How can Big Data help the tourism sector?

1.4 billion people, the equivalent of China’s population, travel around the world every year. It is by far the largest amount of all time, and it seems it’ll continue growing up. According to the World Tourism Organization, by 2030, it’ll be 1.8 billion.

The exponential growth of tourism has caused a collapse in many cities and touristic destinations. Cities like Barcelona and countries like Iceland have taken measures to limit the number of tourists they allow into their territories.

However, is that the solution? Is it worth it to reduce the possible income that may result from tourists spending? There may be an alternative solution: using Big Data to adapt to the situation.

For example, the analysis of tourists’ movement around a city can help planners to adapt the number of buses and other public transportations at peak times. This helps to reduce traffic and the collapse of public transport at certain times.

Many Latin American cities have done it with anonymous data coming from cellphones that differentiated locals from tourists to create profiles of the tourists with the help of AI to know when and where they use to go according to those profiles. Thus, they were able to produce better policies to tackle the issue, reduce pollution, and offer a better urban environment for locals and tourists.

Many large cities in Europe, the US, and Latin America hold massive music festivals around the year. Some of them, such as Tomorrowland, Glastonbury surpass 200,000 people, which creates significant policy and environmental pressure.  Such a festival is transportation, catering, and housing odyssey. However, many forget one considerable aspect: waste disposal, mainly if the festival occurs in a protected, ecological area. How to deal with so many tourists without hindering the environment? Again, Big Data.

Generally, participants have to fill a form providing some basic information, which, with the help of data analysis can help organizers to create profiles and, from there, establish an estimate of the resources needed to deal with the disposal correctly. From there, organizers and authorities can effectively manage waste disposal systems, reinforcing public transportation, and everything else they need.

Big Data here allows organizers to know the capacity of a venue: how many visitors can it hold not only considering space but also the other factors mentioned above.

That last element does not only help festival organizers, but it can also help museums. The data allows them to know how many visitors they can permit at a time without pressing the place and understanding in detail the energy, human capital, and money they need to invest in sustaining it.e

Data analysis shows museum managers peak hours and days, which rooms are the most-visited, and they can cross the data, so they have better options to deal with visitors. This allows them to reduce the waiting time and over-saturation of the venue. Coping with visitors is vital for places such as museums as they cannot increase the number of visitors infinitely but also protect a significant historical, cultural, and artistic heritage.

Big data is an ever-growing business that can help almost any industry to offer better services. Tourism is just one small example of that. Using data analysis can help policy-makers and companies provide an excellent time for tourists without hindering locals, their touristic venues, or the environment.

 

The 5 most important
cybersecurity events of the 2010

The decade is coming to an end, and it’s safe to say it has been the decade with the most significant technology expansions. From AI to cloud computing and big data, technology is taking control of our world. Things that 30 years ago only occurred on science fiction shows today seem perfectly normal.

But technology comes with its risks. If this has been the decade of technology, it has also been a decade of cybersecurity threats. Here we’ll take a look at the most critical data breaches and cyber-attacks of the last ten years.

Stuxnet

This was the first major cybersecurity event of the decade. A computer worm to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. It was designed to kill off SCADA equipment the Iranians used for its nuclear enrichment processes, and the attack succeeded, taking off equipment in many places.

This was not the first, nor the last cyber attack launched by a State. However, it was one of the first few large-scale government cyberattacks and the first to catch worldwide attention.

PlayStation’s Hack

In 2011 Sony announced a group of hackers stole the details of around 77 million PSN users, including financial information. Today, considering other much larger hacks, the amount seems insignificant, but at the time, it was THE hacking.

Sony had to close PlayStation Network for almost a month to address the breach and guarantee it wouldn’t happen again, losing profits due to it. Even worse, users that suffered credit card fraud filed class-action lawsuits that made Sony lose even more money.

It led many companies to add in their Terms of Service a clause to forbid users from filing lawsuits on security breaches and also make them invest more in proper security.

Snowden

This is probably the best-known cybersecurity event of the decade. You know the story, Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, unveiled a global surveillance network led by the US after 9/11.

