| | July 2015 19The Predictive Value of Big Data in Retail ApplicationsSteve Van Till, President and CEO, Brivo SystemsAs interesting as Big Data can be for finding patterns in the past, its biggest promise for security lies in being able to predict the future. No, we're not talking about some sort of Minority Report dystopia where the state peers into your soul. Used correctly, Big Data analysis very often reveals emerging data patterns that can tip off the likelihood of an imminent problem. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to extracting value from Big Security Data, and that's true for predictive analytics capabilities as well. In this article, we'll take a somewhat futuristic look at what Big Data will be able to predict in retail applications.Reducing ShrinkThe retail industry is always looking for new tools to reduce shrinkage. Big Data solutions are already making huge advances in correlating Point of Sale (POS) data with video analytics to identify and reduce various forms of employee malfeasance at the cash register. This was probably one of the first applications to emerge because it's a tightly constrained, data-rich environment that makes analysis relatively straight forward. However, it tackles only one form of retail loss. There are many other problems in retail settings that require more subtle analysis across even larger data sets. Electronics retailers, for example, routinely lock up high-value goods in access-controlled cages to restrict who can handle these items and when. Biometric readers can increase the certainty of who has accessed the cage, and video cameras can provide visual verification. But in a busy store, let alone an entire chain, Steve Van TillWith Big Data it is possible to analyze access to inventory and POS sales data to scan for meaningful correlations in real timeCXO Insight
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