How Big Data is Used in Retail Industry: Etsy

How Big Data is Used in Retail Industry: Etsy Big Data can be defined as the inability of traditional data architectures to efficiently handle the new datasets. Characteristics of Big Data that force new architectures are: 1. Volume: Size of dataset 2. Variety: Data from multiple sources 3. Velocity: Rate of flow 4. Variability: Change in other characteristics We all are aware of the 4 vs and they are considered as the core characteristics of Big Data. NIST perfectly explains these characteristics and further puts emphasis on needing a higher system architecture for higher performance. The system scaling is done using techniques called vertical and horizontal scaling. While researching definition of big data I realized most of the websites talk about the Vs of big data but none talk about how this is a full field but NIST explains us in detail about scaling and what it does. One thing to note is that this article was written in September of 2015 and since then a lot of things have changed and like any technology, big data is evolving and its definition and characteristics are evolving too. The four vs has evolved and are now there are seven vs which include [5] 5. Veracity: Refers to the completeness and accuracy of the data 6. Value: How much value does the data has 7. Visualization: The most important part where the processed data is presented so that readers can understand it. Big data has become a common name and it is being used in e-commerce for numerous ways. Big data is being used in e-commerce to give personalized buying experience to the customers. Using a customers browsing and buying habits to provide them with personalized recommendations can result in increased sales. We all aware of Amazon who provides their customers with Customers who bought this item also bought section which resulted in 30 percent increase in sales. Big data along with click-stream data can be used to monitor prices of products in real time and adjust the prices accordingly. Amazon uses different tools to monitor and adjust pricing of their own products accordingly. By this, they are making sure the customer gets the best price and no other competitor beats them with a lower price. Big data can also be used to send personalized offers which can be in form of emails or even pop-ups while they are trying to abandoned the cart. Etsy is an online e-commerce website which is a platform for selling handmade and vintage items. Most of the items they sell are handmade and made by individuals like you and me. Etsy was created back in 2005 in Brooklyn apartment by Rob Kalin, Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik in their Brooklyn apartment [Citation]. Within two years Etsy had nearly 450,000 registered users and generated $26 million in annual sales. After that Etsy went through many changes in their structure and two of the creators left the company and then the hired Chad Dickerson, senior director of product at Yahoo to lead the company. Dickerson was hired as the chief technology officer and he took the company in an upward direction and was given the position of CEO later on. In 2013 Dickerson proposed tweaking its Terms of Service and allowed selling of manufactured goods which were not taken positively by other sellers but in the end, it helped the company and boosted their sales and revenue. According to Venture Beat in 2013 Etsy sales grew from $895 million to $1.34 billion. And in 2014 the numbers went up 43 percent to a total of $1.93 billion. In 2015 Etsy had more than 1.5 million active sellers and debuted it IPO. Chart is taken from Marketingcharts.com In 2014 Etsy was number eight on top ten shopping websites and this shows us how big and how much market they share and had about 22 million buyers [citation]. According to Chris Bohn a Senior Data Engineer at Etsy and according to him they want to use big data to understand more about their customers which include both sellers and buyers. They would like to provide a rich and smooth experience and their end goal is buyers find their products easier and sellers be able to reach the right buyers. According to Bohn, they want to use Big Data, To know how people are different in their shopping habits across the geography of the world. Lets first start with what type of data architecture Etsy used to use and what changes they made for been able to change with the time and to accommodate big data analysis. Initially, Etsy used to use monolithic Postgres database which consisted of listings, users, sellers, buyers, conversations and forums. As the company grew and their user database grew so they had to shard horizontally. The front end was driven by PHP. Ross Snyder, a senior software engineer said: The sites uptime was not that great and regular maintenance windows and site deploys often dissolved into outages. This all lead to Etsy creating a middleware which would help with scaling the website performance and at the same time the middleware would decrease the number of SQL calls. Etsy named this middleware Sprouter which they planned on making open-source and using it for a long time but after using it for while they decided to abandon it as it required DBAs to write stored procedures for nearly every piece of si te functionality and created a bureaucracy developers had to go through to get functionality made. It was never open-sourced and was rest to death. Then they moved from Postgres to sharded MySQL databases. According to Synder the reason they used MySQL at that time was Flickr is using it on an enormous scale. It scales horizontally, basically, to near infinity, and theres no single point of failure-its all master to master replication. During this process, Etsy decided to do some analytics and copied the data from SQL back to a Postgres server which they called a BI server