improve their reputation and from a variety of sensors as well as retrospective analysis on
retain customers. Building stronger, lasting relationships with massive volumes of CDR and network event data. (See the
customers is having a direct, positive impact on revenues. sidebar, “Spot problems and accelerate decision making with
real-time reporting.”) Instead of struggling to address customer
problems and unanticipated outages, organizations are using
solutions for analyzing big data to help rapidly respond to and
Anticipate customer behavior with predictive analytics
prevent connectivity and bandwidth problems while optimizing
US-based communications service provider XO Communications performance and improving capacity planning. Business users
wanted to reduce customer churn among midsized business can perform network quality-of-experience (QoE) analysis,
groups without having to devote additional resources to
traffic engineering and data analysis to identify and address
managing those numerous accounts. XO implemented
network bottlenecks faster.
IBM SPSS® predictive analytics software to analyze large
volumes of customer data and anticipate which midsized
Leading investment firms are using real-time analytics
businesses were most likely to move to competitors.
solutions for big data to improve financial decision making.
Impact: By predicting customer behavior and focusing For example, stock market traders are conducting real-time
personnel resources on customers with a high churn
analysis of streaming market data and incorporating contextual
potential, XO has increased customer retention and
awareness—such as global news events and weather—into
retained subscription revenues. Since deploying the
trading decisions. Consuming, analyzing and acting on
software, the company reduced churn by 8 percent in the
first year and an additional 18 percent in the second year. real-time market data helps traders maximize gains.
Smarter Analytics 7
Spot problems and accelerate decision making Impact: With faster analysis and reporting, the company
with real-time reporting can spot quality problems in real time and make better
iBasis, a leading provider of international voice over IP decisions about pricing and network management.
(VoIP) network services, needed to analyze tremendous
amounts of CDRs to produce enterprise-critical reports on “Our sophisticated back-office systems have
revenue, margins, network traffic and quality. With the
volume of CDRs growing, the company’s infrastructure enabled us to turn complexity into competitive
could not deliver reports in real time or store sufficient advantage....The Netezza system will be a
historical data for comprehensive trend analysis.
vital tool in accelerating future improvements,
In a proof of concept, the company learned that a data
warehouse appliance—as part of the IBM big data
growth and profitability.”
platform—could accelerate report delivery by an
impressive 125 times, reducing report processing time —Paul
Floyd
Senior Vice President, Research and Development
from two hours to just one minute. After implementing Engineering and Operations
an IBM Netezza data warehouse appliance in production, iBasis
iBasis can now conduct complex CDR analysis on
150 million records in a matter of seconds.
8 Big data: New insights transform industries
Innovate new products at speed and scale Predictive analytics solutions enable organizations to anticipate
In many industries, product innovation is critical for success, how new products and services will be received in the
but the process of researching, developing, testing, reporting, marketplace. By helping to gauge future customer behaviors,
adjusting and retesting new offerings can be long and predictive analytics solutions enable organizations not only to
resource-intensive. Big data is a common factor in product create products that meet customer needs but also to scale
development efforts, and leading organizations are using it to production appropriately.
drive innovation by employing analytics solutions to explore
large, complex data sets and generate new insights. In addition, analytics solutions help organizations in all
industries efficiently and successfully market innovative
Analytics solutions also enable organizations to test “what-if” products. (See the sidebar, “Fuel online innovation with
scenarios and anticipate the performance of new products accelerated analytics.”) Using cluster analytics, organizations
and services, fueling experimentation and guiding research can identify shared customer attributes that may not have
investments. Retailers, banks and telecommunications been obvious to analysts. Teams can then create marketing
companies can use analytics to collect valuable feedback on campaigns or promotions tailored to precise customer
current offerings and identify emerging market trends. These segments, allowing them to focus their resources on the
organizations can draw insights from unstructured customer customers most likely to embrace new products.