Snowden would face trial in the US, so he took refuge in Russia. His revelations led many countries such as China and Russia, to improve their surveillance operations and intelligence, which ironically led to increasing cyber-espionage in the world.

The DNC hack

In the spring of 2016, the DNC announced it had suffered a security breach that stole thousands of emails and documents from the committee’s servers. The servers were hacked by two Russian cyber-espionage groups, which led some to believe that Russian meddling started right there.

The data stolen dare was used for intelligence up that aimed to influence the results of the Presidential elections. It’s still hard to say to what point it succeeded, but as of today, this hack continues to produce headlines and investigations.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

People usually joked about Facebook surveilling the. However, the joke stopped being a joke in 2018 when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke about, and everyone knew how Facebook was hoarding data from them. Data analytics companies such as CA were using FB user data with ease to create profiles and tendencies to sell to political parties and organizations to shape public opinion.

How to deal with stress in employee relationships?

Businesses can be high-pressure environments. Employees usually interact more with their colleagues than with their families in a regular workweek. That means that the significance of the relationship between employees cannot be overstated. Having a healthy environment is crucial to organizational success.

Positive relationships between them lead to better levels of productivity. Negative relationships increase stress and isolation, affecting their motivation. But stress is common and, sometimes, unavoidable.  What can you do to avoid stress from causing toxic relationships between your employees? Here we’ll give you some tips.

Cultivate interaction between employees

Increasing cooperation between your team will help them feel more comfortable. When they feel confident in the environment, they will feel encouraged to share their thoughts, provide feedback, and collaborate with the rest. When everyone understands (to a point) the challenges of everyone else, their concerns, and know and value what they do, you’re off to a good start.

The way to achieve this is simple: organize social events that help them get to know each other and arrange short ice breakers in staff meetings.

Be compassionate

Employees have lives outside of work. Behind an irritable person can be tons of medical bills or a mortgage that’s keeping them awake at night. A high-stress environment can lead them to snap. It’s always vital to be wary of these personal issues and try to help them as much as you can.

Also, learn to have a common ground with them. Some employees may be introverts or may have a rocky relationship with you. Find something you may share with them: it can be something as little as a band you both like or a hobby you both have. Start from that.

Learn to listen

Collective decision-making is crucial for fostering a good work environment. Teamwork helps employees to get to know each other. Also, it will be vital for those who have significant workloads and stress on them. Communication and collaboration are essential for dealing with stress and pressure on an organization.

Also, promote respect and open communication. Employees need to feel you are an open employer. It’s wonderful when they know you can listen to their concerns and consider their feedback. Sometimes all they need to reduce stress is talk about it and find a solution. That’s where you have to be.

But listening doesn’t mean saying yes to whatever they ask. It is about making them feel comfortable talking with you, even if you won’t agree and always finding the best way to say things. Setting boundaries is vital, but the way you set them is even more crucial.

Learn to take a break and to let people take a break

You need to know how to identify when one of your employees may need a day off or at least leaving a couple of hours early. Sometimes the amount of work can get over your head, and you try to get everything from your team. That’s normal. However, people sometimes needs time off. Learn to give them that, even if it’s 20 minutes of coffee and cookies to help them relax.

How to take advantage of failure in business? Some vital things to do

Being a solid decision-maker is crucial for all business leaders. Having the wisdom to do so is usually the differentiating line between a good and a bad leader. However, that doesn’t mean that for making bad decisions once in a while, you’re a bad leader. That only means you’re human.

The defining issue is how you make use of your mistakes: do you let them define you or you take them as experience and a way to grow? Business knowledge comes from reflecting on your past experiences to see what worked, what didn’t and grow from it.

Here we’ll give you a few pieces of advice to be able to learn and grow from your business mistakes.

 

Ask yourself if you become wiser with each difficulty and mistake

If your answer is no, don’t worry. That’s common. Negative experiences are hard to deal with, so it’s reasonable to find it hard to look at the bright side from them. When the project of your life turns into a train wreck, it’s hard to get the best of the situation.

