Big Data in Practice How 45 Successful Companies Used Big Data Analytics to Deliver Extraordinary Results (Bernard Marr) (z-library.sk, 1lib.sk, z-lib.sk)

📄 File Format: PDF

💾 File Size: 2.3 MB

📖 Read Online ⬇️ Download

Registered users can read the full content for free

Register as a Gaohf Library member to read the complete e-book online for free and enjoy a better reading experience.

📄 Page 1

(This page has no text content)

📄 Page 2

(This page has no text content)

📄 Page 3

“Amazing. That was my first word, when I started reading this book. Fascinating was the next. Amazing, because once again, Bernard masterfully takes a com- plex subject, and translates it into something anyone can understand. Fascinat- ing because the detailed real-life customer examples immediately inspired me to think about my own customers and partners, and how they could emulate the success of these companies. Bernard’s book is a must have for all Big Data practitioners and Big Data hopefuls!” Shawn Ahmed, Senior Director, Business Analytics and IoT at Splunk “Finally a book that stops talking theory and starts talking facts. Providing real- life and tangible insights for practices, processes, technology and teams that sup- port Big Data, across a portfolio of organizations and industries. We often think Big Data is big business and big cost, however some of the most interesting exam- ples show how small businesses can use smart data to make a real difference. The businesses in the book illustrate how Big Data is fundamentally about the cus- tomer, and generating a data-driven customer strategy that influences both staff and customers at every touch point of the customer journey.” Adrian Clowes, Head of Data and Analytics at Center Parcs UK “Big Data in Practice by Bernard Marr is the most complete book on the Big Data and analytics ecosystem. The many real-life examples make it equally relevant for the novice as well as experienced data scientists.” Fouad Bendris, Business Technologist, Big Data Lead at Hewlett Packard Enterprise “Bernard Marr is one of the leading authors in the domain of Big Data. Through- out Big Data in Practice Marr generously shares some of his keen insights into the practical value delivered to a huge range of different businesses from their Big Data initiatives. This fascinating book provides excellent clues as to the secret sauce required in order to successfully deliver competitive advantage through Big Data analytics. The logical structure of the book means that it is as easy to consume in one sitting as it is to pick up from time to time. This is a must-read for any Big Data sceptics or business leaders looking for inspiration.” Will Cashman, Head of Customer Analytics at AIB “The business of business is now data! Bernard Marr’s book delivers concrete, valuable, and diverse insights on Big Data use cases, success stories, and lessons learned from numerous business domains. After diving into this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to crush the Big Data hype machine, to soar to new heights of data analytics ROI, and to gain competitive advantage from the data within your organization.” Kirk Borne, Principal Data Scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, USA

📄 Page 4

“Big Data is disrupting every aspect of business. You’re holding a book that pro- vides powerful examples of how companies strive to defy outmoded business models and design new ones with Big Data in mind.” Henrik von Scheel, Google Advisory Board Member “Bernard Marr provides a comprehensive overview of how far Big Data has come in past years. With inspiring examples he clearly shows how large, and small, organizations can benefit from Big Data. This book is a must-read for any orga- nization that wants to be a data-driven business.” Mark van Rijmenam, Author Think Bigger and Founder of Datafloq “This is one of those unique business books that is as useful as it is interesting. Bernard has provided us with a unique, inside look at how leading organizations are leveraging new technology to deliver real value out of data and completely transforming the way we think, work, and live.” Stuart Frankel, CEO at Narrative Science Inc. “Big Data can be a confusing subject for even sophisticated data ana- lysts. Bernard has done a fantastic job of illustrating the true business benefits of Big Data. In this book you find out succinctly how leading companies are getting real value from Big Data – highly recommended read!’ Arthur Lee, Vice President of Qlik Analytics at Qlik “If you are searching for the missing link between Big Data technology and achieving business value – look no further! From the world of science to enter- tainment, Bernard Marr delivers it – and, importantly, shares with us the recipes for success.” Achim Granzen, Chief Technologist Analytics at Hewlett Packard Enterprise “A comprehensive compendium of why, how, and to what effects Big Data ana- lytics are used in today’s world.” James Kobielus, Big Data Evangelist at IBM “A treasure chest of Big Data use cases.” Stefan Groschupf, CEO at Datameer, Inc.