data generated through social media posts, call-center
interactions and online chat sessions, and they can use these Statistical analytics solutions also help companies test the
insights as the basis for developing new products and services. effectiveness of websites, direct email campaigns or other
marketing collateral. Organizations can determine which
outreach efforts generate the most qualified leads and
ultimately yield the strongest customers.
view of enterprise risk exposure. Advanced analytics losses. Predictive analysis technologies assess the future fraud
capabilities enable these organizations to analyze years’ potential of policy applicants by scrutinizing the past history
worth of structured and unstructured identity, behavior of applicants and other people associated with them, giving
and financial transaction data to make more informed organizations another tool to help prevent fraud attempts.
decisions. Implementing new solutions for analyzing big Content analytics technologies deliver a more complete view
data is delivering significant returns on the investment: of information than service bureaus or existing solutions
with better risk analysis, these organizations can reduce can provide. As a result, organizations are able to correlate
write-offs and help minimize losses. information from multiple departments and data sources—for
example, they can monitor and analyze social media sources
For savvy insurance companies, analytics solutions for big for rumors, deliberate misinformation and fraudulent
data are helping to prevent and detect fraud—which can impersonation of employees. Better fraud prediction and
account for a significant portion of an insurance company’s detection helps these insurers significantly reduce costs.
10 Big data: New insights transform industries
Platform components include: Powering analytics for big data requires a deliberate IT
architectural approach and infrastructure to reap the
• IBM InfoSphere Data Explorer: Discovery and navigation benefits and drive business outcomes. The IBM Systems
software (previously known as the Vivisimo® Velocity™ and Technology Group offers flexible integrated systems
Platform) that provides real-time access and fusion of big data designed to access the latest information, regardless of type
with rich and varied data from enterprise applications for or location, by allocating the right resources at the right time
greater insight and ROI. for analysis on demand. These systems provide:
• IBM InfoSphere BigInsights™: An enterprise-ready
Apache Hadoop–based system with sophisticated text • A scalable systems and storage foundation that helps
analytics, visualization, performance, security and improve IT economics and optimizes analytic workload
administrative features for managing and analyzing massive performance by using all available data and information.
volumes of structured and unstructured data. • High-performance parallel technologies that optimize
• IBM InfoSphere Streams: In-motion streaming analytics complex decision making by spotting trends and anomalies to
software that enables continuous analysis of massive volumes predict outcomes.
of streaming data with sub-millisecond response times, • Resilient architectures, either on-premise or in the cloud,
helping to improve your organization’s level of insight and that help organizations deploy analytics throughout their
decision making, as well as promoting real-time response to business, and with customers and suppliers.
events as they happen.
• IBM Netezza: High-performance data warehouse appliances
that are purpose-built to make advanced analytics on
Analytic applications
exploding data volumes simple, fast and accessible; uses
Exploration/ Functional Industry Predictive Content
advanced analytics to deliver deep insights in minutes on BI/Reporting
Visualization application application analytics analytics
petabyte-scale volumes of relational data.
• IBM InfoSphere Warehouse: Comprehensive data IBM platform for big data
warehouse software platform that delivers access to Visualization Application Systems
structured and unstructured information in real time; and discovery development management
The client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual
performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and
Transform business with big data operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS
Analytics solutions for big data offer tremendous possibilities PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR
for transforming businesses and their industries. Leading IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
organizations in retail, financial services, telecommunications, AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-
healthcare and other industries are already capitalizing on INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms
new opportunities. and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.
The client is responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations
In the past, the barriers to capitalizing on big data appeared applicable to it. IBM does not provide legal advice or represent or warrant
formidable. Today, the IBM platform for big data offers a that its services or products will ensure that the client is in compliance with
any law or regulation. Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and
comprehensive, integrated collection of state-of-the-art intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent
technologies for data management and analytics that can help goals and objectives only.
organizations address the challenges of big data and realize its 1
IBM Global CEO Study 2012. ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/
potential for transformation. ceostudy2012
NIW03028-USEN-00