In the past, most retailers could only dream of being able to understand what a customer really thought. But that is now not only possible, but also on display in the form of business intelligence tools from Microsoft at this week's Retail Realm 2016 in Las Vegas.

The conference offered several showcases of services from Microsoft's Cortana Intelligence Suite that allow users to discover insights in their data. The Cortana Intelligence services can be found on the Microsoft Azure portal.