4 tech trends to empower data-centric business – are your Eyes Wide Open?

In the age of digital disruption, technology is rewiring organisations at an exponential pace.

Big or small, companies are adopting IoT, big data, cloud services and artificial intelligence to power up every aspect of their work. This translates to streamlined day-to-day business operations, but more importantly, to agile and insightful business strategies accelerating return on investments and fostering innovation.

A 360-degree customer view

If we look at retail, for example, tech is blurring the lines between physical and digital spaces, and enabling immersive shopping experiences across channels. One technology reshaping retail at every level is the Internet of Things. Intelligent hyper-connected devices are being deployed in multiple facets of the retail industry. They drive efficiency in logistics and supply chain operations and enhance in-store customer experience like never before.

In fact, 77% of retailers are seeing IoT change customer experience, according to a Verizon 2016 survey.

To amplify customer satisfaction, retailers have added self-checkouts that bypass long queues and interactive displays to assist digitally-native shoppers. Driven by data insights such as customer purchases and browsing history, IoT-enabled stores can now offer on the spot customer service and personalized offers. Smart mirrors, smart shelves and interconnected surveillance cameras are only a few of the devices collecting, processing and delivering real-time information on key aspects of the business.

Therefore, by complementing existing digital forces (mobile, social media, e-commerce), the IoT gathers an enormous volume of data. By 2021, the total amount of data created by any device will reach 847 zettabytes per year, according to a Ciscowhite paper.

We don’t just need to collect data, we need to connect data

Making sense of each and every grain of data is an insurmountable and error-prone task for human analysts. In fact, 39% of retailers find it difficult to turn customer data into actionable insights, the PWC 2017 Total Retail study shows. Fortunately, cloud computing enables powerful analytics. Cloud services are widely deployed to not only store sensor data, but also feed it into big data analytics and algorithms for processing.

"Data is inherently dumb," Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President at Gartner, said at a 2015 Gartner Symposium. "It doesn't actually do anything unless you know how to use it, and how to act with it – algorithms are where the real value lies.”

The convergence of big data and AI lays the foundation for innovations such as chatbots and voice assistants that provide excellent customer support. But more importantly, self-taught algorithms can help identify product demand trends, dynamically optimise prices, predict customer churn, forecast quarterly sales and respond to market challenges in real-time.

This agility has become a chief advantage for top-performing businesses looking to stay relevant in their highly competitive industries, be it transportation, industrial applications or government-related. And businesses from all sectors have started reaping the benefits as big data analytics adoption reached 53% in 2017, according to recent research by Dresner Advisory Services.

Morphean incorporates these ground-breaking technologies into its unique Security-as-a-Service solution. The Morphean platform connects devices such as video cameras, collects data, stores it securely in the cloud and uses Active Learning technology to identify actionable business insights. Businesses gain smart proactive surveillance, but also cross-functional visibility into key business operations. So, the question is, are Your eyes wide open?