Big Data & AI World spotlights latest data tactics

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Big Data & AI World – one of five co-located events contributing to this year’s Tech Show London – promised attendees a buzzing exhibition floor, and once again organizers came up with the goods. We live in a digital age where information and expertise can be accessed in a few clicks of the mouse or taps of the keyboard. But nothing has managed to replicate, yet, the rewards of meeting with industry leaders in person. It’s a chance to quiz developers on how to make the latest tools work best for your business, and quickly identify trends. Walking the exhibition floor at Big Data & AI World, it was clear that visitors were keen to learn more about the latest data tactics, and we’ll dig into why.

Big data, big market

Tiger Analytics, which works with several Fortune 500 companies and was in attendance at this year’s show, reminded event-goers that you can do a lot with data. The firm can assist clients with marketing analytics, customer analytics, risk analytics, as well as operations and planning. And an immediate takeaway from the booth was the breadth of what can be achieved using the latest big data and AI solutions. For companies, data insights are undeniably a good thing. But with more firms using the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to quickly extract trends from their business information, competition in markets has intensified.

Looking at sectors, the food and beverage industry has always been super competitive, and today manufacturers have to work harder than ever to stay ahead. Traditionally, promotions have been key to getting the attention of shoppers, but as conventional wisdom converges, firms have to think differently. Some of the latest data tactics center on personalization and using market data to get ahead of the curve. For example, Tiger Analytics has helped one of its European clients working in the food and beverage industry to predict emerging flavours and ingredients across 2 million product launches in 75 countries.

Thoughtspot, another exhibitor at the London-based show, emphasises the performance gains of using AI tools to extract insights from your data stack. According to the firm, AI-powered analytics can help users spot trends and answer business questions 10x faster than conventional methods. In Thoughtspot’s case, rather than having to code their queries, users can just type their requests into a Google-like search interface to pull out information from Snowflake, Google Big Query, Amazon Redshift, Databricks, and other data warehouses.

Avoiding ETL slowdowns

Having an efficient database is key to getting quick access to business intelligence. And another one of the latest data tactics is being able to rapidly visualize information without having to carry out time-consuming extract, transform, load (ETL) processes. MongoDB, which had a busy stand at Big Data & AI World, gives developers the option of using its Atlas Charts visualization tool, which is built natively into the firm’s Atlas multi-cloud developer data platform. The win for Atlas users is that they can take data from their documents and collections and generate charts, maps, and other visualizations without having to move or duplicate any of the source information.

We’ve touched on personalization in the food and beverage sector, but it’s a trend elsewhere too. Treasure Data, also in attendance in London, helps firms wanting to build a customer data platform – a unified database that connects to a wide range of sources and systems across a client’s operations, centralizing customer information. And, with all of the information in one place, marketers can build rich customer profiles and optimize future customer experiences. What’s more, that detailed customer knowledge helps other parts of the business too, such as design teams.

Automotive firm Subaru initially used its customer data platform to segment audiences and identify buyers who may be wanting to upgrade their vehicles soon. But, as Treasure Data – who worked with Subaru on the project – explains, the vehicle manufacturer soon realized that it could do much more with the data. “Now Subaru uses post-purchase customer data and predictive analytics to design new products and services that bring in revenue and build customer loyalty,” writes the customer data platform solutions provider.

Data governance and security

With customer data comes the need to abide by privacy laws. And navigating to Onetrust’s regulation page is a quick way of identifying the compliance that’s required. If asked to name data governance laws, most stakeholders would probably respond with GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. But could you name all 24 entries listed by Onetrust? The growth of data privacy regulation highlights why many developers choose to use platforms offered by Onetrust, another exhibitor at Big Data & AI World, and others. Reducing the complexity involved in data governance is another notable data tactic employed by leading firms.

Letting data governance platforms provide a helping hand allows developers to focus on building core functionality. But managing the software development lifecycle (SDLC) can still require some wrangling. And while the deployed solution may work, is it secure? Dazz, which offers a cloud security repair service to customers, was on hand at the event to highlight the do’s and don’ts. And if you missed the show, Matt Brown – Senior Solutions Engineer – at the firm, has written up the advice into a handy guide to building a secure SDLC.