Question # 1 What are the possible kinds of Big data can be leveraged?

Also
mention some of the decision’s areas where such Big data can be used?

Answer # 1 Primarily, there is 3 Stage path which identify source of Big data:

1. Customer need (Information gathering by customer regarding product)

2. Customer interaction with firm to gather information to make purchase
decision.
3. Customer purchase

New sources of data are available in each of these stages.

A) Point of sales data: POS data serves as a baseline for forecasting future
demand. POS system data can be best leveraged by integrating across
multiple selling channels to minimise the forecasting errors.

These systems serve as a ready reckoner for inventory warehouses & retailer to
access information availability.

B) In store path data: This data is primarily used to track in store customer
behaviour. This data helps to capture & analyse customers interactions with
various store elements before making their purchase decisions.

B.1 Traffic counter data: This data enables retailers to track information on how
many customers visited their stores at different times. Traffic data inform retailers
how effective is their store front & other store promotional programmes which are
attracting customers to step into their store.

By combining traffic data with sales data, a firm can learn effective utilisation of their
operational elements.
B.2.2 Path data: This data allows to track customer interaction with various In store
elements. This data helps to see trends between customer product interaction,
Customer behaviour & their decision-making process. This can effectively utilise for
demand forecasting.

Traditionally, this data is difficult to gather, however technologies, like RFID,

digitalization in modern era made it easy to capture this data.

Key Decision areas where Big data can be used presented as:

Supply Chain Forecasting

decision making

Big Data

Consumer Analysing supply

Behaviour Analytics chain responsiveness
Question # 2 Identify the technologies involved in capturing, storage & retrieval of
big data that is useful for supply chain decision making.

Internet/ user generated content: This data captures consumer behaviour trends
prior to store visit. The key idea is to understand the customer intent to product so
that it can be utilised in improvement of forecasting process.

Collection of this data is made easier these days, especially with the emergence of
social media. These firms interact with customer directly & captures the content for
further analysis.

Google Trends: These data trends explore customer search patterns for products in
order to improve supply chain efficiencies. Recent researches had proven that
Google trend indexes that helps to reduce forecast errors. The underlying premise is
that, smaller the forecast error, better is the supply chain performance.

Recent researches shown that Google trends can used to improve forecasting of
economic indicators as well.

Social Media: The growing stream of social media like facebook, twitter etc can
helps to generates data streams in order to provide forecast insights.

The premise is that, ore the people shares information on real time basis, helps to
analyse their decision making process.

Social media creates a lot of indices like customer sentiments, moods etc which can
be statistically analysed for better forecasting
Question # 3 What are some of the challenges in using Big data for supply chain
decision making?

Answer # 3 Following are the key challenges:

Integrating Big data into sales & operations process:

At a Strategic level, each firm must decide how much of Big data needs to be
incorporated in business decision making process. Integrating big data with supply
chain landscape is indeed emerging challenge for demand and supply chain
planning

Capturing Big data & connecting it to traditional SOP process:

Big data brings with it the potential to improve product forecasts and give interesting
insights into customer behaviors. However, these potential benefits come with
enormous practical challenges for demand planners.

The challenge, however, comes from dealing with the increased number of variables
and their ambiguous relationships.’

From Human judgement to data driven decisions:

Recent Studies of industry practices repeatedly proven that judgmental forecasts are
the norm and are based on ‘‘gut feelings.’’ Here, statistical forecasts are adjusted to
account for numerous factors that demand planners perceive as being difficult to
measure, including promotional activities, seasonal activities, demand risk, demand
and supply chain disruptions.

While human judgement has the potential to improve forecasts, experts often
introduce their own biases in the process.
Changing customer experiences:

The widespread use of connected devices such as smartphones or wearable

technologies are changing the in-store customer experience

From a customer’s perspective, smart devices are helpful for researching a product
(for example, looking for reviews), looking up a competitor’s price or even ordering a
competing product right from the store. While big data technologies have enabled
and enhanced the planning between channels, it still requires a significant amount of
coordination between channels (eCommerce, retail, etc.), in terms not only of tactical
planning, but also of shared strategic goals, performance measures, and incentives.
Indeed, forecasting omnichannel demand remains a viable area of enquiry.

Privacy, Bia & Discrimination:

Connected devices & sensors are constantly collecting significant amounts of data
on customers. Often, such data do not have any specific purpose.

In addition, the data are not anonymous often the identity of the consumer is linked
to the behaviour. Since the forecasting of consumer behaviour often warrants the
use of these private datasets, it raises significant issues of privacy and data integrity,
as well as bias and discrimination, as the ensuing discussion will show. These issues
are increasing in prominence,12 and the forecasting community needs to be actively
engaged in finding solutions.

Big data are also not immune to the typical problems faced by traditional datasets,
such as that of bias and representation in datasets. The device or sensor collecting
the data can introduce bias into the data.
Algorithm Ethics & Injustice:

Another major concern with Big data is that it is prone to biases by algorithms based
on demographic features have come to be known as ‘‘machine bias’’. Algorithms
sometimes generates information which doesn’t have practical relevance.