BI and the Chicken Pot Pie - Everyday Recipes for Business Intelligence and Performance Improvement

Yesterday afternoon The 451 Group’s analyst Chris Hazelton hosted a panel on mobile applications that was a great overview of his research and went beyond the iPhone versus Blackberry banter I have heard at other conferences.

I thought Hazelton’s point that “mobile is a certainty in uncertain times” was very true – we are going to have our smartphones. It’s the crack of business. Just ask any husband or wife who has looked in frustration at their significant other checking work email on vacation – your smartphone can be an addiction.

We see tremendous benefits from mobile. Effectively leveraged mobile devices reduce employee downtime, provide a hub to share information, improve market perception of companies by reducing response times, decrease desk phone footprint and many more benefits.

Mobile devices are here to stay and as the market evolves we see use cases for netbooks, smartphones converge. So what were the highlights from this interesting panel?

This morning’s great content at The 451 Group client conference continued with a timely panel on The Rewards of Virtualization. The 451 Group analyst Rachel Chalmers moderated the discussion with Dan Stross, CIO, Genesys Regional Medical Center and Jeremy Sherwood, VP Sales & Ops, Opus Interactive.

Chalmers did the usual recap of the obvious rewards from virtualization such as decoupling hardware and software, better capacity utilization, etc. However she pointed out the “non-obvious” rewards.

Chalmers pointed out that these unexpected benefits include HIPAA compliance, operating systems migration and license management costs and that virtualization can be leveraged to put IT in a service provider role.

Every analyst organization is talking about the fact that the role of IT is evolving but I thought Chalmers effectively emphasized that IT can use the emergence of virtualization to their advantage.

Ever hear a keynote that made you want to go up to him afterwards and start to pick his brain? That was what I was thinking during Dan Kusnetzky, VP of Research, keynote at The 451 Group client conference today.

Kusnetzky was providing a high level overview of the sectors and themes that The 451 Group sees as key going into 2010 and not only that, he provided some excellent commentary.

The key themes he touched on included anyplace/anytime computing, changing datacenter infrastructure, open source acceptance, security for applications and data, and the grand illusion of virtualization.

There is a ribbon that runs through our industry just as in nature. Kusnetzky shared a John Muir quote that pretty much sums up why we (IT, vendors) are required to see the big picture. "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."

I am live from the bustling and quite packed The 451 Group 4th Annual Client Conference in Boston. Not only am in one of my favorite cities and I get to learn new things which totally energizes me! My schedule for today will be the following so if you see me - say hello! Also, I'll try to post some quick summaries as time permits.

- Analyst Keynote from Dan Kusnetzky, VP Research Operations

- Innovators Showcase Overview - we get to look at the contenders and then tomorrow we vote on most innovative technology so I am extremely interested in this overview of the vendors and applications

- Fireside Chat with The 451 Group CEO Martin McCarthy and Kenneth Brill Founder of Uptime Institute

- The Rewards of Virtualization: A panel to discuss advantages and best practices of server virtualization

And then I will take a break to get something to eat for lunch and gear up for a long afternoon.

Yesterday as I was sitting in the SAS Media Day room I was so impressed by the number of journalists from around the world in attendance. I met folks from Poland, Russia, Brazil and the list goes on.

The panel I moderated on optimization was so much fun. I almost missed the count in for the video taping because I was chatting with my fellow presenters who were a treat. Bill Nowicki with the Carolina Hurricanes, Bobby Hull with BGF Industries and Larry Mosiman my Customer Intelligence peer at SAS were on the panel.

James Taylor has already posted a recap of the panel and you can read his highlights from our optimization panel in his post. You can also watch the video .

The SAS Media Day fraud panel was very interesting! I walked away with tidbits that marry up well with Antonia de Medinaceli’s fraud modeling presentation I blogged about last week. Here are my highlights from the Fraud discussion but you can also watch the video.

I am looking forward to tomorrow’s SAS Media Day here on the Cary campus because I get to meet new folks and also reconnect with some familiar faces. One of the speakers tomorrow for the SAS Media Day is Rex Pruitt with PREMIER BankCard who was a speaker at last week’s Predictive Analytics World.

Pruitt’s presentation last week The Development of a "Good Customer Score" for Use in Customer Acquisition, Rewards, Retention and Recovery drove home the value of testing new scoring models before production – this can be used as a proof point with senior executives especially when the value, in this case Good Customer Score (GCS), can potentially be debated or management is risk adverse to adopting a new scoring model.

Just got back from two days at Predictive Analytics World in Washington DC. The event's chairperson, Eric Siegel, has an excellent conference on his hands! The attendees are analytically savvy and are using a variety of approaches to deliver value to organizations. It was a very invigorating couple of days!

I have several highlights to share but I'll start with Keep Winning the Eternal Fraud Battles from Elder Research's Antonia de Medinaceli.

It was a great presentation - and I think there were some very tasty bites that those engaged in perfecting their organization's fraud strategy should consider. What were de Medinaceli's suggestions?

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!