Tag: online profiling

Business Intelligence: Compelling Topics

Departments are currently organized in a silo. Thus, their information is in silo systems, which makes it difficult to leverage that information across the company.  When we employ a data warehouse, which is a central database that contains a collection of decision-related internal and external sources of data, it can aid in the data analysis for the entire company (Ahlemeyer-Stubbe & Coleman, 2014). When we build a multi-level Business Intelligence (BI) system on top of a centralized data warehouse, we no longer have silo data systems, and thus, can make a data-driven decision.  Thus, to support data-driven decision while moving away from a silo department kept data to a centralized data warehouse, Curry,  Hasan, and O’Riain (2012) created a system that shows results from the hospital centralized data warehouse at different levels of the company, as the organization level (stakeholders are executive members, shareholders, regulators, suppliers, consumers), the functional level (stakeholders are functional managers, organization manager), and the individual level (stakeholders are the employees).  Data may be centralized, but specialized permissions on data reports can exist on a multi-level system.

The types of data that exist and can be stored in a centralized data warehouse are: Real-time data: data that reveals events that are happening immediately, Lag information: information that explains events that have recently just happened; and Lead information: information that helps predict events into the future based off of lag data, like regression data, forecasting model output (based off of Laursen & Thorlund, 2010).  All with the goal of helping decision makers if certain Target Measures are met.  Target measures are used to improve marketing efforts through tracking measures like ROI, NVP, Revenue, lead generation, lag generations, growth rates, etc. (Liu, Laguna, Wright, & He, 2014).

Decision Support Systems (DSS) were created before BI strategies.  A DSS helps execute the project, expand the strategy, improve processes, and improves quality controls in a quickly and timely fashion.  Data warehouses’ main role is to support the DSS (Carter, Farmer, & Siegel, 2014).  Unfortunately, the talks above about data types and ways to store data to enable data-driven decisions it doesn’t explain the “how,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “who”, and “why.”  However, a strong BI strategy is imperative to making this all work.  A BI strategies can include, but is not limited to data extraction, data processing, data mining, data analysis, reporting, dashboards, performance management, actionable decisions, etc. (Fayyad, Piatetsky-Shapiro, & Smyth, 1996; Padhy, Mishra, & Panigrahi, 2012; McNurlin, Sprague,& Bui, 2008).  This definition along with the fact the DSS is 1/5 principles to BI suggest that DSS was created before BI and that BI is a more new and holistic view of data-driven decision making.

But, what can we do with a strong BI strategy? Well with a strong BI strategy we can increase a company’s revenue through Online profiling.  Online profiling is using a person’s online identity to collect information about them, their behaviors, their interactions, their tastes, etc. to drive a targeted advertising (McNurlin et al., 2008).  Unfortunately, the fear comes when the end-users don’t know what the data is currently being used for, what data do these companies or government have, etc.  Richards and King (2014) and McEwen, Boyer, and Sun (2013), expressed that it is the flow of information, and the lack of transparency is what feeds the fear of the public. McEwen et al. (2013) did express many possible solutions, one which could gain traction in this case is having the consumers (end-users) know what variables is being collected and have an opt-out feature, where a subset of those variables stay with them and does not get transmitted.

 

Reference:

  • Ahlemeyer-Stubbe, Andrea, Shirley Coleman. (2014). A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry, 1st Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781118981863/
  • Carter, K. B., Farmer, D., & Siegel, C. (2014-08-25). Actionable Intelligence: A Guide to Delivering Business Results with Big Data Fast!, 1st Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781118920657/
  • Curry, E., Hasan, S., & O’Riain, S. (2012, October). Enterprise energy management using a linked dataspace for energy intelligence. In Sustainable Internet and ICT for Sustainability (SustainIT), 2012 (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
  • Fayyad, U., Piatetsky-Shapiro, G., & Smyth, P. (1996). From data mining to knowledge discovery in databases. AI magazine, 17(3), 37. Retrieved from: http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/download/1230/1131/
  • Laursen, G. H. N., & Thorlund, J. (2010) Business Analytics for Mangers: Taking Business Intelligence Beyond Reporting. Wiley & SAS Business Institute.
  • Liu, Y., Laguna, J., Wright, M., & He, H. (2014). Media mix modeling–A Monte Carlo simulation study. Journal of Marketing Analytics, 2(3), 173-186.
  • McEwen, J. E., Boyer, J. T., & Sun, K. Y. (2013). Evolving approaches to the ethical management of genomic data. Trends in Genetics, 29(6), 375-382.
  • McNurlin, B., Sprague, R., & Bui, T. (09/2008). Information Systems Management, 8th Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781323134702/
  • Padhy, N., Mishra, D., & Panigrahi, R. (2012). The survey of data mining applications and feature scope. arXiv preprint arXiv:1211.5723.  Retrieved from: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1211/1211.5723.pdf
  • Richards, N. M., & King, J. H. (2014). Big data ethics. Wake Forest L. Rev., 49, 393

Business Intelligence: Online Profiling

Online profiling is using a person’s online identity to collect information about them, their behaviors, their interactions, their tastes, etc. to drive a targeted advertising (McNurlin et al., 2008).  Online profiling straddles the point of becoming useful, annoying, or “Big Brother is watching” (Pophal, 2014).  Profiling can be based on simple third-party cookies, which are unknowingly placed when an end-user travels to a website and depending on the priority of the cookie, it can change the entire end-user experience when the visit a site with targeted messages on banner adds (McNurlin et al., 2008).  More complex tracking is when some end user uses a mobile device to scan a QR code or walks near an NFC area, where the phone then transmits about 40 different variables of that person to the company, which can then provide a more precise or perfect advertising (Pophal, 2014).