However, if you decide to continue, you have to learn from your past mistakes. Be humble, embrace them, and change. You can’t expect different results from the same actions.

The four-step review

An excellent way to learn from them is by doing an easy four-step review of any plan to make the best use of your failures.

First, check your expectations. Sometimes, we see some issues as failures, but only because we have unreal expectations from our endeavors.

Second, specify the results you’ve obtained. There are degrees of failure. You have to detail your actions as much as possible for a better view of where you’re standing and where are you heading.

Third, make a list of your decisions, were they right? What outcomes did they have? Sometimes they can even bring mixed results.

Last but not least, detail what you need to learn. From your decisions and your examination, you can discover why some things did not go as planned. From that, you may know what you need to improve as a leader and as an organization.

Embrace them and be patient

Don’t see mistakes merely as a problem but also as an opportunity. Whenever you make a mistake, if you have the correct mindset, you’ll make the right choice the next time it comes. In every error, there’s potential wisdom and growth.

That’s why you need to learn to be patient. When we fail, we can be too hard on ourselves. Negative self-talk can lead you to stay in your mistakes and failures and feel worthless. That’s not what you need. You need to see how you get up from your error, not dive deeper into it, so it’s essential to know how to keep cold blood and take a deep breath when you make a mistake.

If you dive into your mistake, you’re letting it define you and your future.

In conclusion

Mistakes and failures are unavoidable for a business leader. We are human. They don’t define us.

But what does define us is the way we deal with them. If we cannot overcome them, especially within ourselves, we are allowing them to define us. Taking them as a chance to grow, to improve, and to understand ourselves better is the way to go and to deal with failure.

Companies prefer hybrid clouds: How are the big players responding?

In general, cloud providers seemed to prefer offering public clouds to their partners. However, that raised plenty of concerns. IT crews had a significant digital infrastructure that could not be easily moved off private data centers, and some workloads need to be kept close to their source. Similarly, depending on their nature, many companies have huge regulatory requirements that are not easy to comply with if their cloud environment is totally public.

This means that 86 percent of companies have at least a quarter of their IT infrastructure in cloud environments, and more than half have somewhere between 50 and 75 percent. 58 percent prefer hybrid cloud, per OpsRamp, and Right Scale.

The situation led to some tension between companies and cloud providers, as they had different views and approaches over it. However, the three big players (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) are changing their views and responding to the companies’ calls. Let’s see how they are dealing with the public’s preference for hybrid clouds.

The new releases

Microsoft first announced Azure Stack in 2015 and, recently, it revealed Arc, a multi-layered cloud to extend Azure services whether it is with Stack, other clouds or border environments. It seems to be exactly what most companies are looking for as it provides hybrid automation for managing apps and data in all clouds.

Arc’s launch seems like a keeper. In a multi-hybrid cloud environment, IT crews have to re-design apps to allow interoperability between clouds (the mentioned report said that on average, every company uses five different clouds). The teams have to address the issue of managing assets, metrics, services, and data coming on-premise and from cloud providers.

This means the biggest challenge IT crews are facing is integrating multi-cloud hybrid data without wasting much time and money. That’s what offerings like Arc seems to be doing.

Although the major players are extending their hybrid offerings, that doesn’t mean they are perfect. It is a somewhat new competition environment which means there is a ton of space to innovate, improve, and grow.

After Microsoft, Google released its hybrid cloud offering: Anthos. They say is a modernization platform for an open application that allows IT crews to actualize, build, and run apps anywhere.

In Conclusion: How can this impact IT ops?

The change of approach from the most important cloud providers in the market is great for companies. Most of them will be able to operate in a hybrid setup.

Products like Anthos and Azure Arc will let companies accelerate their cloud adoption with lesser risk, better integration and workload migration. The hybrid approach allows organizations to use the best part of the products from all providers, reduce costs, and distribute risks. Also, the hybrid approach allows companies to pass from on-premise monitoring to dynamic cloud management solutions.

All this means that the embracement of hybrid clouds is deeply positive for IT ops as it gives them more diverse options to deal with cloud management and data protection.

 

5 cosas que debes saber antes de incursionar en el marketing de lujo

Trabajar con el marketing de lujo no es una tarea sencilla pero en Atlantis University te daremos varias recomendaciones que te harán irresistible para tu audiencia en el momento en que decida su próxima compra.

El factor clave en el marketing de lujo es aprender a tomar las decisiones correctas para que tu mensaje se interprete de la manera esperada y llegue a tu audiencia clave.

Luego de analizar varias marcas de lujo y siguiendo los consejos de expertos en el sector te traemos una guía básica pero efectiva de cosas que debes saber antes de incursionar en el marketing de lujo.

1. Palabras clave

Todos estamos familiarizados ya con Google AdWords, es por esto que sabemos la importancia de elegir las palaras claves correctas para que tu página web aparezca en las búsquedas que tú decidas, mientras más específico seas, mejor. Sin embargo, una estrategia fundamental al momento de planear una campaña es eliminar las palabras indeseadas que puedan atraer al target incorrecto. Un ejemplo de ellas podían ser “Gratis, barato, descuentos”. Lo ideal es preparar una amplia lista y cargarla toda. También es importante que destaques los atributos que hacen a tu marca exclusiva y valiosa en el copy.

Mira este ejemplo:

¿Qué grita más lujo y dinero que “Sus productos se preparan de manera elegante y se envuelven a mano en papel de seda”? Dior te está diciendo explícitamente: “Si quieres ser elegante, estás en el lugar indicado. Lo que ofrecemos no lo consigues en cualquier lugar y por eso vale la pena que pagues lo que cuesta”.

2. El canal y segmentación

¿Recuerdas haber visto algún infomercial de Chanel? La respuesta es sencilla: No. Al momento de publicitar el marketing de lujo, el canal es uno de los factores clave. Es por eso que te daremos dos tips imprescindibles para seleccionar un par de ellos:

• Bing, ese motor de búsqueda que todos piensan que es un fracaso, realmente no lo es. Este, aunque no lo creas, puede ser un gran aliado cuando de marketing de lujo hablamos, puesto que, siguiendo las estadísticas presentadas por la empresa, el 30% de los usuarios que utilizan este motor de búsqueda tienen unos ingresos anuales de $100.000,00 o más. Eso se traduce a 5 billones de búsquedas mensuales y, mejor aún, 59 millones de personas que no alcanzarías utilizando Google que claramente tienen un gran poder adquisitivo.
• Segmentación demográfica por ingresos: Sí, la información de los ingresos anuales de los usuarios es pública gracias al estado y Google te la entrega en bandeja de plata. ¿Qué mejor dato al momento de segmentar un target de lujo que cuánto ganan los consumidores?

3. Imagen lujosa

Aunque una marca no sea de lujo puede tener rebrandings o productos exclusivos que sí lo sean. Por ejemplo Victoria’s Secret, una marca que se balancea entre lo pop y lujoso, a continuación vemos una publicidad de sus productos para el usuario promedio:

Ahora una de sus productos exclusivos:

Royal Fantasy Bra de $10.000.000. La diferencia: El producto está en el foco, los colores transmiten poder y lujo, no se sobrecarga con más nada. Al momento de vender exclusividad lo principal a tener en cuenta es: Menos es más.

En el marketing de lujo resulta fundamental tener en cuenta que la marca está ofreciendo más allá de un producto o servicio un estilo de vida, una idea de exclusividad y acceso a un mundo que solo unos pocos tienen el lujo de conocer. La presentación del producto, el precio, los canales de distribución y promoción y la forma de publicitar son piezas claves en la ecuación para el éxito en este campo en el que la victoria no está reservada para el experto en ventas sino para quien domina el arte de la seducción.

Deja atrás a tu competencia este Black Friday y Cyber Monday

Este 29 de Noviembre será el fin de semana del Black Friday y Cyber Monday y, como buen empresario, es hora de leer los mejores datos, estadísticas y tácticas para dejar atrás a tu competencia y convertirte en el Rey de las Ventas.

