2015 will be the year when companies start to get a real grip of big data and look at all the data - structured and unstructured, as well as internal or external - as a valuable asset from which value and business benefits can be created. With the help of technology, including semantic analysis, smart data lakes, telematics and beacon transmitters, a company can extract power from the ever-growing amount of data generated by the organization, employees, customers, equipment and products (a holistic approach that we at Cognizant call Code Halos).
When companies use Code Halos to create new and improved services, consumers, who generate customer data, will be able to experience benefits in areas such as banking, retail and FMCG, healthcare and insurance. Here are some examples of trends in 2015 that will affect us as consumers.
Big Data-nize yourself to better fitness levels
The activity band, which became the year's Christmas present in 2014 under the HUI Research, is an example of portable sensor technology, so-called wearables, which are rapidly changing the way we live, work and interact with each other. Portable sensors may have been around a long time, but the rapid and consumer-driven development we are now seeing promising new methods of absorbing information, which through semantic understanding and analysis may change our everyday life on a scale that is comparable to the effect of Internet once received. With activity bands can we as users make use of the big data that we ourselves generate and strategize for a healthier life. With other types of wearables such as Google Glass or so-called hearables, we will be able to enhance our human brain capacity, which means we can work with computers in a way that was not possible before.
Boost your career with gamification
Gamification is a method for influencing behavior in everyday life and at work by including the competitive elements and mechanisms for direct feedback. Gamification is used today in a variety of places such as hospitals, schools, cities and workplaces to incorporate social competitive elements, where people (both individually and in teams) compete and measure their performance against set targets. Gamification will become so common that it will shortly be seen as an integral part of the IT system design. In retail, where gamification currently is used to motivate store employees to streamline work and improve learning, implementation is growing quickly because the employees consists largely of younger people who are used to using social media and mobile games. But it will soon come to your workplace too!
Pay safer
As the use of mobile banking services is increasing, new demands arise on both consumer protection and speediness. In the banking world, solutions for real-time monitoring is becoming a more common way to protect customers by detecting and combating card fraud and identity theft. Banks obtain an overall picture of their customers by integrating all available customer data and thus can more quickly detect irregularities in individual customer behavior patterns while transactions are verified at the fast pace customers expect.
Get the insurance you deserve
In the insurance industry, digitization has already come a long way. Insurance companies will continue to look at how entire business models can be digitized and transformed to better meet customer needs. For example, insurance companies use GPS transmitters and other kinds of sensors on cars, and with telematics, it enables to identify the client's individual driving behavior, prevent theft and measure various values in automotive engines. Through telematics, insurance companies can offer personalized offers such as insurance premiums based on driving behavior, where the transmitter is used to identify the driving pattern and thus perform a more precise risk analysis.
Get well faster
In health care increases the need to rapidly develop decision support based on both internal and external information. The so-called Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms used to find relevant information about treatment, side effects and feedback in a variety of external medical databases while integrating insights with internal patient. User-friendly, intuitive and visual tools are becoming increasingly common tool for healthcare professionals so that they can quickly make healthcare decisions based on both the internal patient information and insights from a variety of external sources.
Shop precision
In trade used technology such as the beacon transmitter to collect customer data that can be used to improve customer experiences, develop personalized offerings but also give traders useful insights about customer flow and staffing, which can help streamline business operations. Beacon transmitter creates opportunities for automated direct communication with store customers via their mobile phones but also raises important privacy issues that dealers need to consider.
Developments in big data will next year revolve around how well the company can handle the amount of information available. Two big data tools which are to become more widespread next year are semantic analysis and smart data lakes. In the same way Google uses semantic analysis of customer data other companies begin to look at how they similarly can save time when it comes to understanding and managing their own structured and unstructured data. Smart data lakes are becoming increasingly common solutions to collect all the data in one place and thus by including semantic analysis making it easier to discover connections and correlation between different kinds of data.