This data collection is all to gain more information about the consumer, to make better decisions about what to offer theses consumers like precise advertisements, deals, etc. (McNurlin, 2008).  The best way to describe this is through this quote by a current marketer in Phophal (2014): “So if I’m in L.A., and it’s a pretty warm day here-85 degrees-you shouldn’t be showing me an ad for hot coffee; you should be showing me a cool drink.” But, advertisers have to find a way to let the consumer know about their product, without overwhelming the consumer with “information overload.” How do consumers say “Hey look at me, I am important, and nothing else is… wouldn’t this look nice in your possession?”  If they do this too much, they can alienate the buyer from using the technology and from buying the product altogether. These advertisers need to find a meaningful and influencing connection to their consumers if they want to drive up their revenues.

At the end of the day, all this online profiling is aiming to collect enough or more than necessary data to make predictions of what the consumer is most likely going to buy and give them enough incentive to influence their purchasing decision.  The operating cost of such a tool must be done so that there is still a profit to be gained when the consumer completes a transaction and buys the product.  This, then becomes an important part of a BI program, because you are aiming to drive consumers away from your competitors and into your product.

The fear comes when the end-user doesn’t know what the data is currently being used for, what data do these companies or government have, etc.  Richards and King (2014) and McEwen, Boyer, and Sun (2013), expressed that it is the flow of information, and the lack of transparency is what feeds the fear of the public. Hence, the “Big Brother is watching”.  McEwen et al. (2013) did express many possible solutions, one which could gain traction in this case is having the consumers (end-users) know what variables is being collected and have an opt-out feature, where a subset of those variables stay with them and does not get transmitted.

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Big Data Analytics: Compelling Topics

Big Data and Hadoop:

According to Gray et al. (2005), traditional data management relies on arrays and tables in order to analyze objects, which can range from financial data, galaxies, proteins, events, spectra data, 2D weather, etc., but when it comes to N-dimensional arrays there is an “impedance mismatch” between the data and the database.    Big data, can be N-dimensional, which can also vary across time, i.e. text data (Gray et al., 2005). Big data, by its name, is voluminous. Thus, given the massive amounts of data in Big Data that needs to get processed, manipulated, and calculated upon, parallel processing and programming are there to use the benefits of distributed systems to get the job done (Minelli, Chambers, & Dhiraj, 2013).  Parallel processing allows making quick work on a big data set, because rather than having one processor doing all the work, you split up the task amongst many processors.

Hadoop’s Distributed File System (HFDS), breaks up big data into smaller blocks (IBM, n.d.), which can be aggregated like a set of Legos throughout a distributed database system. Data blocks are distributed across multiple servers. Hadoop is Java-based and pulls on the data that is stored on their distributed servers, to map key items/objects, and reduces the data to the query at hand (MapReduce function). Hadoop is built to deal with big data stored in the cloud.

Cloud Computing:

Clouds come in three different privacy flavors: Public (all customers and companies share the all same resources), Private (only one group of clients or company can use a particular cloud resources), and Hybrid (some aspects of the cloud are public while others are private depending on the data sensitivity.  Cloud technology encompasses Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).  These types of cloud differ in what the company managers on what is managed by the cloud provider (Lau, 2011).  Cloud differs from the conventional data centers where the company managed it all: application, data, O/S, virtualization, servers, storage, and networking.  Cloud is replacing the conventional data center because infrastructure costs are high.  For a company to be spending that much money on a conventional data center that will get outdated in 18 months (Moore’s law of technology), it’s just a constant sink in money.  Thus, outsourcing the data center infrastructure is the first step of company’s movement into the cloud.

Key Components to Success:

You need to have the buy-in of the leaders and employees when it comes to using big data analytics for predictive, prescriptive or descriptive purposes.  When it came to buy-in, Lt. Palmer had to nurture top-down support as well as buy-in from the bottom-up (ranks).  It was much harder to get buy-in from more experienced detectives, who feel that the introduction of tools like analytics, is a way to tell them to give up their long-standing practices and even replace them.  So, Lt. Palmer had sold Blue PALMS as “What’s worked best for us is proving [the value of Blue PALMS] one case at a time, and stressing that it’s a tool, that it’s a compliment to their skills and experience, not a substitute”.  Lt. Palmer got buy-in from a senior and well-respected officer, by helping him solve a case.  The senior officer had a suspect in mind, and after feeding in the data, the tool was able to predict 20 people that could have done it in an order of most likely.  The suspect was on the top five, and when apprehended, the suspect confessed.  Doing, this case by case has built the trust amongst veteran officers and thus eventually got their buy in.

