Business Intelligence

I am enjoying the new BBC series "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and have been using it so often as a catch phrase in my work conversations that I couldn't resist sharing my experience at the F2009 conference earlier this month in the same context! If you haven't caught the show - where Andrew Lloyd Webber is searching for his next Maria for The Sound of Music - you are missing a treat.

AND if you missed the latest gathering for forecasting experts at F2009 earlier this month, I wanted to share a few tasty experiences. I'll keep you posted on the F2010 schedule so you can plan ahead. (Or so that you can forecast your 2010 conference attendance, pun totally intended.)

One of the interesting F2009 sessions featured Susie Fortier from Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada publishes all official statistics like labor, wages, retail wholesale, Gross Domestic Product, etc. for Canada.

Statistics Canada has several underlying objectives that have to be factored into the reporting of these important statistics - which include exposing the underlying math to the public so it is exactly reproducible, presenting several estimates or alternatives and stating all findings as conditional.

There are certain situations where the technique or philosophy you adopt to solve the problem could impact those objectives to provide the public with accurate, reproducible data. Statistics Canada is not formally in the business of forecasting but they have adopted an approach to addressing these situations for a consistent methodology to non-overlapping time series data.

Last week I was in meetings with my peers from around the globe that are experts in the fields of busines intelligence and analytics. I had a great time learning about how customers are using SAS analytics in Sweden, France and other parts of the world but also hearing about the cool software updates coming out that will provide customers NEW capabilities. The world of analytics is going mainstream into business processes and the fabric of organizations that want to make "Competing on Analytics" their reality. If you are energized at the thought of learning from leading analytics experts from fields such as data mining, forecasting, operational research and statistical analysis, then GET THEE to DENMARK July 1-2!

I've been away in London for a fantastic vacation and came back to focus some time on training with my peers in the SAS Global Analytics Network for the past week. I have a wonderful blog post I'm working on about the ultimate customer experience I had in London (it has to do with Gordon Ramsay and a bar).

Since I got back home, I've been in sessions learning about the latest developments from SAS for Bayesian analysis, model management, econometrics and sentiment analysis.

So apologies for the hiatus from the blog-o-sphere. For those of you that Twitter (@tkgeorge), you've seen me pick up the pace in the past week and I just sent out a COOL tweet.

I learned Friday that there is a new SAS Statistical Procedures Forum available so that users can ask questions, share experiences, and thoughts on best practices using the SAS/STAT procedures and other statistical procedures in SAS.

I am so happy we have this new conduit for the SAS statistics community.

There are many valuable SAS Discussion Forums. I often monitor the following forums SAS Forecasting, JMP Software and SAS Integration with Microsoft Office.

Now that I am focusing more on analytics, I am learning about so many resources available including one that I thought provided a nice overview of Bayesian analysis procedures.

I need to get back to my sentiment analysis training and learn more about what's coming from SAS in coming months. VERY EXCITING!

Last week at SAS Global Forum I was so incredibly busy but it's such a wonderful week getting to meet so many folks from around the world and talk with them about how they use our software and how we can continue to help them succeed. Coming back to Cary, I will be on vacation till the 13th on a trip to London - and I want to get at least one Pot Pie post in this week if I can.

However, today is April Fool's day - have you played a trick on someone today?

I am so excited to share this link about SAS on the Wii!!!! Check it out here. All of the Pot Pie Readers know that the purchase of my Wii last summer was life changing.

Of course it's April Fool's Day so .... read the link with that in mind.

My fave? Grand Theft Autoregressive Models

On the vendor side, we do see changes in buying behavior due to economic conditions - and this was a subject of discussion at last week's Gartner BI Summit. I blogged a bit about it and so when I saw this update Gartner Highlights Seven Great Concerns for CEOs in 2009 from Gartner on the CEO perspective this morning cross my Tweetdeck.... I had to post a quick link here.

Here's the take away. "CIOs should plan for extraordinary requests in 2009 for work and changes."

Now what were the 7 top concerns that are going to shape your IT agenda?

Forecasting. What does it mean to you and your organization? For two days in June here in Cary we'll host the fourth annual F2009 conference so that forecasting professionals who help their organizations plan and compete more effectively can share best practices, attend training sessions and network with folks from around the world.

I was fortunate to attend last year and hear some great panel discussion and presentations. As a matter of fact Dr. Anne Robinson from Cisco whose presentation I summarized from the Gartner BI Summit last week was a speaker at last year's F2008. I've blocked these two days in ORANGE on my calendar!

Here are all the details.

It's the data, Pot Pie. It always comes down to the data. As my dad says "garbage in means garbage out." He also told me to keep adding "Tools to my toolbox."

So to add to my tools, I just registered to attend the Web Seminar on March 18 Got Bad Data? to learn more about how to improve data quality profiling so that I have a unitifed view of trusted information.