but what they did not realize is that they went back to the original thing they wanted to go away from and it was all back to zero. They also realized that Postgres is not the best option for performing analytic queries and it was really hard to get a huge amount of data into the database. Here Etsy unknowingly faced the Volume characteristic of the big data. They again started their hunt for finding an appropriate replacement and came across HP Enterprise Vertica. One of the first reason they selected HPE Vertica is because it derives from Postgres and it has a Berkeley license which can enable Etsy to take it private and make changes to the code accordingly and do not have to republish it to the community. Using hp Vertica boosted the efficiency of their queries by running them 50x-1000x faster. With Vertica, there is unlimited scalability and this is a great feature for Etsy as they were a growing company. Vertica also stores 10x to 30x more data per server and also has compression. Etsy at start faced a problem with outages mentioned before and Vertica can guarantee maximum uptime and eliminate failures. It is also an open architecture with support for Hadoop, R and other range of BI tools. Etsy used a data replication tool to copy the data over to Vertica used Verticas open architecture feature to build their internal tools for doing analytics on the data. The big data problem here was to prepare their database to be able to do some analytic work and use the data they have been collecting. With Vertica, Etsy was able to quickly and efficiently analyze 30 terabytes of data. Bohn says that the greatest benefits are accessibility and speed and that use of the tool has spread to all departments. The fact that queries that previously took many days to run, now run in minutes, provides a dramatic example of the level of incr eased productivity gained company-wide. Apart from all the amazon functionality, Vertica was able to save Etsy $80,000 a month by switching from amazon cloud. By using Vertica Etsy did not have to hire any new people as Vertica uses a lot of similarity with Postgres and their developers already had experience with it. Velocity It is the measure of how fast the data coming in and for Etsy, it been top ten websites for shopping it was generating a massive number of clicks which needed to be stored. Etsy wanted to use this data to figure out where their customers are clicking and at what point they are leaving the website. Etsy took it to next step and used this clickstream data and joined it with their data to find details about the customer and what their buying history was in the past. This is how Etsy can get some value out of the clickstream data as it is the just path of click what a consumer goes through. The second type of data that Etsy has is the transactional data which includes order values, the category of sales, purchase frequency, the amount paid and shipping preferences. Variety Etsy had clickstream data, data about sellers, buyers, forums, messages and lot of different types and before they used to use Postgres which is not ideal for handling the variety of data. But with Vertica, they now can store any variety of data. Volume When we talk about volume we are talking about an insanely large amount of data and in our case, Etsy already had 30 TB of data which needed to be transferred and stored. By entering the world of big data, the employees were able to do much more than before with very little time. The first result of this whole change was all employees started using it as getting results was much better and way faster than a traditional database. It was not that they were getting different results but the time from entering the query and getting the output was shortened. By adding Vertica Etsy was then able to get information in real time right away. This feature was used by them when they introduced postage on their website where sellers can use postage service provided by Etsy to ship their products. The engineers wanted to keep an eye on this feature and know how it is performing in real time which was made possible using Vertica. All the departments were able to use this functionality and the people from finance department said, Wow, I can run these financial reports that used to take days in literally seconds.. Within very short time Etsy had 200 Vertica accounts and had a total of 750 employees which shows us how much popular this new change was. One of the surprises which Etsy faced according to Chris Bohn is that when they installed Vertica they thought only their analysts would use but it was so easy and so popular that they had to buy more licenses for their users. Vertica was being used for many other ways such as for their internal dashboards, running financial reports and for testing too. The result of this project resulted in total revenue of $119 million for the first half of 2015, up 44% on the same period in 2014. The number of active buyers grew to 21.7 million and the number of active users grew to 1.5 million. Etsy is the go-to place for unique products and gifts. None of this would have been possible without their keen embracing of Big Data and analytics. This project was successful as not only it led to increase in revenue but it also led to change in companys culture. Generally, the change in culture leads to change in technology but at Etsy, the technology changed the way people did their job. According to Bohn This is technology that has driven the culture. Its really changed the way people do their job at Etsy. It really has been impactful. After this project, Etsy realized that they were spending too much on AWS and they can save that money by buying their own servers. Bohn said Wait a minute. This is crazy. We could actually buy our own servers. This is commodity hardware that this can run on, and we can run this in our own data center. We will get the data in faster because there are bigger pipes. Thats what Etsy did by creating Estydoop which has 200 plus nodes and they ended up saving a lot of money and it would not have been possible if they did not do the big data project. Another thing which Etsy realized is that the market was changing and now smartphones were becoming common and been used for e-commerce. Etsy was able to use big data to figure out what each customer on their smartphone doing on their website and used that data to find crossover points and to change things accordingly. By this way, Etsy was moving along with the developing technology and not been left behind. Citation [1] 5 Benefits of Big Data for E-Commerce Companies and Shoppers. SmartData Collective. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www.smartdatacollective.com/seanmallonbizdaquk/410001/5-benefits-big-data-e-commerce-companies-and-shoppers. [2] A brief history of Etsy, from 2005 Brooklyn launch to 2015 IPO. VentureBeat. March 05, 2015. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/05/a-brief-history-of-etsy-from-2005-brooklyn-launch-to-2015-ipo/. [3] Akter, Shahriar, and Samuel Fosso Wamba. Big data analytics in E-commerce: a systematic review and agenda for future research. SpringerLink. March 16, 2016. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-016-0219-0. [4] April 8, 2014 by MarketingCharts staff. Top 10 Shopping and Classifieds Websites #8211; March 2014. MarketingCharts. April 08, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www.marketingcharts.com/updates/top-10-shopping-and-classifieds-websites-march-2014-41856/. [5] Big Datas Role in Etsys Product Development. InfoQ. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://www.infoq.com/interviews/big-data-etsy-product-development. [6] How Etsy Uses Big Data for eCommerce to Put Buyers and Sellers in the Best Light. BriefingsDirect Transcripts. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www.briefingsdirecttranscriptsblogs.com/2016/04/how-etsy-uses-big-data-for-ecommerce-to.html. [7] Sean Gallagher Oct 3, 2011 1:59 pm UTC. When clever goes wrong: how Etsy overcame poor architectural choices. Ars Technica. October 03, 2011. [8] Accessed March 25, 2017. https://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/when-clever-goes-wrong-how-etsy-overcame-poor-architectural-choices/. [9] The biggest surprise Etsy encountered when applying HP Vertica to search | #HPBigData2014. SiliconANGLE. August 13, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2017. [10] http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/08/13/the-biggest-surprise-etsy-encountered-when-applying-hp-vertica-to-search-hpbigdata2014/. [11]The biggest surprise Etsy encountered when applying HP Vertica to search | #HPBigData2014. SiliconANGLE. August 13, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/08/13/the-biggest-surprise-etsy-encountered-when-applying-hp-vertica-to-search-hpbigdata2014/. [12] Vertica Advanced Analytics Offerings. Vertica Big Data SQL Analytics Platform Free Software Trials | Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software-solutions/advanced-sql-big-data-analytics/try-now.html. [13] What does Etsys architecture look like today? High Scalability -. High Scalability. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/3/23/what-does-etsys-architecture-look-like-today.html.

Introduction of Hospitality Industry

Introduction: During the technology improving, the world is becoming much smaller and more and more integrated; people are more willing and able to pay more time and money on travel and leisure. â€Å"According the World Tourism Organization, international tourism is expected to grow at an average of 4. 1 percent though 2020, ending with a total of 1. 6 billion tourists traveling worldwide. † [1] Therefore there are a lot of opportunities for the hospitality industry to improve.In these years, the hospitality industry had a huge improvement, and many top companies are looking for the new marketing in the emerging economies, such as Carlson, Hyatt, and Hilton. â€Å"Our Ambition 2015 strategy entails growing our hotel portfolio by at least 50 percent to reach over 1,500 hotels in operation by 2015. †[2] However, we are still facing many problems and difficulties in the different hotels, such as Human Resources management, guest satisfactions and food safety. Related article: Relationship Between Hospitality and Tourism IndustryIn this project, I am going to analysis the problem in the hotel and find the solutions for the problem which are based on the academic, then give the SWOT of my topic. I did my internship in Radisson Blu in China; position was F&B cross training, so my problem is based on my own real experiences. My problem is the lack of employees of the F&B Department. The solutions will link to the Human Resources, on the management skill side, that should be team work, time management and motivation.From the project, we will know the working process of the F&B Department, the guest’s satisfactions and how to motivate the employee and let them do the contributions to the hotel. Lack of employees is a general problem for the hotels, so the limit for the research is hard to find the special theory or method to solve the problem. Analysis the Problem: Hospitality is a huge industry. It is a high-growth projected for the glo bal hotel industry.Estimated 112,000,000 employees in the worldwide hospitality industry and this number will only grow. [3] In this situation, every hotel needs a big group of employees; therefore, the lack of employees is a general problem in the industry. Under the background of my experiences, in China, there are not a lot of people willing to join this industry. For the first reason, the wages are not really high. Secondly, cost a long period of time to