Data Mining Techniques and How Businesses Implement Them

Data Mining Techniques and How

Businesses have more data than ever in contemporary times because of rapidly evolving technology. Data is one of the most valuable resources available to any business or entrepreneur. Businesses today are overflowing with data from a wide range of sources, including websites, mobile devices, social media, and other digital channels, but they don’t know where to start.


It doesn't matter if you have massive data; what matters is what you do with it. This is where data mining comes into play. Turning unstructured data into insights helps companies accomplish their goals and improvement strategy for the future. These days, data mining techniques are widely used by organizations from different industries.

“With data collection, ‘the sooner the better’ is always the best answer.”

- Marissa Mayer, Ex-CEO of Yahoo!

Let’s explore some of the top data mining techniques used by businesses.


What are the Must-Have Data Mining Techniques?

Data mining is a successful process that uses a variety of data mining approaches. The problem is determining which data mining techniques are most appropriate for your situation and business. Even though many data mining techniques are often required to uncover insights hidden inside massive datasets, it's wise to use more than one.


Data Cleaning

When it comes to data mining, data cleaning is a must-have approach. For raw data to be used for various sorts of analytical techniques, it must first be cleaned, formatted, and analyzed. This data mining technique is used in data modeling, transformation, aggregation, and migration processes.


Clustering Analysis

Clustering analysis is the recognition and clustering of related data from an big data collection. Clustering analysis can assist an organization in evaluating the differences and similarities in data from the perspective of a company. This can help them develop customer personas, similar segment leads, and others.


Association Rule Discovery

This is a technique for discovering interesting connections and interdependencies among variables in big datasets. This data mining technique can help decipher hidden data patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. Association rule discovery a term that's frequently used in machine learning.


Classification Analysis

The technique of extracting information about the data is called classification analysis. It is the most complicated data mining technique. Data classification involves splitting data into categories that have similarities in their context. As a result, classification analysis is useful in combination with clustering analysis. The structure or recognition of the data is known as classification.


Data Visualization

Data visualization uses real-time graphs and charts to provide users with extra insights into their data and help them better grasp performance targets. Data visualization is a popular data mining technique because it can get data from any source, such as file uploads, database queries, and application connections.


Top Industries Using Data Mining

Data mining in business can help you manage risk by detecting fraud, errors, and discrepancies that can result in revenue loss and reputation damage. Data mining is used in various industries to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and businesses. Many brands in various industries perfectly portray how data mining is used in business.


Finance and Banking

Using data mining approaches, financial organizations gather information about loans and credit reports. Financial institutions can evaluate if a lender has a good or bad credit score by using an analysis model based on historical financial data. Banks can also keep a watch on suspicious or fraudulent transactions with the help of data mining techniques.


E-commerce

E-commerce platforms are among the most well-known examples of data mining and business analytics. Many e-commerce websites utilize data mining and business intelligence to provide cross-sells and up-sells. Amazon is, of course, one of the most popular users of data mining and business intelligence.


Retail

Customers are segmented into 'recency, frequency, and monetary' (RFM) categories by retailers, focusing on marketing to those segments. A consumer who spends little but frequently and recently will be treated differently from one who spends a lot just once, which was some time ago. Loyalty, up-sell, and cross-sell offers may be made to the frequent buyer, while the big spender may provide a win-back deal.


Top 3 Companies Leveraging Data Mining Techniques

Businesses use data mining to boost revenue, save expenses, locate consumers, improve customer experience, listen to what others have to say, and conduct competitive intelligence. These are just a few ways of using data mining techniques.
Here are the top three examples of data mining in business.


Amazon

Amazon is gathering competitive intelligence and pricing data from its competitors. Consumers who use the Amazon Price Check Mobile App to scan items in-store, capture an image of the product, or do a text search to find the best price will get a $5 discount. The application also encourages customers to report the in-store price.


Netflix

House of Cards – the American thriller series was an ideal entertainment experience for creating data models and discovering what makes a show or movie successful among viewers based on the insights data gathered. They went all out for the license, winning a bidding battle with rival businesses and instantly scheduling two seasons before presenting a single episode. It was a super hit, and the best thing is that they had a pretty good idea of what it would be.