En cualquiera de los casos: si tienes una tienda virtual o una tienda física en Estados Unidos, estos 12 datos importantes, tácticas y estadísticas sobre el Black Friday serán tu arma para enfocar tus estrategias.

1. El Black Friday ocurre cada año el día después de Thanksgiving (Acción de Gracias) y es la primera avalancha de compras navideñas en el país.
2. Tuvo sus inicios en la década de 1960 gracias a que los comercios minoristas comenzaron a incorporar grandes rebajas y ofertas para incrementar sus ventas navideñas. El término Black Friday salió a la luz por primera vez en un diario de Filadelfia refiriéndose al caos que se había visto en las calles gracias a las compras del día posterior a Acción de Gracias.
3. Por muchos años las rebajas tenían una duración de 24 horas y ahora comercios como Amazon y tiendas online alargan las promociones hasta una semana completa.
4. Según Finder.com, en el 2019 se espera que las ganancias generadas por este día en Estados Unidos sean de aproximadamente $87 billones.
5. De acuerdo con algunas encuestas, el 88% de los hombres planea participar en el Black Friday, superando en un 3% a las mujeres, quienes alcanzan un porcentaje de 85% de participación.
6. Si ponemos en una escala de participación a las distintas generaciones, en primer lugar se encontrarían los Baby Boomers, luego de esto los Gen X y en el tercer lugar estarían los Millenials.
7. Como máximos preferidos en la tendencia de compras en las tres generaciones están aparatos tecnológicos, maquillaje y productos de belleza. Le siguen ropa, decoraciones para el hogar y viajes.
8. Con el apogeo de la era digital, la mayor parte de las compras se realizan por internet, siento los Smartphone el dispositivo principal, seguido por los ordenadores y finalmente las tablets ocupando el tercer lugar.
9. Es recomendable posicionar la estrategia de promoción vía SMS (mensaje de texto) como primer lugar en tu lista pues, siguiendo con el punto anterior, los usuarios realizarán sus compras a través de sus teléfonos y representa para ellos facilidad, sumado a que se encuentran receptivos a ofertas durante toda la semana (cuándo comienza, códigos de descuento, comparaciones de precios, etc).
10. Tu Community Manager o quien se encarga de las redes sociales debe estar especialmente atento y activo esos días para informar todo lo relacionado con las ofertas y lo que sucede tanto en la página web como en la tienda, de esta manera podrá resolver cualquier duda de los usuarios interesados porque una duda sin resolver representa, en la mayoría de los casos, una venta perdida.
11. Enfoca parte de tu juego para enviar buenas promociones a tus clientes actuales y más fieles, si es posible, haz una oferta especial sólo para ellos y con el objetivo de aumentar su fidelidad.

Los anuncios pagos en buscadores, publicidad de Facebook y el remarketing serán tus buenos amigos esta semana. Estudia tu mercado y con una buena segmentación de tu target las ventas se elevarán mucho más de lo que esperas.

La tecnología de nube continua su expansión

IBM lanza su primera nube para servicios financieros con Bank of America

IBM anunció la creación de la primera nube de servicios financieros a través de un acuerdo con Bank of America.

Esta es la primera nube de IBM dedicada a alguna industria en particular y la primera nube para servicios financieros del mundo. ¿Por qué los servicios financieros necesitan una tecnología de nube específica? Debido a sus estándares regulatorios y de seguridad particularmente elevados y únicos.
“Mediante el establecimiento de un estándar que se encargue del problema de resguardar información altamente calificada, buscamos llevar la nube pública a un nivel de seguridad sin precedentes”, dijo Cathy Bessant, Oficial en Jefe de Operaciones y Tecnología de Bank of America.

Bank of America ha intentado mejorar su capacidad de cloud computing en los últimos años, lo que ha llevado al banco a reducir sus servidores de 200 mil a 70 mil y sus centros de datos de 67 a 23, lo que ha resultado en un ahorro de dos millardos anuales. Este acuerdo es el siguiente paso en un trayecto de siete años en el que Bank of America ha incursionado en la computación en la nube para mejorar la seguridad y privacidad de sus clientes mientras crean una solución adaptada al mercado para organizaciones financieras.

