Mashups for Every Industry
Learn More About Enterprise Mashups
In addition to the 7 Mashups Every Company Must Have, mashups also have specific benefits for every industry. Here are some examples from some very different industries:
1. Transportation: Logistics Analysis Mashups.
Logistics companies operate sophisticated predictive analysis teams to coordinate supply and demand for their services. They need to coordinate capacity based on manufacturing schedules, market conditions, weather, and more. When they get it wrong, they drive around the country with empty trucks, or are forced to lease capacity from other providers, at the cost of corporate profits and customer service. Mashups can't solve the predictive analysis challenge but they are a great way to do post-mortem analysis. Create a mashup that polls data from prediction systems and compares it with data from real-time logistics systems. Bringing this data together, analysts can review performance and adjust their assumptions, making their analysis more accurate.
2. Financial Services: Risk Management Mashups.
Traditional risk modeling is a challenge since it provides an incomplete picture of true risk - there are just too many internal and external sources of data, and these systems are overly focused on capturing internal information. When key external data is missed, uncovered risk becomes a major issue. Mashups can't prevent the next sub-prime lending crisis but a risk management mashup can improve decision making by combining traditional risk scoring models and scores with external information such as economic and jobs data, supplemental payment histories not found on credit reports (such as rent payments), research on companies and individuals. Most importantly, mashups puts the power to configure the risk management information into the risk manager's hands himself -they no longer have to wait for IT to build yet another complex application that is outdated as soon as it’s completed.
3. Government & Defense: Intelligence Gathering Mashups.
Situational Awareness is critical in both the military and technology sectors, and mashups are a key tool to meet that need. Intelligence analysts want real-time dashboards of current situations in order to make the right decisions - but this information must be collected from many internal and external data sources, and presented in an easy-to-digest dashboard. There's no time for ETL, sophisticated data integration or complex processing - analysts want to see the data fast and make their own inferences. This is a great description of what a mashup is all about, and why the Defense Intelligence Agency recently built a desktop-like intelligence asset dashboard using mashup technology.
4. E-Commerce Retailers: Competitive Intelligence Mashups.
Every e-commerce manager knows that the e-tailing word is hyper-competitive, with price changes taking minutes and consumers using sophisticated scanning tools to move to the lowest priced sites. E-merchandisers need a near-instant snapshot of critical data - site traffic and performance statistics, competitive price and product mix, online ad spending, and consumer preferences, just to name a few. And they need it long before monthly internal reports or quarterly syndicated data. Every company with an e-presence can create a simple CI mashup that takes a competitor's top 10 seller list in a particular category and compares it to their own. Mashups can put the power right into the hands of the front-line merchandiser to ask and answer his own questions, and adjust the marketing mix faster.