get a good position. Thirdly, only a few of people did the rofessional education on the hospitality. In my hotel, lack of employees is a main problem, especially for the F&B Department. That causes we cannot make the guests 100% satisfaction, because nobody put the services into the details. Also, the division of labor is not clear also is the consequence. For example, one employee does the lobby bar work; in the meantime she also is a hostess. That means, if the guests are coming together, she is not going to take care both of them. That is a loophole in the work. SWOT Strengths |Weaknesses | |Employees have higher wages because there is a shortage in the |No detail, unique or particular services | |industry |No professional employees so no professional services | |Good environment to work | | |Opportunities | | |More jobs are offering | | |Many new companies and stages in the market | | Solution: The F&B should notice the HR to hire more employees and part- timers. For the employees, the HR and the F&B should work together, use the professional standard to do the particular training which is based on the weaknesses of the ———————– [1] American Hotel and Lodging Association [2] Carlson official website [3] International Labor Organization

Justification for an Internal Control System

Over the past years many organizations have fallen because of inadequate financial reporting and ineffective controls. To overcome this dilemma, the creation of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 requires corporations to take full control over its financial reporting and accounting by placing internal controls within its organization. Internal controls not only establish the foundation of reasonable assurance for meeting company objectives but also provide functions in achieving other objectives. These objectives are operational effectiveness and efficiency, relevant and reliable financial data, and verify law and regulation compliance. As a controller of this company one believes that internal controls are important for these areas to be successful. Although this business uses the insurance and portfolio approaches as controls to manage the association of risks with activities, one believes an internal control system would be more beneficial for this company. Current Approaches Insurance Approach Insurance is not as large as it can be for a company because it is a way of looking at the risk along with knowing that an acceptance of loss is present for a company. Companies basically carry insurance policies to prevent and cover large liabilities from natural disasters or accidents. Under this approach management is stating an acceptance of a loss is present for a company when insuring the company, assets, or its employees. For a company using this approach protection is the only gain in knowing the company has insurance to make a claim to replace or receive monies for the loss (McCarthy & Flynn, 2004, p. 75). However, the insurance approach is more of a tool for risk financing than a tool for risk management. This is because this approach is reactive in mitigating the impact of a loss rather than preventive in protecting the company from a loss. This approach can be beneficial for the company if a company can find affordable insurance with deductibles the company feels comfortable with. This is because the company would only be responsible for paying the deductible and the insurance company would pay the rest in the event of a catastrophic disaster. Portfolio Approach Unlike, the insurance approach the portfolio approach has more structure and complexity. This is because during the process of decision-making it gives more procedures and processes in making a decision (Thomas, 2002, para. 23). The main idea behind this approach is to maximize investments of a company while minimizing the risks of the company. Even though this approach organizes to an extent the decision-making process it does not provide protection assurance for the investment against risk. The portfolio approach is beneficial for a company when the company wants to measure the type of risk it wants to take on along with the likelihood of making a positive return on that risk. Internal Control System To an organization a vital component to risk management procedures is a reliable internal control system. This system helps regulate, reduce lost, and minimize risks along with accomplishing the organizational goals and success of a company (McCarthy & Flynn, 2004, p. 249). Benefits of an Internal Control System Generally the insurance approach is necessary for a company to overcome the risk of a loss. The portfolio approach is an effective approach but is more reactive than preventive. Even though a business may have insurance and portfolio approaches in place these approaches are not efficient and cost-effective enough to protect the company from risks like an internal control system can. Internal control systems are unlike the insurance and portfolio approaches because these systems are proactive tools in risk management. This type of system ensures the protection of company assets through a system of policies and procedures. In addition, this system establishes reliability in financial data along with establishes compliance with laws and regulations set forth from regulations like the SOX Act. These types of systems also help to improve internal and external communication processes within a company. Recommendation As a controller of this company, one recommends that management incorporates an internal control system into the company. This is because this system will be more beneficial to the company in the long-run than the current approaches the company already has in place. One believes an internal control system will help protect the company from uncertainties as well as ensuring the company is operating in proper