📄 Page 5

BIG DATA IN PRACTICE

📄 Page 6

(This page has no text content)

📄 Page 7

BIG DATA IN PRACTICE HOW 45 SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES USED BIG DATA ANALYTICS TO DELIVER EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS BERNARD MARR

📄 Page 8

This edition first published 2016 © 2016 Bernard Marr Registered office John Wiley and Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com. The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-119-23138-7 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-119-23139-4 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-119-23141-7 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-119-27882-5 (ebk) Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © vs148/Shutterstock Set in 11/14pt MinionPro Light by Aptara Inc., New Delhi, India Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall, UK

📄 Page 9

This book is dedicated to the people who mean most to me: My wife Claire and our three children Sophia, James and Oliver.

📄 Page 10

(This page has no text content)

📄 Page 11

CONTENTS Introduction 1 1 Walmart: How Big Data Is Used To Drive Supermarket Performance 5 2 CERN: Unravelling The Secrets Of The Universe With Big Data 11 3 Netflix: How Netflix Used Big Data To Give Us The Programmes We Want 17 4 Rolls-Royce: How Big Data Is Used To Drive Success In Manufacturing 25 5 Shell: How Big Oil Uses Big Data 31 6 Apixio: How Big Data Is Transforming Healthcare 37 7 Lotus F1 Team: How Big Data Is Essential To The Success Of Motorsport Teams 45 8 Pendleton & Son Butchers: Big Data For Small Business 51 9 US Olympic Women’s Cycling Team: How Big Data Analytics Is Used To Optimize Athletes’ Performance 57 10 ZSL: Big Data In The Zoo And To Protect Animals 63 11 Facebook: How Facebook Use Big Data To Understand Customers 69 12 John Deere: How Big Data Can Be Applied On Farms 75 13 Royal Bank of Scotland: Using Big Data To Make Customer Service More Personal 81 14 LinkedIn: How Big Data Is Used To Fuel Social Media Success 87 15 Microsoft: Bringing Big Data To The Masses 95 16 Acxiom: Fuelling Marketing With Big Data 103 ix

📄 Page 12

CONTENTS 17 US Immigration And Customs: How Big Data Is Used To Keep Passengers Safe And Prevent Terrorism 111 18 Nest: Bringing The Internet of Things Into The Home 117 19 GE: How Big Data Is Fuelling The Industrial Internet 125 20 Etsy: How Big Data Is Used In A Crafty Way 131 21 Narrative Science: How Big Data Is Used To Tell Stories 137 22 BBC: How Big Data Is Used In The Media 143 23 Milton Keynes: How Big Data Is Used To Create Smarter Cities 149 24 Palantir: How Big Data Is Used To Help The CIA And To Detect Bombs In Afghanistan 157 25 Airbnb: How Big Data Is Used To Disrupt The Hospitality Industry 163 26 Sprint: Profiling Audiences Using Mobile Network Data 169 27 Dickey’s Barbecue Pit: How Big Data Is Used To Gain Performance Insights Into One Of America’s Most Successful Restaurant Chains 175 28 Caesars: Big Data At The Casino 181 29 Fitbit: Big Data In The Personal Fitness Arena 189 30 Ralph Lauren: Big Data In The Fashion Industry 195 31 Zynga: Big Data In The Gaming Industry 199 32 Autodesk: How Big Data Is Transforming The Software Industry 205 33 Walt Disney Parks and Resorts: How Big Data Is Transforming Our Family Holidays 211 34 Experian: Using Big Data To Make Lending Decisions And To Crack Down On Identity Fraud 217 35 Transport for London: How Big Data Is Used To Improve And Manage Public Transport In London 223 36 The US Government: Using Big Data To Run A Country 229 37 IBM Watson: Teaching Computers To Understand And Learn 237 38 Google: How Big Data Is At The Heart Of Google’s Business Model 243 x