Walmart

The current search engine of Walmart contains semantic data. Polaris, an in-house platform, uses text analysis, machine learning, and even synonym mining to provide relevant search results. Walmart says that integrating semantic search has led to a 10% to 15% increase in the number of people who buy things online.


Conclusion

Data mining's ultimate significance for data-driven growth and progress cannot be overstated. Using the right data mining technique will give you unparalleled insight into your massive data. Data mining will only get better as technology improves, which will allow for more in-depth analysis.


FAQ


What are the 3 types of data mining?

Pictorial data mining, text mining, social media mining, online mining, and audio and video mining are only a few examples of data mining.


What are the 6 processes of data mining?

Data mining is both an analytical process and a collection of algorithms and models. The CRISP-DM process model has been broken down, just like the CIA Intelligence Process. These parts are business understanding, data understanding, data preparation, modeling, evaluation, and deployment.


What are the most commonly used data mining processes?

Clustering, data cleansing, association, data warehousing, machine learning, data visualization, classification, neural networks, and prediction are just a few of the important data mining techniques to consider when starting out in the industry.

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Taking a qualitative approach to a data-driven market

Article | March 31, 2022

While digital transformation is proving to have many benefits for businesses, what is perhaps the most significant, is the vast amount of data there is available. And now, with an increasing number of businesses turning their focus to online, there is even more to be collected on competitors and markets than ever before. Having all this information to hand may seem like any business owner’s dream, as they can now make insightful and informed commercial decisions based on what others are doing, what customers want and where markets are heading. But according to Nate Burke, CEO of Diginius, a propriety software and solutions provider for ecommerce businesses, data should not be all a company relies upon when making important decisions. Instead, there is a line to be drawn on where data is required and where human expertise and judgement can provide greater value. Undeniably, the power of data is unmatched. With an abundance of data collection opportunities available online, and with an increasing number of businesses taking them, the potential and value of such information is richer than ever before. And businesses are benefiting. Particularly where data concerns customer behaviour and market patterns. For instance, over the recent Christmas period, data was clearly suggesting a preference for ecommerce, with marketplaces such as Amazon leading the way due to greater convenience and price advantages. Businesses that recognised and understood the trend could better prepare for the digital shopping season, placing greater emphasis on their online marketing tactics to encourage purchases and allocating resources to ensure product availability and on-time delivery. While on the other hand, businesses who ignored, or simply did not utilise the information available to them, would have been left with overstocked shops and now, out of season items that would have to be heavily discounted or worse, disposed of. Similarly, search and sales data can be used to understand changing consumer needs, and consequently, what items businesses should be ordering, manufacturing, marketing and selling for the best returns. For instance, understandably, in 2020, DIY was at its peak, with increases in searches for “DIY facemasks”, “DIY decking” and “DIY garden ideas”. For those who had recognised the trend early on, they had the chance to shift their offerings and marketing in accordance, in turn really reaping the rewards. So, paying attention to data certainly does pay off. And thanks to smarter and more sophisticated ways of collecting data online, such as cookies, and through AI and machine learning technologies, the value and use of such information is only likely to increase. The future, therefore, looks bright. But even with all this potential at our fingertips, there are a number of issues businesses may face if their approach relies entirely on a data and insight-driven approach. Just like disregarding its power and potential can be damaging, so can using it as the sole basis upon which important decisions are based. Human error While the value of data for understanding the market and consumer patterns is undeniable, its value is only as rich as the quality of data being inputted. So, if businesses are collecting and analysing their data on their own activity, and then using this to draw meaningful insight, there should be strong focus on the data gathering phase, with attention given to what needs to be collected, why it should be collected, how it will be collected, and whether in fact this is an accurate representation of what it is you are trying to monitor or measure. Human error can become an issue when this is done by individuals or teams who do not completely understand the numbers and patterns they are seeing. There is also an obstacle presented when there are various channels and platforms which are generating leads or sales for the business. In this case, any omission can skew results and provide an inaccurate picture. So, when used in decision making, there is the possibility of ineffective and unsuccessful changes. But while data gathering becomes more and more autonomous, the possibility of human error is lessened. Although, this may add fuel to the next issue. Drawing a line The benefits of data and insights are clear, particularly as the tasks of collection and analysis become less of a burden for businesses and their people thanks to automation and AI advancements. But due to how effortless data collection and analysis is becoming, we can only expect more businesses to be doing it, meaning its ability to offer each individual company something unique is also being lessened. So, businesses need to look elsewhere for their edge. And interestingly, this is where a line should be drawn and human judgement should be used in order to set them apart from the competition and differentiate from what everyone else is doing. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. Your business is unique for a number of reasons, but mainly because of the brand, its values, reputation and perceptions of the services you are upheld by. And it’s usually these aspects that encourage consumers to choose your business rather than a competitor. But often, these intangible aspects are much more difficult to measure and monitor through data collection and analysis, especially in the autonomous, number-driven format that many platforms utilise. Here then, there is a great case for businesses to use their own judgements, expertise and experiences to determine what works well and what does not. For instance, you can begin to determine consumer perceptions towards a change in your product or services, which quantitative data may not be able to pick up until much later when sales figures begin to rise or fall. And while the data will eventually pick it up, it might not necessarily be able to help you decide on what an appropriate alternative solution may be, should the latter occur. Human judgement, however, can listen to and understand qualitative feedback and consumer sentiments which can often provide much more meaningful insights for businesses to base their decisions on. So, when it comes to competitor analysis, using insights generated from figure-based data sets and performance metrics is key to ensuring you are doing the same as the competition. But if you are looking to get ahead, you may want to consider taking a human approach too.

