LAS VEGAS – In 2016, more data will be generated that year than in all of the years preceding it. That mountain of information can either overwhelm you or inspire you to scale its heights. Tuesday’s educational session, “Playing Catch-Up With Technology,” gave retailers more insights on that mountain of data.

“The world is increasingly digital. We’re actually building something that looks a lot like ‘The Matrix,’” said session speaker George Shaw, vice president of retail and development for RetailNext. “Our ethos is to bring online analytics to the brick-and-mortar retail world. So, the kinds of metrics and analytics that somebody like Amazon.com enjoys—we’re bringing the same kind of available data to brick-and-mortar retailers.”

Session speakers showed attendees how all of that data is being collected, and discussed the potential of using the information to track the behaviors of existing and potential customers. “The world is becoming increasingly ‘sensored,’ with sensors collecting huge amounts of data,” Shaw said. “Still, more data is collected through digital systems that range from automatic ticketing for parking to complex distribution systems.

“We’re generating more data every year than the year past just because of the increasing number of sensors,” he said. “This includes the ‘Internet of Things’ that people like to talk about, so each of those things generates information and that information is all being collected.

“When we start looking at giant data sets, that’s where the buzzword ‘big data’ comes in. The massive data mountains of information hold potential for brick-and-mortar retailers…that’s when we get into these engineering problems that we’ve never faced before, where we need these massive scalable systems, ways to manage these huge data sets.”