¿Por qué es la computación en la nube tan importante en el sector financiero? Porque cada vez más transacciones, especialmente las de larga escala son digitales, por lo que hay una necesidad fundamental: que la plataforma del proveedor de servicios financieros pueda mantener la data segura, prevenir filtraciones de datos y transferir la información rápidamente, y todos estos procesos se ven beneficiados por la tecnología en la nube.

Aún así, muchas personas no consideran que la tecnología en la nube sea segura. Por ejemplo, Capital One tuvo una filtración de datos masiva a principios de año, lo que llevo a muchos a cuestionar si la tecnología de nube proveída por un tercero era lo suficientemente segura para los bancos. Este acuerdo pretende dar respuesta ofreciendo una nube adaptada a la industria financiera y sus particularidades

“Esta nube pública para servicios financieros ha sido diseñada para atender los requerimientos de las instituciones financieras para el cumplimiento de protocolos de seguridad y las regulaciones. Esto ayudará a las instituciones financieras a trabajar con proveedores tecnológicos que cumplan con los requerimientos de las plataformas. Es la única plataforma de nube específicamente diseñada para la industria que puede proveer los controles necesarios para las cargas regulatorias de los servicios financieros y una seguridad proactiva y automatizada, aprovechando los niveles más altos de encriptación y certificación de la industria,” dijo IBM en un comunicado.

La nube de IBM permitirá a los proveedores de ISV y SaaS enfocarse en sus productos clave para organizaciones financieras, puesto que no tienen que preocuparse de seguridad o controles, que son manejados desde la nube.

“Esta es una de las colaboraciones más importantes en la tecnología de nube para la industria de servicios financieros. Esta plataforma de primer nivel permitirá a Bank of America usar la nube pública, colocando en primer lugar la seguridad de datos, la privacidad y seguridad de la información de los clientes,” dijo Cathy Bessant, Oficial en Jefe de Operaciones y Tecnología de Bank of America.

Este acuerdo abre un nuevo espacio para la computación en la nube ya que definitivamente no será el último. Permitirá a las organizaciones financieras tener la oportunidad de evaluar y cumplir con los estándares de seguridad que requieren.

Big data Sector Bancario

¿Por qué la big data es el futuro del sector bancario? El caso de Wells Fargo

Conforme más transacciones económicas se digitalizan, los bancos y proveedores de servicios financieros no pueden quedarse atrás. Pero con una mayor tecnología y optimización de procesos también viene una mayor responsabilidad en términos de seguridad. Sin embargo, el análisis de datos puede ayudar al sector bancario a ofrecer mejores resultados en inversiones y otras áreas. Acá te diremos por qué muchos bancos están usando big data, partiendo de un caso exitoso en particular: Wells Fargo.

Primero lo primero

La big data y el análisis de datos son los canales de innovación más vitales en la industria bancaria. ¿Por qué? Porque traen consigo posibilidades infinitas: puede mejorar la experiencia del cliente personalizándola; mejora la eficiencia del servicio y colabora en la toma de decisiones fundamentales para la empresa. En un mercado como el actual, ante el riesgo de la volatilidad y aumento de costos, las empresas pueden usar el análisis de datos para adquirir un mejor conocimiento del mercado y para sus necesidades particulares.

Pero, en general, necesitan de terceros. Compañías del sector financiero suelen tener dificultades sobre cómo analizar la data que manejan y su desempeño. Por esto, la big data responde a tres asuntos fundamentales a los que se enfrentan dichas compañías: las ayuda a optimizar procesos internos; mejora su ciberseguridad y, por lo tanto, reduce riesgos; y provee una mejor visibilidad de las operaciones diarias. Esto significa que usar big data les ayuda a tomar nota del comportamiento de sus clientes y predecir las mejores opciones para ellos para proveerles de soluciones personalizadas.

¿Cómo ha usado Wells Fargo la big data?

