Big Data in Business: Pros, Cons & Future Career Benefits for IT

Personalization is a sought-after feature for those using browsing sites to connect with their customer and clients. Trulia, a real estate company, has built a platform that capitalizes on advanced big data analytics and other technologies that help create a personalized browsing experience for individuals that are searching for a new home. In order to streamline the home buying process, the company invested in personalization, predictive analytics, and machine learning (which includes computer vision and recommender engines). Trulia handles more than 1.

5 terabytes of data which draws on two data sets. They are 1. Public records that include listing information and 2. Consumer behavior and engagement data. The article states that there are seven stages for processing public records:

1. Trulia uses parsers to convert data streams into one standard format and then defines unique shortcodes for attributes to enable efficient storage,
2. All addresses are standardized using Trulia’s own address standardization and normalization technology,
3. All pictures of properties are processed and resized for a better customer experience,
4. Location-aware data such as amenities, neighborhood crime scores, stats and trends are added to the listings,
5. All historical datasets are assigned to listings,
6. All datasets are merged and matched in an index to make information searchable for consumers, and
7. The data goes through Trulia’s data service API that is moved into a searchable index on the firm’s site and its mobile device.
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While other real estate sites also make this kind of public data accessible, what sets Trulia’s platform apart is what it does with consumer behavior data.

Trulia also uses advertisements, deep Varma, computer vision, recommender systems, and click-through models. The result is a smarter system that makes it easier and faster for people to find the information they want about the neighborhoods they’re interested in, along with their preferred features in homes, without being inundated with irrelevant information. The browsing experience is tailored to them with the information they find more valuable. This article relates to business intelligence because these technologies and strategies can be applied to a variety of businesses and organizations. Personalization is becoming an increasingly popular feature for companies when looking into data science services that will help increase awareness of their companies, mission, products and services.

Trulia’s purpose for investing in these technologies should be applied as well for many businesses and organizations. Their purpose is to help “consumers find their perfect home.” These technologies would be useful to me in a future career because I might need personalization for consumers who are searching for a health system to serve as their provider or primary or secondary care. For example, the organization I currently work for is trying to grow its number of clients, but many are unfamiliar with their mission and purpose. By using personalization and location preferences for consumers who are using a browsing experience, this could help become a tool to create awareness of the organization’s services, obtain new clients and enhance and improve the consumer’s experience. Cumbersome processes make it difficult for business executives to access data in a timely manner.

The results is that many decisions are made based on data residing in local spreadsheets, which are often riddled with conflicting data, faulty assumptions, and hidden errors. Many business leaders don’t even bother asking for a custom report because it takes IT organizations so long to create one. By the time the IT organization can get an answer to the question, chances are high no one in the business will remember why they asked it in the first place. In order to make its data a useful asset, Pfizer challenged its business intelligence department to come up with a way to essentially take IT out of the data query and exploration process. In place of those static presentation layers, there are now a series of self-service BI dashboards that enable business users to drill down into any set of data at will, without any intervention required on the part of the IT department. IT still runs the data warehouse, but access to it is provided via applications that the Bl unit creates and then hands off to the business units.

Pfizer is now in the process of applying this business analytics approach to the rest of the business. This article applies to business intelligence because it uses a clear, real-life example of how data is both a burden and a blessing for organizations. It must just be learned how to handle, control and manage. Storage and processing of data can help a business make a timely and efficient decision, but only if the data is available in a timely and efficient manner. Pfizer is an excellent example of trying to increase efficiency in operations processes and applying successful strategies across the entire organization. This article also applies to business intelligence because it uses a clear, real-life example of how data is both a burden and a blessing for organizations. It must just be learned how to handle, control and manage. Storage and processing of data can help a business make a timely and efficient decision, but only if the data is available in a timely and efficient manner.

Pfizer is an excellent example of trying to increase efficiency in operations processes and properly use the data and analytics tools they have to make better decisions. In my future career, I can use some of the concepts of this case because it is also desirable to have complete and timely data to make better decisions. It is also valuable to understand strategies to improve operations processes throughout the entire facility or organization. In this case, we see leaders giving challenges and employees tackling them successfully. Improving the way that data is stored, managed and presented can help leaders and the organization as a whole. If I, as a future leader of a healthcare organization, would like to request a custom report to use in a presentation, to make organizational decisions, or to analyze and/or create strategies, I should make sure that my data scientists have the resources that we need and that they have time to give feedback on what they see could be done to increase efficiency within the data realm of the organization.