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A Tale of Two Data-Centric Services

Article | May 2, 2023

The acronym DMaaS can refer to two related but separate things: data center management-as-a-service referred to here by its other acronym, DCMaaS and data management-as-a-service. The former looks at infrastructure-level questions such as optimization of data flows in a cloud service, the latter refers to master data management and data preparation as applied to federated cloud services.DCMaaS has been under development for some years; DMaaS is slightly younger and is a product of the growing interest in machine learning and big data analytics, along with increasing concern over privacy, security, and compliance in a cloud environment.DMaaS responds to a developing concern over data quality in machine learning due to the large amount of data that must be used for training and the inherent dangers posed by divergence in data structure from multiple sources. To use the rapidly growing array of cloud data, including public cloud information and corporate internal information from hybrid clouds, you must aggregate data in a normalized way so it can be available for model training and processing with ML algorithms. As data volumes and data diversity increase, this becomes increasingly difficult.

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How Should Data Science Teams Deal with Operational Tasks?

Article | April 13, 2023

Introduction There are many articles explaining advanced methods on AI, Machine Learning or Reinforcement Learning. Yet, when it comes to real life, data scientists often have to deal with smaller, operational tasks, that are not necessarily at the edge of science, such as building simple SQL queries to generate lists of email addresses to target for CRM campaigns. In theory, these tasks should be assigned to someone more suited, such as Business Analysts or Data Analysts, but it is not always the case that the company has people dedicated specifically to those tasks, especially if it’s a smaller structure. In some cases, these activities might consume so much of our time that we don’t have much left for the stuff that matters, and might end up doing a less than optimal work in both. That said, how should we deal with those tasks? In one hand, not only we usually don’t like doing operational tasks, but they are also a bad use of an expensive professional. On the other hand, someone has to do them, and not everyone has the necessary SQL knowledge for it. Let’s see some ways in which you can deal with them in order to optimize your team’s time. Reduce The first and most obvious way of doing less operational tasks is by simply refusing to do them. I know it sounds harsh, and it might be impractical depending on your company and its hierarchy, but it’s worth trying it in some cases. By “refusing”, I mean questioning if that task is really necessary, and trying to find best ways of doing it. Let’s say that every month you have to prepare 3 different reports, for different areas, that contain similar information. You have managed to automate the SQL queries, but you still have to double check the results and eventually add/remove some information upon the user’s request or change something in the charts layout. In this example, you could see if all of the 3 different reports are necessary, or if you could adapt them so they become one report that you send to the 3 different users. Anyways, think of ways through which you can reduce the necessary time for those tasks or, ideally, stop performing them at all. Empower Sometimes it can pay to take the time to empower your users to perform some of those tasks themselves. If there is a specific team that demands most of the operational tasks, try encouraging them to use no-code tools, putting it in a way that they fell they will be more autonomous. You can either use already existing solutions or develop them in-house (this could be a great learning opportunity to develop your data scientists’ app-building skills). Automate If you notice it’s a task that you can’t get rid of and can’t delegate, then try to automate it as much as possible. For reports, try to migrate them to a data visualization tool such as Tableau or Google Data Studio and synchronize them with your database. If it’s related to ad hoc requests, try to make your SQL queries as flexible as possible, with variable dates and names, so that you don’t have to re-write them every time. Organize Especially when you are a manager, you have to prioritize, so you and your team don’t get drowned in the endless operational tasks. In order to do this, set aside one or two days in your week which you will assign to that kind of work, and don’t look at it in the remaining 3–4 days. To achieve this, you will have to adapt your workload by following the previous steps and also manage expectations by taking this smaller amount of work hours when setting deadlines. This also means explaining the paradigm shift to your internal clients, so they can adapt to these new deadlines. This step might require some internal politics, negotiating with your superiors and with other departments. Conclusion Once you have mapped all your operational activities, you start by eliminating as much as possible from your pipeline, first by getting rid of unnecessary activities for good, then by delegating them to the teams that request them. Then, whatever is left for you to do, you automate and organize, to make sure you are making time for the relevant work your team has to do. This way you make sure expensive employees’ time is being well spent, maximizing company’s profit.