Wells Fargo es el cuarto banco más grande del mundo y pasó por un proceso de cambio masivo el año pasado. Se transformó la manera en la que el banco hacía uso de su data, centralizándola. El banco hizo esto para mejorar su eficiencia procedimental, mejorar las experiencias de los consumidores y cumplir con los complejos requisitos regulatorios que suelen enfrentar las compañías financieras.

El plan era inicialmente para tres años, pero apenas después de un año de implementarlo, el banco está viendo resultados. Están usando la data para predecir futuras amenazas, mitigar los riesgos y personalizar la experiencia del consumidor. Usan inteligencia artificial para personalizar la experiencia de los consumidores y usan algoritmos de machine learning para obtener una mejor compresión de las interacciones de los clientes con la plataforma del banco. Además, tanto la inteligencia artificial como el machine learning están siendo usados para mejorar la detección de riesgos y fraude y para el cumplimiento de regulaciones.

Regularmente la data se encuentra regada por distintas plataformas y ambientes en una organización. Lo que pretende Wells Fargo es organizarla y ponerla en un mismo lugar (centralizarla) para controlarla de forma estandarizada, eficiente y segura.

¿Cuáles son los planes de Wells Fargo para los próximos dos años en lo referente a inteligencia artificial y machine learning? Estandarizar y automatizar la mayoría de sus procesos de modelación para seguir aprovechando la big data en la compañía.
En conclusión, Wells Fargo es el mejor caso de cómo una estrategia concertada de análisis de big data puede ayudar a una compañía a mejorar sus procesos y optimizar la experiencia de sus clientes con inteligencia artificial y machine learning.

What about Walmart’s e-commerce strategy?

Walmart’s e-commerce strategy has been widely perceived as a successful one, but it hasn’t been able to get even close to e-commerce mammoth, Amazon. Specialists agree that one major issue is that Walmart’s e-commerce is based mostly on groceries. Similarly, there’s one key issue that the company needs to address: the clash between physical sales and e-commerce.

Here we’ll go through the challenges Walmart is facing in its e-commerce strategy and what is it doing to overcome them.

Leaving the comfort zone

Walmart saw a 41 % e-commerce growth in the third quarter of the year, which was the best quarter of the year for them. Most of it came from groceries.

Even as these are good results, there’s a need to do better. GlobalData Retail noticed that the company saw a 5.4 % operative income decline.

How to improve the outcomes? By raising e-commerce sales in non-groceries. The company says it will focus on two areas to improve sales: home and fashion as they have the best potential for the retail mammoth to get new clients. The greatest burden Walmart faces is how people see it.

Most casual customers only see Walmart as a place to buy groceries and cheap products, but don’t see it as a place where they can find quality.

Still, results are generally positive and the company seems to go the right way to overcome them.

Which brings us to our next issue…

The clash between cultures

Walmart has kept its physical and e-commerce operations separate which has created power struggles between managers at both sides of the company. This is a clear issue to address.

Doug McMilllon, CEO of Walmart is attempting to turn the company into an “omnichannel retailer,” a way to say they’re trying to integrate both areas in such a way they can please customers whenever, wherever, and whoever they shop: they key is to offer a seamless experience for customers.

This is key for Walmart as Amazon takes 40 % of all e-commerce money in the US and is starting to move to take Walmart’s spot as top grocery e-commerce provider and Target’s strategy of opening smaller stores in large, urban areas, is bringing results. Smaller competitors such as Dollar General and Aldi are offering lower prices than Walmart. This means the retail giant is taking heavy fire on all fronts.

The good news? They’re holding on. The bad news? They have to adapt to keep it so.

Part of it is integrating both businesses into one, standardized strategy to offer a top-notch experience for clients. These processes are usually tough but necessary as any successful company must innovate and change constantly. It’s harmonizing two different mindsets: physical merchants prioritize profit per item while online merchants focus on giving the most precise product listing details.

In conclusion, Walmart is facing some serious challenges in its e-commerce strategy. We can’t say they’re not being successful because numbers say otherwise, but there are areas for improvement. Strong leadership is necessary to lead the company through the profound cultural changes it has to go through. Also, it’s needed so the company can change its image and increase its non-grocery sales.