Why You Should Combine Advanced Analytics with Cloud Storage

Information is king. Today’s successful companies can turn big data into insights that drive profitability and operational efficiency. Most organizations look to storing their data in the cloud as a component of their digital transformation strategy.

However, the cloud proves much more powerful than simply serving as a data storage solution. The cloud allows for unparalleled flexibility for advanced analytics.

In this post we will highlight just a few of the benefits of having advanced analytics with cloud services storage for your company.

Cost Efficiency

One of the primary drivers behind moving data to the cloud is cost efficiency. Managing on site servers is costly in terms of physical capital, opportunity cost as well as staffing the right people to maintain them. A Forbes article cites that companies realize about 37% in IT savings by migrating to the cloud.

Companies often waste money by either investing in too much storage or too little and sacrifice time to market speed. The total cost of ownership (TCO) of housing data internally often isn’t worth it, especially for companies for which IT is not a core aspect of their business.

Azure cloud services include advanced data analytics that also promote cost savings. With no infrastructure to manage, customers can process data on-demand, scale instantly, and only pay per job. Customers can scale out as needed per job and pay based on the services they actually use.

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Customer Insights for Targeted Marketing

Advanced analytics coupled with machine learning can help businesses learn a lot more about their customers. In turn, they can increase their pipeline with qualified leads and learn how to better service their existing customers.

Knowing more about your potential customer base takes a lot of the guesswork out of marketing and allows for more precise, targeted efforts.

At Redapt we help take customer insights from Azure analytics and apply them in a number of tangible ways.

• Price and margin optimization - What is the ideal selling price for my product to maximize margin?
• Product recommendation - What additional items might be of interest to my customer?
• Product placement and market promotion- where should I place a specific product on a website or in a store? Which promotions should my customers receive to maximize return?

Boost Sales

Better customer insights should arm your salesforce to close more. In today’s business world, more companies are leveraging data, targeting leads earlier and heating up the competition.

With all the competition out there, plus savvier customers, companies need to do more with data. Housing and analyzing data in the cloud can boost sales by increasing leads in the pipeline, making the sales process more efficient, drive intelligence-based selling and improve customer transparency.

Companies that store data in the cloud can benefit from a plethora of SaaS solutions aimed at sales and customer relationship management specifically. Instead of maintaining proprietary sales programs in-house, companies can take advantage of the latest technologies offered by leading cloud providers to stay abreast of the competition.

Increase Profits and Productivity

With advanced analytics, companies can identify millions in opportunity cost in operations, pricing or productivity. Microsoft’s Cortana is at the forefront of business predictive analytics. Cortana is a subscription-based analytics toolset in the cloud that helps both technologists and business people leverage data science to make predictions.

At Redapt, we provided our customer, Seagate with a big data and advanced analytics solution. Seagate is one of the largest manufacturers of hard disks globally.

Redapt analytics allowed Seagate to reduce spoilage and increase profits in their supply chain by analyzing telemetry data from silicon wafer presses. Redapt developed a hybrid platform coupling on premise systems with cloud services from the Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite.

Actionable Insights

One of the main drivers behind deploying an analytics program is business intelligence that leads to actionable insights. At Redapt, we describe this in four stages:

1. Descriptive Analytics: Involves describing what happened which is typically a backward looking process. This is often harder than it sounds as instances can be subject to interpretation. At Redapt, we work with our customers to come to an understanding of one version of the truth to highlight in BI tools.
2. Diagnostic Analytics: Why something happened.  Beyond producing charts and spreadsheets, we help display diagnostic data in a meaningful way using our customers’ key data drivers.
3. Predictive Analytics: Based on historic data, we can estimate what will happen through analytics. This helps illuminate trends before they occur.
4. Prescriptive Analytics: Armed with all of this information, analytics should help us determine what to do now. The Redapt Machine Learning team combines state-of-the-art data science practices with proven statistical modeling methods to make that happen.

Enabling IoT Capabilities

Many companies are exploring and implementing IoT as part of their digital transformation strategies. IoT devices garner massive amounts of data that require advanced analytics in order to interpret, sift through the noise and uncover the gold nuggets of information. With analytics in the cloud, companies can seamlessly go from sensors to insights.

Some of the benefits of IoT solutions through Azure include remote device monitoring, improving industrial efficiencies through a connected factory, increase reliability with predictive maintenance and develop and test IoT solution with device simulation.

IoT coupled with advanced analytics in the cloud doesn’t just present intelligence for internal operations. IoT and analytics also improve the customer experience. For example, IoT devices integrated in distribution centers can signal when it’s time for order replenishment preventing stockouts. Acting proactively can not only help your customer succeed, but in turn cultivate a better long-standing relationship.

Coupling cloud services with advanced analytics enables companies to take advantage of flexibility, access to the latest technology and seamless IoT integration without needing to manage the required infrastructure. Companies that partner with experts in advanced analytics ensure that they reap the maximum benefits their data can offer.

The Redapt Advanced Analytics Team is helping enable our clients to identify and capture more value from their existing businesses and make their data work for them.