to augment its machine data with structured data from relational databases. Traditionally, the data used in BI systems has been structured, which is well understood, according to Cummins. However, it was becoming increasingly important to find a way to form intelligence from the 95% of data which remains unstructured. “Using Splunk, we can harvest all of the data that we’re
generating from a plethora of sources,” explained Cummins. “We bring the whole lot in and don’t know what we need to ask, but we don’t need to know. Splunk is really about drilling down and looking for correlations.” “So if there was an issue on our website that caused
inconvenience to customers, we can see straight away if it was also going on in associated systems at the same time. Splunk is essentially the Google of machine data.” While traditionally, analysis tends to take place after the
event as it can be a time consuming task, Splunk can take over and deliver in real time. “We talk about intelligence, operational intelligence and
behavioural intelligence, well we need actionable intelligence and that’s the key here.” So Splunk enables John Lewis not only to pinpoint an issue, but to correlate it with anything else that may be going on at the same time and deliver an actionable result. “You’re getting straight to the root cause instead of wasting
time. The beauty of it is, before you had a tool like Splunk that pulls things together, data was all over the place and many people doing so many things with the same data, but doing it with different, inconsistent ways.” When John Lewis rolls out a new application or service,
the team is now able to monitor its health and performance using Splunk software and ensure smooth operations. Data is harvested centrally so everyone within the organisation is using the same tool. By creating a shared pool of knowledge, Splunk by
default fosters collaboration at John Lewis between the IT and business teams for the creation of dashboards going beyond the ‘click’ of an event to the correlation of entire projects and systems. For John Lewis, this new approach to data mining has been
helping the retailer’s people to solve problems that they didn’t necessarily know that they had. “The information that we’re discussing has always been
there, but we’re just shining a light on it. Let’s not think about log files as something that are a necessary evil, let’s look at them as the opportunity that they are.” Cummins added that Splunk has changed people’s perception of how log files might be viewed and used. “In a way, we’re raising the bar for IT. There’s so much
intelligence in there that the term ‘log files’ seems like an under representation of what it actually is. It’s actually what you need to give customers the experience they absolutely deserve.
www.retailtechnology.co.uk
Time to resist.
As a retailer, you’re under constant pressure. Falling demand. Taxes. Rent. Red tape. Labour costs. All squeezing the life out of what should be a fun and rewarding business.
This cannot go on. We believe retailers deserve to be rewarded for what they do, not be hampered by an increasing burden of regulation and costs.
Retail Directions speaks out in support of the retail industry. But, we also do something more tangible - we help by providing advanced software solutions and business advice. Many retailers have gained significant business advantage from our assistance. Their success is the best part of our reward.
Visit our website to see how Retail Directions can help to make your business easier and stronger.
T: 01332 813868 •
retaildirections.co.uk
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