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Enhance Your Customer Experience with Data-Centric AI

Article | July 15, 2022

Data-centric AI is a unique approach to machine learning that depends on the data scientist to design the complete pipeline from data purification and intake through model training. There is no need for a detailed understanding of AI algorithms in this method; instead, it is all about the data. The principle behind data-centric AI is simple: rather than training an algorithm first and then cleaning up the dirty dataset, begin with clean data and train an algorithm on that dataset. Why Is It Necessary to Centralize Datasets? A consolidated data platform can be utilized to produce a single source of truth, therefore simplifying and assuring accuracy. When a team concentrates on continual improvement, wasted time and resources are reduced. You can improve optimization by centralizing data. This is due to the increased opportunity for your team to enhance procedures and make better judgments. The capacity to exploit a single platform that promotes constant improvement in processes, products and operationalization models is provided by centralizing data. Data-Centric AI for Personalized Customer Experience Data-centric AI connects your data and analytics. It's used to detect common habits and preferences, tailor marketing campaigns, provide better suggestions, and much more. Data-Centric AI is being used to evaluate various types of data in order to assist organizations in making quicker, more efficient choices. It can be used to analyze client behavior and trends across several channels in order to provide personalized experiences. It enables applications and websites to adjust the information that individuals view according to their preferences, as well as advertisers to target specific consumers with tailored offers. What Will the Future of Data-Centric AI Look Like? Data-centric AI strives to provide a systematic approach to a wide range of domains, including product design and user experience. Data-centric AI is a systematic technique and technology that enables engineers and other data scientists to employ machine learning models in their own data studies. Moreover, the goal of data-centric AI is to build best practices that make data analysis approaches less expensive and easier for businesses to implement effortlessly.

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Marketelligent provides data analytics-based consulting and outsourcing services that help you make smarter business decisions. The firm is backed by senior professionals with rich experience across Consumer focused industries - Consumer Finance, Consumer Packaged Goods,..

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Snowflake Accelerates How Users Build Next Generation Apps and Machine Learning Models in the Data Cloud

Business Wire | November 03, 2023

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, today announced at its Snowday 2023 event new advancements that make it easier for developers to build machine learning (ML) models and full-stack apps in the Data Cloud. Snowflake is enhancing its Python capabilities through Snowpark to boost productivity, increase collaboration, and ultimately speed up end-to-end AI and ML workflows. In addition, with support for containerized workloads and expanded DevOps capabilities, developers can now accelerate development and run apps — all within Snowflake's secure and fully managed infrastructure. “The rise of generative AI has made organizations’ most valuable asset, their data, even more indispensable. Snowflake is making it easier for developers to put that data to work so they can build powerful end-to-end machine learning models and full-stack apps natively in the Data Cloud,” said Prasanna Krishnan, Senior Director of Product Management, Snowflake. “With Snowflake Marketplace as the first cross-cloud marketplace for data and apps in the industry, customers can quickly and securely productionize what they’ve built to global end users, unlocking increased monetization, discoverability, and usage.” Developers Gain Robust and Familiar Functionality for End-to-End Machine Learning Snowflake is continuing to invest in Snowpark as its secure deployment and processing of non-SQL code, with over 35% of Snowflake customers using Snowpark on a weekly basis (as of September 2023). 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Users can implement popular AI and ML frameworks natively on data in Snowflake, without having to create stored procedures. Snowpark ML Operations Enhancements: The Snowpark Model Registry (public preview soon) now builds on a native Snowflake model entity and enables the scalable, secure deployment and management of models in Snowflake, including expanded support for deep learning models and open source large language models (LLMs) from Hugging Face. Snowflake is also providing developers with an integrated Snowflake Feature Store (private preview) that creates, stores, manages, and serves ML features for model training and inference. Endeavor, the global sports and entertainment company that includes the WME Agency, IMG & On Location, UFC, and more, relies on Snowflake’s Snowpark for Python capabilities to build and deploy ML models that create highly personalized experiences and apps for fan engagement. Snowpark serves as the driving force behind our end-to-end machine learning development, powering how we centralize and process data across our various entities, and then securely build and train models using that data to create hyper-personalized fan experiences at scale, said Saad Zaheer, VP of Data Science and Engineering, Endeavor. With Snowflake as our central data foundation bringing all of this development directly to our enterprise data, we can unlock even more ways to predict and forecast customer behavior to fuel our targeted sales and marketing engines. Snowflake Advances Developer Capabilities Across the App Lifecycle The Snowflake Native App Framework (general availability soon on AWS, public preview soon on Azure) now provides every organization with the necessary building blocks for app development, including distribution, operation, and monetization within Snowflake’s platform. Leading organizations are monetizing their Snowflake Native Apps through Snowflake Marketplace, with app listings more than doubling since Snowflake Summit 2023. This number is only growing as Snowflake continues to advance its developer capabilities across the app lifecycle so more organizations can unlock business impact. For example, Cybersyn, a data-service provider, is developing Snowflake Native Apps exclusively for Snowflake Marketplace, with more than 40 customers running over 5,000 queries with its Financial & Economic Essentials Native App since June 2022. In addition, LiveRamp, a data collaboration platform, has seen the number of customers deploying its Identity Resolution and Transcoding Snowflake Native App through Snowflake Marketplace increase by more than 80% since June 2022. 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Data Science

J.D. Power Acquires Autovista Group to Expand Automotive Data Portfolio

J.D. Power | September 18, 2023

J.D. Power, a prominent global leader in data analytics, has recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire Autovista Group, a renowned pan-European and Australian automotive data, analytics, and industry insights provider. This strategic acquisition complements J.D. Power's existing strengths in vehicle valuation and intricate vehicle specification data and analytics while significantly expanding its presence within the European and Australian automotive markets. This acquisition represents a crucial moment, as it delivers substantial value to the customers of both companies. It brings together Autovista Group's extensive European and Australian market intelligence with J.D. Power's market-leading predictive analytics, valuation data, and customer experience datasets. These complementary offerings will empower original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), insurers, dealers, and financing companies with a truly global perspective on critical industry trends. They will also provide the tools to accurately predict risk, capitalize on emerging trends, and align sales strategies with real-time market dynamics. Pete Cimmet, Chief Strategy Officer at J.D. Power, stated: The addition of Autovista Group broadens our global presence allowing us to serve our customers across key global markets including North America, Europe and Asia/Australia. We look forward to partnering with the Autovista team to launch innovative new products and pursue strategic add-on acquisitions in Europe and Australia. [Source: Business Wire] Autovista Group, through its five prominent brands—Autovista, Glass's, Eurotax, Schwacke, and Rødboka—standardizes and categorizes a multitude of technical attributes for nearly every vehicle manufactured in European and Australian markets. This comprehensive approach offers clients a 360-degree view of detailed vehicle data, which is invaluable for valuations, forecasts, and repair estimates. Furthermore, Autovista Group's robust analytical solutions and its team of seasoned experts are trusted by stakeholders across the automobile industry for their in-depth insights and benchmarks related to vehicle values, ownership, replacements, and repair costs. Under this agreement, Autovista Group's senior leadership, along with its 700 employees, will remain part of the organization, serving as J.D. Power's automotive data and analytics platform for Australia and Europe. Lindsey Roberts will continue to lead the team in her role as President of J.D. Power Europe, reporting to CEO Dave Habiger. Currently, Autovista Group is owned by Hayfin Capital Management, a prominent European alternative asset management firm. The anticipated closure of the Autovista Group acquisition is set for conclusion by the end of 2023, pending customary closing conditions and regulatory review and approval. For this transaction, RBC Capital Markets acted as the exclusive financial advisor, and Kirkland & Ellis provided legal counsel to J.D. Power. TD Cowen served as the exclusive financial advisor, with Macfarlanes, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and Mishcon de Reya acting as legal advisors to Autovista Group and Hayfin. About J.D. Power J.D. Power, a renowned consumer insights, advisory services, and data and analytics firm, has consistently spearheaded the use of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithmic modeling to illuminate the intricacies of consumer behavior for more than half a century. With a storied legacy of providing in-depth industry intelligence on customer interactions with brands and products, J.D. Power serves as the trusted leader for the world's preeminent enterprises, spanning diverse major sectors, profoundly influencing and refining their customer-centric strategies.

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Sigma and Connect&GO Redefine Data Analytics for Attraction Industry

Sigma Computing | November 07, 2023

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Data Science

Snowflake Accelerates How Users Build Next Generation Apps and Machine Learning Models in the Data Cloud

Business Wire | November 03, 2023

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, today announced at its Snowday 2023 event new advancements that make it easier for developers to build machine learning (ML) models and full-stack apps in the Data Cloud. Snowflake is enhancing its Python capabilities through Snowpark to boost productivity, increase collaboration, and ultimately speed up end-to-end AI and ML workflows. In addition, with support for containerized workloads and expanded DevOps capabilities, developers can now accelerate development and run apps — all within Snowflake's secure and fully managed infrastructure. “The rise of generative AI has made organizations’ most valuable asset, their data, even more indispensable. Snowflake is making it easier for developers to put that data to work so they can build powerful end-to-end machine learning models and full-stack apps natively in the Data Cloud,” said Prasanna Krishnan, Senior Director of Product Management, Snowflake. “With Snowflake Marketplace as the first cross-cloud marketplace for data and apps in the industry, customers can quickly and securely productionize what they’ve built to global end users, unlocking increased monetization, discoverability, and usage.” Developers Gain Robust and Familiar Functionality for End-to-End Machine Learning Snowflake is continuing to invest in Snowpark as its secure deployment and processing of non-SQL code, with over 35% of Snowflake customers using Snowpark on a weekly basis (as of September 2023). Developers increasingly look to Snowpark for complex ML model development and deployment, and Snowflake is introducing expanded functionality that makes Snowpark even more accessible and powerful for all Python developers. New advancements include: Snowflake Notebooks (private preview): Snowflake Notebooks are a new development interface that offers an interactive, cell-based programming environment for Python and SQL users to explore, process, and experiment with data in Snowpark. Snowflake’s built-in notebooks allow developers to write and execute code, train and deploy models using Snowpark ML, visualize results with Streamlit chart elements, and much more — all within Snowflake’s unified, secure platform. Snowpark ML Modeling API (general availability soon): Snowflake’s Snowpark ML Modeling API empowers developers and data scientists to scale out feature engineering and simplify model training for faster and more intuitive model development in Snowflake. Users can implement popular AI and ML frameworks natively on data in Snowflake, without having to create stored procedures. Snowpark ML Operations Enhancements: The Snowpark Model Registry (public preview soon) now builds on a native Snowflake model entity and enables the scalable, secure deployment and management of models in Snowflake, including expanded support for deep learning models and open source large language models (LLMs) from Hugging Face. Snowflake is also providing developers with an integrated Snowflake Feature Store (private preview) that creates, stores, manages, and serves ML features for model training and inference. Endeavor, the global sports and entertainment company that includes the WME Agency, IMG & On Location, UFC, and more, relies on Snowflake’s Snowpark for Python capabilities to build and deploy ML models that create highly personalized experiences and apps for fan engagement. Snowpark serves as the driving force behind our end-to-end machine learning development, powering how we centralize and process data across our various entities, and then securely build and train models using that data to create hyper-personalized fan experiences at scale, said Saad Zaheer, VP of Data Science and Engineering, Endeavor. With Snowflake as our central data foundation bringing all of this development directly to our enterprise data, we can unlock even more ways to predict and forecast customer behavior to fuel our targeted sales and marketing engines. Snowflake Advances Developer Capabilities Across the App Lifecycle The Snowflake Native App Framework (general availability soon on AWS, public preview soon on Azure) now provides every organization with the necessary building blocks for app development, including distribution, operation, and monetization within Snowflake’s platform. Leading organizations are monetizing their Snowflake Native Apps through Snowflake Marketplace, with app listings more than doubling since Snowflake Summit 2023. This number is only growing as Snowflake continues to advance its developer capabilities across the app lifecycle so more organizations can unlock business impact. For example, Cybersyn, a data-service provider, is developing Snowflake Native Apps exclusively for Snowflake Marketplace, with more than 40 customers running over 5,000 queries with its Financial & Economic Essentials Native App since June 2022. In addition, LiveRamp, a data collaboration platform, has seen the number of customers deploying its Identity Resolution and Transcoding Snowflake Native App through Snowflake Marketplace increase by more than 80% since June 2022. Lastly, SNP has been able to provide its customers with a 10x cost reduction in Snowflake data processing associated with SAP data ingestion, empowering them to drastically reduce data latency while improving SAP data availability in Snowflake through SNP’s Data Streaming for SAP - Snowflake Native App. With Snowpark Container Services (public preview soon in select AWS regions), developers can run any component of their app — from ML training, to LLMs, to an API, and more — without needing to move data or manage complex container-based infrastructure. Snowflake Automates DevOps for Apps, Data Pipelines, and Other Development Snowflake is giving developers new ways to automate key DevOps and observability capabilities across testing, deploying, monitoring, and operating their apps and data pipelines — so they can take them from idea to production faster. With Snowflake’s new Database Change Management (private preview soon) features, developers can code declaratively and easily templatize their work to manage Snowflake objects across multiple environments. The Database Change Management features serve as a single source of truth for object creation across various environments, using the common “configuration as code” pattern in DevOps to automatically provision and update Snowflake objects. Snowflake also unveiled a new Powered by Snowflake Funding Program, innovations that enable all users to securely tap into the power of generative AI with their enterprise data, enhancements to further eliminate data silos and strengthen Snowflake’s leading compliance and governance capabilities through Snowflake Horizon, and more at Snowday 2023.

