Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is acquiring Inkiru, a small startup focused on real-time predictive analysis in its latest effort to spur e-commerce.

"The similarities between Inkiru and @WalmartLabs are uncanny, with both having an innovative spirit and the ability to leverage big data to improve the customer experience," the company wrote in a blog post. 

Inkiru is joining @WalmartLabs in what Venture Beat describes as a "fairly straightforward 'manquisition,'" the latest move in a series of tech-centric acquisitions as the company looks to build upon its online sales prowess, which has already seen over a 30 percent increase in e-commerce in the first quarter. Determined to take competitors like Amazon head-on, Walmart CEO Mike Duke said the company expects online sales to hit $10 billion this year—an estimate that takes into account the recent purchase of Chinese online retailer Yihaodian.Continue reading...

If Big Data can help mankind solve massive challenges ranging from gene sequencing to avoiding asteroid hits, surely a little dose of big data in the supermarket aisle could go a long way for its wielder, right?

Dannon USA and IBM are testing that notion with a partnership to harness IBM's cloud-based predictive analytics to help ensure that Dannon has the right product mix delivered at the right time to satisfy consumers in the highly competitive, $7 billion US yogurt market.

The move already has reduced the frustration of out-of-stocks for Dannon consumers, enhanced the brand's ability to manage a proliferation of SKUs in the yogurt section, boosted Dannon's forecasting abilities and allowed its sales, merchandising and distribution staffs to focus on creating and executing effective promotions rather than focusing on the math.

"Yogurt and the fresh-dairy aisle in general are high-turn environments and are promotionally sensitive," Michael Neuwirth, senior director of public relations for Dannon USA, told brandchannel.Continue reading...

It may not make your salad taste better, reduce your wait for a table or remove any calories from the creme brulee, but American restaurant patrons can rest assured that Big Data is on the way to make their experience of eating away from home a better one.

With alliances like IBM with the Cheesecake Factory, the providers and purveyors of overwhelming numbers are helping restaurant operators marry their traditional huge volumes of transactional data—such as sales receipts from customers and information about purchase orders to suppliers—with "unstructured" data to help them automate decisions that will improve food safety and quality, labor productivity and other aspects of their operations. The end result is supposed to be more-satisfied customers, greater revenues and fatter profit margins.

"It's about enriching the more structured data with unstructured data in order to gain business insight," Paul Chang, global leader for consumer-products strategy for IBM, told brandchannel. "If you can do that then you can automate these processes."Continue reading...

As retailers increasingly leverage location-based marketing to predict customer behavior and influence purchasing decisions, the result is more sophisticated data about who and when to target — and what offers to make.  

“Collecting GPS data is becoming quite pervasive. Using the knowledge of where a customer goes, which path she travels and how much time she spends at various locations can improve the quality of customer interactions and types of marketing offers and increase the likelihood that she’ll redeem an offer,” writes FICO’s Shafi Rahman and Amit Sowani.

FICO, founded in 1956, introduced analytic solutions including credit scoring, predictive analytics and business rules management and optimization, now used by most of the world's top banks, leading insurers, retailers, pharmaceutical businesses and government agencies, as well as managing the personal credit health of millions of individuals. 

The organization identified some key steps in location-based data collection:Continue reading...

Olympics sponsor GE is using data visualization to engage the public in the gargantuan logistical underpinning involved in mounting and hosting the Olympic Games.

"What (g)oes into building an Olympic city? GE's chief marketing officer Beth Comstock tweeted from a panel discussion Monday on the future of cities at the London Olympics. "Lots of technology and big machines hidden in plain sight." Her tweet linked to GE's Building the Games interactive map, which (powered by Bing search) features GE's infrastructure work behind the scenes of London 2012.Continue reading...

The new IBM THINK app for Apple iPad and Android tablets is inspired by scientific advances over the centuries, combining history and technology in an "innovation time machine." It’s a virtual timeline of images and historical anecdotes ranging from the history of ancient measurement to modern metrics of atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope, to the Wright Brothers' prototype airplane in 1903 through modern airline mechanical parts simulations and the history of metal detectors.

“Through thousands of images and historical anecdotes, IBM THINK brings to life stories of the history of progress, from space exploration to weather prediction and medical advances,” blogs IBM's head of design, Lee Green. “It documents the roots of Big Data, from early charts and scales to microscopes and telescopes, from RFID chips and biomedical sensors in clothing to breath-sensor diabetes detectors. Given its strong educational bent, the app will even be used to create lesson plans for middle school students later this year.”Continue reading...

The University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab has conducted a groundbreaking social sentiment analysis of the 2012 Academy Awards race. The project, in collaboration with IBM and the Los Angeles Times, illustrates how organizations and brands — from media & entertainment, retailing, sports, and politics — can apply advanced analytics tools in order to learn and report on new trends.