3 ways South Florida firms use Big Data

Here are some of the ways South Florida companies are using Big Data:

1. To improve customer service.
Citrix collects information about all of its tech support cases, Chief Information Officer Paul Martine said.
That helps the company measure how long it took to resolve a problem, which allows Citrix to zero in on ways to fix issues faster.
The key is to make sure employees store the data in a standard, consistent way — and then analyze it, Martine said.
“Collecting the information and keeping it stored and structured is great, but what value do you get out of it?” he said.

2. To understand health conditions.
Boca Raton-based Modernizing Medicine just landed a multimillion-dollar investment from IBM to continue using its Watson cognitive computer to sift through dermatology research.The electronic medical records company can also feed Watson de-identified patient data. That allows doctors to see what treatments are typically prescribed to similar patients, said Patric Edmondson, the company’s senior vice president of product development.

MDLive is building out a data warehouse that will help the company do things like analyze recorded patient-doctor interactions to see how a flu epidemic is spreading.
“Think of the Big Data opportunity,” Dennstedt said.

3. To help people find deals.
Miami-based mobile payments firm YellowPepper is testing a program where it keeps track of customer purchasing behavior, then sends them promotions when they’re walking past a store they might like.
However, YellowPepper Chief Technology Officer Alexander Sjogren said he worries that customers have become wary of Big Data.
For example, when Facebook recently introduced its peer-to-peer payment system, some users became uncomfortable. Sjogren wondered if people were OK with the website having not only their biographical information, likes and friends, but also their financial information.
“For us, it’s very important to be careful about Big Data,” Sjogren said.