As we know from past experience, you can have the best business intelligence solution in the world but if the information it provides is fundamentally flawed by bad data, your investment just became moot.

Oh, and another cool thing! Was just reading an article about how Google Mars lets you view images downloaded by NASA that chart out that amazing planet within hours of receiving the data from an orbiting craft. You can look at it online or download Google Earth and explore the red planet at your leisure.

It's amazing the tools that are out there - both intellectually and literally - when you just look!

This time next week SAS Global Forum (#SGF09) will be in full swing as the opening night session jump starts three days of incredible classes. I have been planning my agenda with a great deal of care since I am taking on a more analytics flavored role at SAS.

Agenda building is now OFFICIALLY in process!

Fortunately I happened to get a link to Maura Stoke's summary of five of the SAS analytics presentations at the conference to help me make some of my decisions. Get this, there will be over three dozen SAS and over twenty user presentations focused on analytics over the course of three days! Maura had some great suggestions.

I'll finalize my plans this week but here are three I'm definitely attending and I'll share more of them with you later this week.

• I am definitely going to Bob Rodriguez's session Methods, Models and More: New Analyses Available with SAS/STAT 9.2.

• Dashboard Reports for Predictive Model Management: Now more than ever empowering executives and other decision makers with the insights from predictive analytics is a differentiator - that often touted evidence based decision making. This particular session will focus on how you can deliver the insights from predictive models via dashboards so that action can be taken - putting the insights in context to the decision maker's day! (Ah the marriage of BI and predictive analytics - Pot Pie nirvana )

• Setting Up the Marketing Plans for Lotte Department Store: This should be a great presentation about how to use data mining to develop marketing plans that "nurture potential VIP customers". Based on the abstract, the presenters will look at the existing market plan methodology and will examine the weaknesses. Then they will compare that to a different approach using data mining.

I will be live blogging next week from SAS Global Forum. Are you going? If so, I hope we get a chance to meet - and there will be a Tweet Up. I'm not sure of the details, but will keep you posted!

Sitting here waiting to board my flight back to NC and reflecting on the last Gartner Business Intelligence Summit session I attended today that brought it home for me.

It was Blending Data & Expertise at Cisco: How Analytics can Boost Forecast Accuracy. Anne G. Robinson Ph.D and Senior Manager of Information & Data Strategy Customer Value Chain Management shared how Cisco re-engineered their customer value chain and planning process.

She started her session by defining analytics – advanced statistical, mathematical and algorithmic techniques used to solve a business problem. Analytics is not frequency, queries, OLAP or simple reports (Amen.) Coming from SAS and being in the BI realm for so long, this is always a good level playing field to start with - it eliminates translation issues.

And then she started telling her story....

John Van Decker moderated an interesting panel at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit yesterday on BI in Today’s Economy. The panel consisted of representatives from Deloitte Consulting, TaTa, Accenture and IBM Global Services how they are seeing business intelligence and performance management projects impacted in today’s economic environment.

Van Decker kicked things off by asking how the recession has affected business intelligence and performance management projects.

Caught a quick bite at lunch with Jim Ericson from Information Management before the afternoon sessions kick into full blast. I had great time talking with Jim about some of the highlights we'll present at the upcoming SAS Global Forum (#SGF09).

We talked about the impact of visualization, new data sources, Flash, enhanced user experience, etc. will have on the ability to really provide the business what they need to interact with data. At one point we joked "isn't this what we have been saying for years"? And we also discussed the need for the basics (see Neil Raden's comment to my blog yesterday, one of my fave thought leaders) - are we indeed chasing wind mills with all this talk of information management, strategy and BI competency centers when all the business really wants is the data, they want it now and get out of the way?....

Well, I think we came to the conclusion that you have to do both - you must deliver projects that answer today's needs but keep in mind the bigger picture. (Begin with an end state in mind -the vision for the next quarter, the next year, the next two to five years). I agree with Jim's view about the importance of keeping the various players, capabilities and visions that information management can provide in your lens.

Related to this topic, just an hour later I had a great conversation with Gartner analyst Rita Sallam that reinforced what I heard in this morning's presentation from Gartner's Colleen Graham. Economic forces are driving departmental BI purchases - the business wants it easy to use, cheap and quickly deployed.

How does IT build this into a vision for information management strategy when building silos is one of the perils we fear? Well a lot of it has to do with the relationships IT can build with business and by scoping out flexible options for departmental deployments that can fit into an enterprise strategy at some point. There are options that allow you to meet the needs of the department for BI, for analysis, for data exploration yet tie into your framework.

I immediately thought of SAS own JMP and how it can be deployed on a desktop, a server and integrated as part of our BI solution - how do you need that today :-)? You can explore and use SAS JMP in-memory on your desktop yet also grow to deploy your JMP use with SAS BI in an enterprise deployment yet maintain the metadata and other issues because JMP integrates with the SAS BI, data integration solution stack. Not all the vendors touted as highly visual and interactive data visualization and exploration vendors have integration with the BI and data integration stacks like SAS' JMP.

