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is a rock concert on in that part of the city; whether it is pay day, and so on. All the while the Blue CRUSH system is looking at this data and working out the probability of a crime occurring. “With this data, the system can advise shift commanders to help them with rostering, telling them where and when to deploy their officers. And then when an incident occurs, the system can rerun these models and update the city’s risk profi le.” The ability to analyse information for use in predicting future results is just one facet of the recent upsurge in collating vast quantities of data and employing new tools to reach a desired decision or result. “The thing that has really changed in the past few months and years is that, all of a sudden, organisations have access to so much more data,” says Laurie Miles, Head of Analytics at SAS. “Traditionally companies have done a pretty good job analysing structured data, but the real thing that has changed is all this unstructured data that is now available on blogs, review sites, Twitter and places like that. Increasingly, organisations are starting to take advantage of that sort of data.” There is no doubt that websites such as TripAdvisor have been shaping the thoughts and consumer habits of millions of hotel-goers for a few years now, but the next step in this evolution is going to be companies using this information to tailor their services and products in a more structured, targeted way. Everybody who is online in the modern age leaves a trace, and it is this trace that companies are now analysing in an effort to better understand their customers, and seeking ways to capitalise on the content people leave as part of their trace. “Companies can and will now analyse not just the types of words people are using on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and TripAdvisor,” says Miles, “but also what time of day they are posting, how frequently they are posting and the ways they are interacting with their peers. This information is proving to be a goldmine for proactive businesses.” It cannot be long before analysed data begins to alter the very way in which we consume. Loyalty card schemes based around information companies hold on shoppers are already shaping buying habits in some supermarkets, while telecommunication companies have a wealth of information on their customers’ preferences, developing packages to provide better service and further monetise their consumer base. Th row in predictive spending and consumption habits, allied with better business intelligence feedback and smarter analytical tools, and you are faced with a future where every action of every consumer can be analysed, fed back into the business and worked with to create profit and more streamlined service. Exciting times lie ahead.
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News in pictures
British supermodel Naomi Campbell is seen giving evidence at the Sierra Leone war crimes trial at the Hague via a videoscreen in the press room at a UN-backed special court in Leidschendam, The Netherlands.
Flood victims in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province await their turn to cross a dangerously swollen river by cable car as the flood-damaged bridge severed this Chakdara region in half.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the BBC lost mobiles and laptops worth £240,000 (€290,000) over the past two years, which is the equivalent of 1656 TV licence fees.
18/08/2010 15:44