Applications of Big Data Analytics:

A result of Big Data Analytics is online profiling.  Online profiling is using a person’s online identity to collect information about them, their behaviors, their interactions, their tastes, etc. to drive a targeted advertising (McNurlin et al., 2008).  Profiling has its roots in third party cookies and profiling has now evolved to include 40 different variables that are collected from the consumer (Pophal, 2014).  Online profiling allows for marketers to send personalized and “perfect” advertisements to the consumer, instantly.

Moving from online profiling to studying social media, He, Zha, and Li (2013) stated their theory, that with higher positive customer engagement, customers can become brand advocates, which increases their brand loyalty and push referrals to their friends, and approximately 1/3 people followed a friend’s referral if done through social media. This insight came through analyzing the social media data from Pizza Hut, Dominos and Papa Johns, as they aim to control more of the market share to increase their revenue.  But, is this aiding in protecting people’s privacy when we analyze their social media content when they interact with a company?

HIPAA described how we should conduct de-identification of 18 identifiers/variables that would help protect people from ethical issues that could arise from big data.   HIPAA legislation is not standardized for all big data applications/cases; it is good practice. However, HIPAA legislation is mostly concerned with the health care industry, listing those 18 identifiers that have to be de-identified: Names, Geographic data, Dates, Telephone Numbers, VIN, Fax, Device ID and serial numbers, emails addresses, URLs, SSN, IP address, Medical Record Numbers, Biometric ID (fingerprints, iris scans, voice prints, etc), full face photos, health plan beneficiary numbers, account numbers, any other unique ID number (characteristic, codes, etc), and certifications/license numbers (HHS, n.d.).  We must be aware that HIPAA compliance is more a feature of the data collector and data owner than the cloud provider.

HIPAA arose from the human genome project 25 years ago, where they were trying to sequence its first 3B base pair of the human genome over a 13 year period (Green, Watson, & Collins, 2015).  This 3B base pair is about 100 GB uncompressed and by 2011, 13 quadrillion bases were sequenced (O’Driscoll et al., 2013). Studying genomic data comes with a whole host of ethical issues.  Some of those were addressed by the HIPPA legislation while other issues are left unresolved today.

One of the ethical issues that arose were mentioned in McEwen et al. (2013), for people who have submitted their genomic data 25 years ago can that data be used today in other studies? What about if it was used to help the participants of 25 years ago to take preventative measures for adverse health conditions?  However, ethical issues extend beyond privacy and compliance.  McEwen et al. (2013) warn that data has been collected for 25 years, and what if data from 20 years ago provides data that a participant can suffer an adverse health condition that could be preventable.  What is the duty of the researchers today to that participant?

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Big Data Analytics: Advertising

Advertising went from focusing on sales to a consumer focus, to social media advertising, to now trying to establish a relationship with consumers.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, third party cookies were used on consumers to help deliver information to the company and based on the priority level of those cookies banner ads will appear selling targeted products on other websites (sometimes unrelated to the current search).  Sometimes you don’t even have to click on the banner for the cookies to be stored (McNurlin, Sprague, & Bui, 2008).  McNurlin et al. (2008) then talk about how current consumer shopping data was collected by loyalty cards, through BlockBuster, Publix, Winn-Dixie, etc.

Before all of this in the 1980s-today, company credit cards like a SEARS Master Card could have captured all this data, even though they had a load of other data that was collected that may not have helped them with selling/advertising a particular product mix that they carry.  They would help influence the buyer with giving them store discounts if the card was used in their location to drive more consumption.  Then they could target ads/flyers/sales based on the data they have gathered through each swipe of the card.

Now, in today’s world we can see online profiling coming into existence.  Online profiling is using a person’s online identity to collect information about them, their behaviors, their interactions, their tastes, etc. to drive a targeted advertising (McNurlin et al., 2008).  Online profiling straddles the point of becoming useful, annoying, or “Big Brother is watching” (Pophal, 2014).  Profiling began as third party cookies and have evolved with the times to include 40 different variables that could be sent off from your mobile device when the consumer uses it while they shop (Pophal, 2014).  This online profiling now allows for marketers to send personalized and “perfect” advertisements to the consumer, instantly.  However, as society switches from device to device, marketers must find the best way to continue the consumer’s buying experience without becoming too annoying, which can turn the consumer away from using the app and even buying the product (Pophal, 2014).  The best way to describe this is through this quote by a modern marketer in Phophal (2014): “So if I’m in L.A., and it’s a pretty warm day here-85 degrees-you shouldn’t be showing me an ad for hot coffee; you should be showing me a cool drink.” Marketers are now aiming to build a relationship with the consumers, by trying to provide perceived value to the customer, using these types of techniques.

Amazon tries a different approach, as items get attached to the shopping cart and before purchases, they use aggregate big data to find out what other items this consumer would purchase (Pophal, 2014) and say “Others who purchased X also bought Y, Z, and A.”  This quote, almost implies that these items are a set and will enhance your overall experience, buy some more.

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