Picture this: The power of analytics extended to everyone in your organization

Jennifer Marchi
Jennifer Marchi|March 28, 2012

In my last blog post I revealed the WOW factor of SAS Visual Analytics.  In summary: analyzing billions of rows of data, across vast numbers of columns, via 100+ correlation calculations in SECONDS (wow). What exactly does that mean?  SAS Visual Analytics takes full advantage of SAS’ high-performance analytics technology.  [...]

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So many WOWs…in so little time

Jennifer Marchi
Jennifer Marchi|March 23, 2012

I remember the first time I saw a Cirque du Soleil® performance—the artistry, the split-second timing, that repeating sense of WOW.  I was an instant fan. Funny… but I got that same sense of awe the first time I saw a demo of SAS® Visual Analytics.  I’d read the project [...]

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The path to lean analytics

Rachel Alt-Simmons
Rachel Alt-Simmons|March 13, 2012

In my role at SAS I have the great fortune to meet with business intelligence and analytic (BI&A) teams all across the United States to share and discuss best practices and pain points, particularly around the ability to execute and operationalize insight internally and externally throughout the organization. In these [...]

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IFSUG kicks off with a bang!

Rachel Alt-Simmons
Rachel Alt-Simmons|March 9, 2012

This week I attended the inaugural Insurance and Finance SAS User Group conference at the SAS Headquarters in Cary, NC. The two-day conference was well attended by 80 members of our insurance and financial services customer community, and attendees were treated to a variety of presentations focused on these industry [...]

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The growing shortage of analytical talent and where to find it

Geoffrey Taylor
Geoffrey Taylor|January 30, 2012

That there is a growing shortage of analytical talent in most of the economies of the world is clear. In a May 2011 report, the McKinsey Global Institute put some numbers on the demand: “By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with [...]

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The evolving use of data in higher education

Georgia Mariani
Georgia Mariani|November 21, 2011

I my past blog posts I have written mostly about K-12 education. This is mainly because I think K-12 is over-ripe for reform in so many ways. School districts could learn a great deal from other industries and higher education in terms of data usage, reporting and analysis of students, programs and [...]

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Being customer centric is everyone’s responsibility

Rachel Alt-Simmons
Rachel Alt-Simmons|November 2, 2011

Not long ago, one of my colleagues wrote a blog post entitled, How to wake up dormant customers, which discusses the challenges in being customer centric – where you want to treat all customers well, and your best customers better. It made me think about the key tenet of Six Sigma [...]

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Looking at information flow from a business process perspective

Rachel Alt-Simmons
Rachel Alt-Simmons|October 21, 2011

Since I started getting more involved in process improvement, I’ve started to look differently at how we work and interact with each other, information, knowledge and technologies. In analytics, I typically see processes represented in two ways: From a systems perspective and from a functional perspective. The problem with the [...]

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Holy analytics, Stat-Man!

Rachel Alt-Simmons
Rachel Alt-Simmons|September 26, 2011

Tomorrow I was going to go visit one of our insurance clients. I was really looking forward to the meeting – a chance to share experiences with a strategic analytic team. Unfortunately, I got an e-mail from the team’s administrative assistant: “I’m sorry, but so-and-so needs to cancel. An important [...]

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The intelligent business analyst

Rachel Alt-Simmons
Rachel Alt-Simmons|September 20, 2011

Sometimes when you change a couple of words around, you can end up with an entirely new concept. In a conversation with a co-worker around analytic roles and responsibilities, she noted that we shouldn’t be talking about “business intelligence analysts,” but discussing ways to create “intelligent business analysts.” Brilliant!! One [...]

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