The history for insurance, railroads, manufacturing, retailing and services businesses is cyclical, bordering on cyclical growth during economic expansions.

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Retailing excludes most services, which are growing.

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The group has had mixed success in financial services and retailing, but Birla says he plans to keep investing behind them.

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Whether your business is media, financial services, retailing, B2B, or even non-profit, your director of analytics should be able to rattle off your key customer touch points, tell you the current strategies for measuring those touch points and let you know which touch points would most benefit from improvements in measurement.

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On a similar basis, the bounce-back it identifies is strongest in construction, scientific and technical services, hospitality and retailing.

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Other areas of high-tech are premised less on breakthrough innovations and more on the application of technology to massive new markets in retailing, advertising, media, financial services, education, publishing, communications, fashion and music.

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So after pioneering online retailing, Amazon has moved into selling all manner of goods including clothes, into providing cloud computing services, and now hardware to give users access to all sorts of media content.

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