Ever wonder how much data is analyzed in real-time during an average business trip? Let's start with boarding passes. For a boarding pass to be generated, your itinerary must pass through a few massive databases—from ticketing to no-fly lists—before you get confirmation from whatever online booking system you use. You won’t make it to the departure gate without the help of big data.
Before you leave for the airport from chilly, drizzly London in November for a week of business meetings in Hong Kong, you'll probably check one of the many online weather services.
Maybe you like to use your cell phone for international calls while in Hong Kong. It’s only by applying advanced data management techniques to big data that wireless carriers are able to determine whether your device can use other networks in different regions. Can you imagine being dependent on public landlines on a business trip these days?
And when you check into your hotel and hand over your credit card for the first time at your destination, behind the scenes across the globe big data analytics are being run against your profile to determine the chance that this transaction is fraudulent. Once your card is approved, the hotel chain may automatically update its customer loyalty database with your latest visit’s data.
Yes, you could do all of these things before our current era of big data but they required you to interact with travel agents, newspaper weather sections and telephone operators.
Big data has simplified complexities in so many business processes we hardly notice any longer. It permits our rapidly emerging self-service economy. It’s not just our future. It’s our present.
This post was written by and previously appeared on the Business Innovation from SAP and is reprinted here with permission.
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