Big Data Applications - Big Data: Related Technologies, Challenges and Future Prospects - page 68

with a built-in seismograph in a mobile phone, so as to cope with Parkinson and
other nervous system diseases [ 57 ]. Many other mobile device applications aim to
acquire information through mobile devices, no matter how useful such information
is for future data analysis.

6.3 Key Applications

6.3.1 Application of Big Data in Enterprises

At present, big data mainly comes from and used in enterprises, while BI and OLAP
can be regarded as the predecessors of big data application. The application of big
data in enterprises can enhance their production efficiency and competitiveness in
many aspects. In particular, on marketing, with correlation analysis of big data,
enterprises can more accurately predict the behavior of consumers and mine new
business modes. On sales planning, after comparison of massive data, enterprises
can optimize their commodity prices. On operation, enterprises can improve their
operation efficiency and operation satisfaction, optimize the input of labor force,
accurately forecast personnel allocation requirements, avoid excess production
capacity, and reduce labor cost. On supply chain, using big data, enterprises may
conduct inventory optimization, logistic optimization, and supplier coordination,
etc., to mitigate the gap between supply and demand, control budgets, and improve
services.
In finance, the application of big data in enterprises has been rapidly developed.
For example, China Merchants Bank (CMB) utilizes data analysis to recognize
that such activities as “Multi-times score accumulation” and “score exchange in
shops,” are effective for attracting quality customers. By building a customer loss
early warning model, the bank can sell high-yield financial products to the top
20 % customers in loss ratio so as to retain them. As a result, the loss ratios
of customers with Gold Cards and Sunflower Cards have been reduced by 15 %
and 7 %, respectively. By analyzing customers' transaction records, potential small
and micro corporate customers can be effectively identified. By utilizing remote
banking and the cloud referral platform to implement cross-selling, considerable
performance gains were achieved.
Obviously, the most classic application is in e-commerce. Tens of thousands
of transactions are conducted in Taobao and the corresponding transaction time,
commodity prices, and purchase quantities are recorded every day. More important,
such information matches age, gender, address, and even hobbies and interests of
buyers and sellers. Data Cube of Taobao is a big data application on the Taobao plat-
form, through which, merchants can be ware of the macroscopic industrial status of
the Taobao platform, market conditions of their brands, and consumers' behaviors,
etc., and accordingly make production and inventory decisions. Meanwhile, more
consumers can purchase their favorite commodities with more preferable prices.