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Data Science

J.D. Power Acquires Autovista Group to Expand Automotive Data Portfolio

J.D. Power | September 18, 2023

J.D. Power, a prominent global leader in data analytics, has recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire Autovista Group, a renowned pan-European and Australian automotive data, analytics, and industry insights provider. This strategic acquisition complements J.D. Power's existing strengths in vehicle valuation and intricate vehicle specification data and analytics while significantly expanding its presence within the European and Australian automotive markets. This acquisition represents a crucial moment, as it delivers substantial value to the customers of both companies. It brings together Autovista Group's extensive European and Australian market intelligence with J.D. Power's market-leading predictive analytics, valuation data, and customer experience datasets. These complementary offerings will empower original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), insurers, dealers, and financing companies with a truly global perspective on critical industry trends. They will also provide the tools to accurately predict risk, capitalize on emerging trends, and align sales strategies with real-time market dynamics. Pete Cimmet, Chief Strategy Officer at J.D. Power, stated: The addition of Autovista Group broadens our global presence allowing us to serve our customers across key global markets including North America, Europe and Asia/Australia. We look forward to partnering with the Autovista team to launch innovative new products and pursue strategic add-on acquisitions in Europe and Australia. [Source: Business Wire] Autovista Group, through its five prominent brands—Autovista, Glass's, Eurotax, Schwacke, and Rødboka—standardizes and categorizes a multitude of technical attributes for nearly every vehicle manufactured in European and Australian markets. This comprehensive approach offers clients a 360-degree view of detailed vehicle data, which is invaluable for valuations, forecasts, and repair estimates. Furthermore, Autovista Group's robust analytical solutions and its team of seasoned experts are trusted by stakeholders across the automobile industry for their in-depth insights and benchmarks related to vehicle values, ownership, replacements, and repair costs. Under this agreement, Autovista Group's senior leadership, along with its 700 employees, will remain part of the organization, serving as J.D. Power's automotive data and analytics platform for Australia and Europe. Lindsey Roberts will continue to lead the team in her role as President of J.D. Power Europe, reporting to CEO Dave Habiger. Currently, Autovista Group is owned by Hayfin Capital Management, a prominent European alternative asset management firm. The anticipated closure of the Autovista Group acquisition is set for conclusion by the end of 2023, pending customary closing conditions and regulatory review and approval. For this transaction, RBC Capital Markets acted as the exclusive financial advisor, and Kirkland & Ellis provided legal counsel to J.D. Power. TD Cowen served as the exclusive financial advisor, with Macfarlanes, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and Mishcon de Reya acting as legal advisors to Autovista Group and Hayfin. About J.D. Power J.D. Power, a renowned consumer insights, advisory services, and data and analytics firm, has consistently spearheaded the use of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithmic modeling to illuminate the intricacies of consumer behavior for more than half a century. With a storied legacy of providing in-depth industry intelligence on customer interactions with brands and products, J.D. Power serves as the trusted leader for the world's preeminent enterprises, spanning diverse major sectors, profoundly influencing and refining their customer-centric strategies.

