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

So today it is rainy and gray here in Cary and I ran into two stories today with recent
survey findings I found interesting. Those "quick snacks" or pulse points about what folks are thinking in our industry brighten a dreary day.

CIO Top Priorities: The Society for Information Management released their 2009 CIO priorities survey this week and some interesting tid bits can be gleaned from it. This year the number one priority of CIO's is business productivty and cost reduction followed by IT and business alignment (#1 in 2008), business agility and speed to market and business process re-engineering.

The top four CIO technology investments in 2009 were business intellignece, server virtualization, ERP systems and customer/corporate portals.

The survey shows that CIO's are focused on productivity and cost reduction which knocked last year's IT and business alignment priority to #2. Projects that suport those objectives should continue to see an uptick in receptiveness and execution. In addition I thought the top software investment of business intelligence (BI), followed a few priorities later by portals (often part of a BI initiative) interesting. The need for basic reporting capabilities is still rampant but since I didn't see a definition of BI in connection with the survey I would have to ask "how did you define BI?"

It's a "Cloudy" term: Proofpoint (a SaaS vendor) partnered with a research firm to approach more than 200 IT professionals for a cloud computing survey. The key survey summary is that general confusion over cloud computing may impact the rate of adoption by enterprises. For example, among IT professionals 33% believe cloud computing is more hype than substance and 24% aren't sure. That's more than fifty percent of IT professionals in this survey standing on a fence.

These survey respondents are not alone. For example, I was at The 451 Group's annual client conference last week where cloud was a VERY hot topic - and because of the confusion in understanding the term, The 451 Group has provided a framework of definitions and architecture they call the Cloud Codex. Other analysts and consultants are doing the same just to try and get a level set on definitions so we all have consistent expectations.

However we also work with customers and talk with IT leaders that are actively embracing aspects of cloud strategy - definining it for themselves and their organization. This survey is just a good reminder to make sure you are starting out with a good definition level set when having a conversation on cloud strategy. I'm not sure I believe more than 50% of IT is still on the fence... I think there are a lot of other priorities and issues pulling them in different directions to perhaps take a stand.

Positive thinking from the Chicken Pot Pie on this rainy day!

So many awesome customer stories swirl around in my notes from conferences, Web casts, customer conversations and I want to blog and Twitter about them all. I was catching up today on some news that made me a tad frustrated about how silly some of our legislative issues can be - and I thought to myself, "hey, why not blog about a positive example of government being effective for society?"

Immediately an example from SAS Global Forum earlier this year came to mind. The Court Services & Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) for Washington, DC was set up in 1997 as a federal agency to help parolees avoid reincarceration and protect the community. CSOSA supervises 15,000 offenders daily. Just as every government agency under stress they are feeling the pressure to do more with less, effectively manage the offender community and enhance public safety.

In a climate where all states are being asked to ease budget strain and the expense to house inmates is under scrutiny, how can we use data to make better decisions? What best practices could other government agencies learn from CSOSA? Calvin Johnson from CSOS had such a great case study that I have kept the notes on my desk since March. Crazy huh? Well, here's the 411...

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.