accordance with its mission and goals. Justification for an Internal Control System The internal control system has been used since the company was in need of the system and until this day it has been working to its fullest potential. Internal control plays an important key in making sure that the accounting information, financial data, meeting the targets, and ensuring that the management policies are getting followed. There are two elements in making an internal control system successful. These elements are portfolio approaches and insurance. Even though they both help the internal controls, they are somewhat different.Portfolio approach is used in different ways, this helps make investments decisions easier. It also balances the risk against the routine of the company. When discussing portfolio management it is known that there are two types of management: active and passive. Active management can be only one manager or a team but regardless if it one or more. They all have the same idea in mind, which is to get a better market return and they do this by constant ly checking the funds portfolio. A passive management just checks the market index; it does not necessarily say that the passive management is less capable of doing its job.â€Å"Every company's risk management â€Å"solution† will be unique because the exposures and risk appetites all differ. The key is to have a reasonable under-standing of how each treatment option works, alone, and in combination with others, so that decisions are informed and results are less influenced by luck than by reason (McCarthy, Flynn, & Brownstein, 2004). The appetite for risk will always depend on the management team. We will need to understand every risk and think of the options before continuing. A great return is always good but a big loss will hurt more.Insurance is another element that was put in place with the internal controls. Insurance will protect the company in case of an error occurs. There can always be risks in a company, but it is the way we handle them, what is important. When they add insurance it is for a peace of mind, a company wants to be cover in case something did happen. Weather risks can happen anytime and any day. It can be challenging thinking best option for the business. Due to the fact that no one can know what will happen tomorrow but is it better to be protected. As the controller some of the aspects to look into is what do we need.There hasn’t been a tornado in this area for more than 50 years, the question to think is, and do we need tornado insurance? The company was built once but if a risk strikes, it would be really hard to restart the company without developing a financial plan. The company will continue to grow every day, and we need to keep that in mind with the insurance. When the insurance was first put in place, the management team covers everything they thought was needed. However, we may not need certain things that are currently been covered by the insurance. That is why it is very important to do a six month or even a year checkup on the insurance plan.As the controller of the company there are tasks to be completed such as compliance, reporting, budgets, analyzing, and goals. The internal controls help the company and especially the controller achieve all these tasks and stay up-to-date with them. Having internal controls can prevent any losses due to fraud and minimize the loss in assets. It also helps with everyday business activities and what to do in a situation in which a risk is encounter. For the previous reasons that were discuss the company’s success will be much better off having the internal controls with a combination of insurance and portfolio approaches.

Seetting and Acheiving Goals Essay - 949 Words

Marsden Dyson and Zack Canova 3/4/13 Adv. English 12 Mrs. Hornung Some people say that with dedication, persistence, and time people can accomplish any goal. Others say that people are limited in what they can accomplish and need to be realistic when setting goals. Shooting For the Stars Some people believe that dedication, persistence, and time people can accomplish any goal. Everyone should have goals when striving to achieve a specific task. Goal setting is used by top level athletes, successful business man, and achievers in all fields. A wise athlete once said, â€Å"Without time and effort put towards ones goal for the sport, you are nearly wasting your time and your teams time and you will never achieve ones goal for that†¦show more content†¦Dyson had realized in that spring season of soccer when he suffered another devastating concussion it was time to hang up the cleats and pursue his goal for his Green Jacket at the Masters. Marsden sat down with his swing coach to set up his objectives for his golf career. He realized he had a lot of work to do to reach that goal of winning a Green Jacket. Marsden’s father Jeff, had bought him a membership at Mattaponi Springs, where he would spend countless hours on the range an d around the greens. Dyson had a routine he would do every day; he would hit eight perfect shots with each club in his bag. The young man then would move on to the chipping surface, he hit fifty perfect shots that had to land within three feet of the pin. Whenever he had nothing to do, he would be on the range practicing, if he didn’t answer the phone and you needed him he was at the range working. He would put in dedication into his golf game twenty four seven. Dyson was finally recognized for his hard work when he got to play college golf at Hampden Sydney College. Marsden was still striving for that Green Jacket. When he was not in class or not at golf practice he was at the course hitting balls and perfecting his swing. On his way to earning that Green Jacket he had three NCAA Division 3 Championships at HSC. Most people said his hard was getting him so far