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Big Data Management

Sigma and Connect&GO Redefine Data Analytics for Attraction Industry

Sigma Computing | November 07, 2023

Sigma and Connect&GO have recently introduced the new Connect&GO reporting tool, an advanced embedded analytics solution that empowers attractions worldwide to enhance operational efficiency, boost revenue, and evaluate their data in real-time. This no-code platform, a result of Sigma's cloud analytics expertise and Connect&GO's integrated technology, offers an intuitive and customizable dashboard for real-time data insights. It simplifies data analytics, reporting, and sharing, making it suitable for a wide range of attractions industry customers, including marketing, finance, and operations managers, as well as C-suite executives. The new Connect&GO reporting tool equips attractions industry customers with the ability to make informed decisions through customizable dashboards. Operators can effortlessly upload data sets, such as forecasts and projections from various systems, and compare them in real-time with actual data, including budgets. This live data and insights allow them to delve into the granular details of their business, enabling them to address day-to-day challenges, compare data sets, and plan for the future more accurately. These capabilities enable attractions to improve guest satisfaction, foster collaboration, ease the burden on engineering teams, and ultimately generate new revenue streams. For instance, park management can use better data to predict attendance, adjust staffing levels as needed, and ensure appropriate retail, food, and beverage inventory to enhance the guest experience. Sigma has rapidly established itself as a go-to cloud analytics platform, experiencing significant growth over the past years and earning numerous awards, including Snowflake BI Partner of the Year 2023. Sigma's success can be attributed to its mission of removing traditional barriers to data access and empowering business users to extract maximum value from live data without requiring technical expertise. Platform users can directly access and manage data stored in a cloud data warehouse without the involvement of a data team. With a familiar and intuitive interface, they can easily explore data and test different scenarios, gaining new insights and the context needed for decision-making. In contrast to legacy technology platforms that keep data isolated and operations disjointed, Connect&GO's cutting-edge solution, Konnect, is a fully integrated system that enables operators to oversee every aspect of their business seamlessly. This platform uniquely provides operators with real-time data, making it effortless to manage eCommerce, access control, point-of-sale, and cashless payments through proprietary Virtual Wallet technology. With its configurable interface and connected RFID wearables, Konnect enables operators to curate premium guest experiences that drive revenue and enhance engagement. About Sigma Computing Sigma Computing is a prominent cloud analytics solutions provider, offering business users seamless access to their cloud data warehouse for effortless exploration and insight gathering. With its intuitive spreadsheet-like interface, Sigma eliminates the need for coding or specialized training, enabling users to effortlessly navigate vast datasets, augment them with new information, and conduct real-time 'what if' analyses on billions of rows of data. About Connect&GO Connect&GO is a leading integrated technology and RFID solutions provider for the attractions industry. Its flexible operations management platform seamlessly integrates e-commerce, food & beverage, point-of-sale, access control, RFID, and cashless payments using its proprietary Virtual Wallet technology, consolidating all data in one place. The company helps drive revenue and maximize guest engagement with valuable real-time data insights. Connect&GO serves amusement and water parks, family entertainment centers, zoos & aquariums, and other attractions worldwide, integrating user-friendly wearable technology into extraordinary experiences.

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