Good times are ahead today - I am sitting in a Gartner bean bag (my favorite discovery so far at the conference) and getting ready for some time with some more analysts this afternoon. Tomorrow I'll be able to share more from the perspective of the conference sessions but today I'll try to focus on the conversations I'm having and share those with you as much as I can.

I am in my first content session with Colleen Graham re: BI Market Trends. Graham kicked off the session by saying this is an attempt at providing a business intelligence roadmap or framework to put the conference content in context.

World growth outlook: Instead of 2009 looking like 2008 and continuing that trajectory, organizations had to turn on a dime.

Gartner sees organizations that have already initiated a BI strategy at an advantage. Here was an awesome tidbit - in Q4 2008 Gartner had a 98% increase in inquiries on BI.

We are all experiencing this in the industry based on conversations with customers and it is being picked up by the press but it was reinforced by Graham - BI is a lifeline for organizations right now. It is crucial to run the business smarter and figure out how to do more with less.

Yet again, BI is a key priority. In the 2009 version of Gartner’s annual survey of 1500 CIO’s linking business and IT strategies the top priority (it was #10 last year!) followed by reducing costs of IT, and projects that deliver growth. The 2008 #3 priority, retaining and developing IT talent is now #10. Ouch for long term, understandable in short term economic chaos.

General market trends show IT budgets will be relatively stagnant which means if you fund a new project then another budget line item will suffer.

Business Intelligence platform spend has historically been in the double-digit range and for 2009 is expected to be in mid to low single digits. Business intelligence spending is under more pressure and organizations are looking at more ways to embed BI in processes.

Expect to see 10-15% growth for what Graham termed “emerging” areas of business intelligence like corporate performance management. (Personally, I don’t view that as emerging.)

BI according to Graham is not a commodity – it is not being given away for free. Other areas of growth will be driven by predictive modeling, visualization and embedding BI in work flow.

Encouraging predictions include the fact that BI user growth is expected to double! By embedding BI where people work – into applications, Web 2.0 delivery models and more sophisticated users, we’ll see uptake in business intelligence adoption that is currently in the 25% range.

Graham spent some time on the BI circle of life – the merger and acquisition frenzy of past years, emerging vendors and the vendor trade off of stack integration versus innovation.

Overall an interesting session. Next on the agenda is lunch and a meeting with Gartner analyst Rita Sallam.

Bill Hostmann's workshop "Future Scenarios for the Five Key BI and Information Management Initiatives" was my first session of the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2009.

I liked in particular a point that Hostmann made about why investments in Business Intelligence and Information Management are still needed in the current volatile economic climate. If your business model is still in 2007, if you are using the same information and analysis- then you are probably making bad decisions because the world if fundamentally different.

A recent survey of CIO's revealed that new IT initiatives and leadership are needed because of these fundamental challenges facing organizations. Most CIO priorities in the study showed top priorities went beyond the usual technology systems issues and now more than ever delve into the deep waters of managing business process change, increasing knowledge worker productivity, business model innovation and exploitation of information as a strategic asset.

So how does Gartner think most organizations are going to fare with adapting to an information centric strategy? A strategy that means new leadership, approaches and technology?

I'm going to be busy Friday getting projects completed and finalizing a few things before I leave Sunday for Gartner BI so I wanted to go ahead and post re: the sessions I plan to blog about next week from Gartner BI Summit.

Here's a quick run down of sessions I'm planning on attending and blogging about:

Monday: planning on attending Does BI equal Better Decision Making (A1), CIO's View of BI (A2), BI/Business Applications and BPM session (D3) and the closing Mega Vendors Keynote.

Tuesday:Robert Kaplan keynote and then the BI Competency Center (A4) and Case Study (A5) sessions. This is also the afternoon I'll go to the NC Department of Commerce and E*TRADE presentations.

Wednesday: Garth Sundem keynote, Impact of Open Source BI/DW/DI (D6), Data Quality Insurance (A7), Implementing Analytics Apps for Perfomance Management (B8)

Whew! And there's some awesome research from Computerworld that I'll be blogging about next week. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I'd be talking more about Business Analytics. This research - hot off the presses -it is a current look at market understanding of the term Business Analytics. Not familiar with the software taxonomy and vendors included in the Business Analytics software market? Check out this IDC report on Worldwide Business Analytics Software Forecast & Vendor Shares.

I'm going to try something new next week. Pending the wireless card is working and all is right with the world, I am going to try live blogging from the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit in D.C. next week.

The theme of the conference is The BIg Discrepancy: the priority vs. the reality of business intelligence. We have some exciting things going on at the conference and I would love to meet those of you attending!

Here are some highlights to make sure you don't miss....