📄 Page 13

CONTENTS 39 Terra Seismic: Using Big Data To Predict Earthquakes 251 40 Apple: How Big Data Is At The Centre Of Their Business 255 41 Twitter: How Twitter And IBM Deliver Customer Insights From Big Data 261 42 Uber: How Big Data Is At The Centre Of Uber’s Transportation Business 267 43 Electronic Arts: Big Data In Video Gaming 273 44 Kaggle: Crowdsourcing Your Data Scientist 281 45 Amazon: How Predictive Analytics Are Used To Get A 360-Degree View Of Consumers 287 Final Thoughts 293 About the Author 297 Acknowledgements 299 Index 301 xi

📄 Page 14

(This page has no text content)

📄 Page 15

INTRODUCTION We are witnessing a movement that will completely transform any part of business and society. The word we have given to this move- ment is Big Data and it will change everything, from the way banks and shops operate to the way we treat cancer and protect our world from terrorism. No matter what job you are in and no matter what industry you work in, Big Data will transform it. Some people believe that Big Data is just a big fad that will go away if they ignore it for long enough. It won’t! The hype around Big Data and the name may disappear (which wouldn’t be a great loss), but the phenomenon will stay and only gather momentum. What we call Big Data today will simply become the new normal in a few years’ time, when all businesses and government organizations use large volumes of data to improve what they do and how they do it. I work every day with companies and government organizations on Big Data projects and thought it would be a good idea to share how Big Data is used today, across lots of different industries, among big and small companies, to deliver real value. But first things first, let’s just look at what Big Data actually means. What Is Big Data? Big Data basically refers to the fact that we can now collect and analyse data in ways that was simply impossible even a few years ago. There 1

📄 Page 16

BIG DATA IN PRACTICE are two things that are fuelling this Big Data movement: the fact we have more data on anything and our improved ability to store and analyse any data. More Data On Everything Everything we do in our increasingly digitized world leaves a data trail. This means the amount of data available is literally exploding. We have created more data in the past two years than in the entire previous history of mankind. By 2020, it is predicted that about 1.7 megabytes of new data will be created every second, for every human being on the planet. This data is coming not just from the tens of millions of messages and emails we send each other every second via email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, etc. but also from the one trillion digital photos we take each year and the increasing amounts of video data we generate (every single minute we currently upload about 300 hours of new video to YouTube and we share almost three million videos on Facebook). On top of that, we have data from all the sensors we are now surrounded by. The latest smartphones have sensors to tell where we are (GPS), how fast we are moving (accelerometer), what the weather is like around us (barometer), what force we are using to press the touch screen (touch sensor) and much more. By 2020, we will have over six billion smartphones in the world – all full of sensors that collect data. But not only our phones are getting smart, we now have smart TVs, smart watches, smart meters, smart kettles, fridges, tennis rackets and even smart light bulbs. In fact, by 2020, we will have over 50 billion devices that are connected to the Internet. All this means that the amount of data and the variety of data (from sensor data, to text and video) in the world will grow to unimaginable levels. Ability To Analyse Everything All this Big Data is worth very little unless we are able to turn it into insights. In order to do that we need to capture and analyse the data. 2

📄 Page 17

INTRODUCTION In the past, there were limitations to the amount of data that could be stored in databases – the more data there was, the slower the system became. This can now be overcome with new techniques that allow us to store and analyse data across different databases, in distributed locations, connected via networks. So-called distributed computing means huge amounts of data can be stored (in little bits across lots of databases) and analysed by sharing the analysis between different servers (each performing a small part of the analysis). Google were instrumental in developing distributed computing tech- nology, enabling them to search the Internet. Today, about 1000 com- puters are involved in answering a single search query, which takes no more than 0.2 seconds to complete. We currently search 3.5 billion times a day on Google alone. Distributed computing tools such as Hadoop manage the storage and analysis of Big Data across connected databases and servers. What’s more, Big Data storage and analysis technology is now available to rent in a software-as-a-service (SAAS) model, which makes Big Data analytics accessible to anyone, even those with low budgets and lim- ited IT support. Finally, we are seeing amazing advancements in the way we can anal- yse data. Algorithms can now look at photos, identify who is on them and then search the Internet for other pictures of that person. Algo- rithms can now understand spoken words, translate them into writ- ten text and analyse this text for content, meaning and sentiment (e.g. are we saying nice things or not-so-nice things?). More and more advanced algorithms emerge every day to help us understand our world and predict the future. Couple all this with machine learning and artificial intelligence (the ability of algorithms to learn and make decisions independently) and you can hopefully see that the devel- opments and opportunities here are very exciting and evolving very quickly. 3

