Technology is a great tool, but what does it mean if you have no customers? Rajesh Krishnan, senior product manager of personalization at AIMIA, Inc., is working with companies to improve customer loyalty. And the company has found ways to use Spark to help them do so.

During Spark Summit 2016 in San Francico, Krishnan spoke to John Walls and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team. Krishnan shared his journey of adopting Apache Spark in a step-by-step process, which his company is still working on.

Regional differences

London-based, Krishnan shared the differences between the Spark communities in the UK and the US. In the UK, Spark is still very new, and everyone is excited about learning how to switch from legacy-based applications to Spark-based applications.

In contrast in the US, more companies are further along in actually implementing Spark, so this week’s Spark Summit conference is rich with ideas.

The next level of targeting customers

As the technology upgrades, so too does the amount of data that can be learned and kept about any one consumer. Data about the location of a customer can tell you a great deal about them — not simply what store they are in, but what department they are lingering in within the store.

From that you could tell that they are looking for a white shirt, so maybe advertise a pair of jeans to match, Krishnan explained. Or if a customer likes a recipe on Facebook, show them ads for the ingredients. Caution is needed, however. “The most complex thing is understanding an individual,” Krishnan said. They change every day, and you have to update the algorithms constantly.

He advised companies to look toward the future and to stay in the fast lane. When you are in a stagnant place and want to go to next step, you need to think of where you are today and how to get there, he explained. As for Krishnan, the fast lane is taking it “to the next level and widening the gap” between his company and the company second in the ranking.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Spark Summit 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE