December 19th, 2013 by Elma Jane
NTC’s BIG DATA
Improving Collection and Analytics tools to Create Value from Relevant Data.
Big data is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured. And big data may be as important to business…and society… as the Internet has become. Why? More data may lead to more accurate analyses. More accurate analyses may lead to more confident decision making, and better decisions can mean greater operational efficiencies, cost reductions and reduced risk.
With NTC Virtual Merchant product, it captures email addresses at the Point-of-Sale (POS) into a database to assist merchants and consumer stay connected, and for future Marketing.
In understanding Big Data For Merchants, NTC’s President Mark Fravel, provided a general overview of how online merchants can use Big Data. Large amounts of seemingly random data from many sources…can be used to create competitive advantages.
Necessity of Analytical Tools
Collecting Big Data is the easy part. Storing, organizing, and analyzing it is much more complex. One seam of data that several experts identify as a particularly rich, emerging source of information can be as diverse as CRM software, AdWords, and your own website. Mobile communications, including text messages and social media posts such as Facebook and Twitter. Making sense of it can be overwhelming without analytical tools. These tools facilitate the examination of large amounts of different types of data to reveal hidden patterns and correlations that are not otherwise easily discernible.
A good example is NTC, they could analyze data on visitor browsing patterns, login counts, phone calls, and responses to promotions…they can monitor to eliminate what isn’t working and focus on what does. Some of the off-the-shelf analytic solutions are so finely tuned, they can tell a vendor whether it needs to offer a 25 percent discount or if a 15 percent discount will suffice for a particular customer.
Association rule learning is another analytics method that is a good fit with Big Data. This could be, for example, a shopping cart analysis, in which a merchant can determine which products are frequently bought together and use this information for marketing purposes.
Uses of Big Data Analytics:
Big Data can be most useful in analyzing a customer’s shopping and purchasing experience, which can help a merchant in the following four ways.
Become more efficient by alerting you to merchandising efforts that are ineffective, and products that are not selling.
Encourage more purchases by presenting existing customers with complementary items to what they’ve purchased previously.
Enhance inventory management by eliminating slow-moving items and increasing the supply of fast-moving merchandise.
Example: A top marketing executive at a sizable U.S. retailer recently found herself perplexed by the sales reports she was getting. A major competitor was steadily gaining market share across a range of profitable segments. Despite a counterpunch that combined online promotions with merchandising improvements, her company kept losing ground….The competitor had made massive investments in its ability to collect, integrate, and analyze data from each store and every sales unit and had used this ability to run myriad real-world experiments. At the same time, it had linked this information to suppliers’ databases, making it possible to adjust prices in real time, to reorder hot-selling items automatically, and to shift items from store to store easily. By constantly testing, bundling, synthesizing, and making information instantly available across the organization…the rival company had become a different, far nimbler type of business.
Increase conversion rates by better identification of successful sales transactions.
Is Big Data Analysis Affordable?
NTC Data Storage is also a good alternative for small ecommerce merchants because it is relatively inexpensive and is scalable it can expand as data requirements grow.
Relying on data-driven decision-making is crucial in industries in which profit margins are slim. Amazon, which earns increasingly thin profit margins, is one of the most effective users of data analytics. As more Big Data solutions for small online businesses come to market and more online merchants incorporate Big Data into their business tool set, employing Big Data will become a necessity for all Merchants.
Using data wisely has the potential to boost margins and increase conversions for online merchants, and investors are banking on it.
This is Big Data for NTC we know WHO, WHAT,WHEN, AND WHERE a purchase took place.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: analyses, analytic, big data, communications, competitive, consumer, cost, database, decision, ecommerce, email, internet, marketing, Merchant's, mobile, monitor, ntc, online, orgainizing, patterns, point of sale, POS, profit margins, promotions, risk, scalable, solutions, storing, text messages, virtual merchant, website