📄 Page 18

BIG DATA IN PRACTICE Big Data Opportunities With this book I wanted to showcase the current state of the art in Big Data and provide an overview of how companies and organizations across all different industries are using Big Data to deliver value in diverse areas. You will see I have covered areas including how retailers (both traditional bricks ’n’ mortar companies as well as online ones) use Big Data to predict trends and consumer behaviours, how gov- ernments are using Big Data to foil terrorist plots, even how a tiny family butcher or a zoo use Big Data to improve performance, as well as the use of Big Data in cities, telecoms, sports, gambling, fashion, manufacturing, research, motor racing, video gaming and everything in between. Instead of putting their heads in the sand or getting lost in this startling new world of Big Data, the companies I have featured here have figured out smart ways to use data in order to deliver strategic value. In my previous book, Big Data: Using SMART Big Data, Ana- lytics and Metrics to Make Better Decisions and Improve Performance (also published by Wiley), I go into more detail on how any company can figure out how to use Big Data to deliver value. I am convinced that Big Data, unlike any other trend at the moment, will affect everyone and everything we do. You can read this book cover to cover for a complete overview of current Big Data use cases or you can use it as a reference book and dive in and out of the areas you find most interesting or are relevant to you or your clients. I hope you enjoy it! 4

📄 Page 19

1 WALMART How Big Data Is Used To Drive Supermarket Performance Background Walmart are the largest retailer in the world and the world’s largest company by revenue, with over two million employees and 20,000 stores in 28 countries. With operations on this scale it’s no surprise that they have long seen the value in data analytics. In 2004, when Hurricane Sandy hit the US, they found that unexpected insights could come to light when data was studied as a whole, rather than as isolated individual sets. Attempting to forecast demand for emergency supplies in the face of the approaching Hurricane Sandy, CIO Linda Dillman turned up some surprising statistics. As well as flashlights and emergency equip- ment, expected bad weather had led to an upsurge in sales of straw- berry Pop Tarts in several other locations. Extra supplies of these were dispatched to stores in Hurricane Frances’s path in 2012, and sold extremely well. Walmart have grown their Big Data and analytics department con- siderably since then, continuously staying on the cutting edge. In 2015, the company announced they were in the process of creating 5

📄 Page 20

BIG DATA IN PRACTICE the world’s largest private data cloud, to enable the processing of 2.5 petabytes of information every hour. What Problem Is Big Data Helping To Solve? Supermarkets sell millions of products to millions of people every day. It’s a fiercely competitive industry which a large proportion of people living in the developed world count on to provide them with day-to-day essentials. Supermarkets compete not just on price but also on customer service and, vitally, convenience. Having the right products in the right place at the right time, so the right people can buy them, presents huge logistical problems. Products have to be effi- ciently priced to the cent, to stay competitive. And if customers find they can’t get everything they need under one roof, they will look elsewhere for somewhere to shop that is a better fit for their busy schedule. How Is Big Data Used In Practice? In 2011, with a growing awareness of how data could be used to understand their customers’ needs and provide them with the prod- ucts they wanted to buy, Walmart established @WalmartLabs and their Fast Big Data Team to research and deploy new data-led ini- tiatives across the business. The culmination of this strategy was referred to as the Data Café – a state-of-the-art analytics hub at their Bentonville, Arkansas head- quarters. At the Café, the analytics team can monitor 200 streams of internal and external data in real time, including a 40-petabyte database of all the sales transactions in the previous weeks. Timely analysis of real-time data is seen as key to driving business per- formance – as Walmart Senior Statistical Analyst Naveen Peddamail tells me: “If you can’t get insights until you’ve analysed your sales for a week or a month, then you’ve lost sales within that time. 6