Monday, February 8. 2010It's not too late for predictive insight
Last week was a busy one in the world of business analytics. The biggest news for SAS is our ranking as a leader in predictive analytics and data mining by an independent analyst firm. In The Forrester Wave: Predictive Analytics and Data Mining Solutions, Q1 2010, SAS earned top overall ranking in all three categories – current offering, strategy and market presence – including perfect scores for functionality, professional services, licensing and cost, direction, and company financials criteria.
Separately, new research launched last week from our friends at Accenture shows that most global organizations are failing to use analytics to make informed decisions and predict future business events. What are we to make of these two divergent studies? On the one hand, you have a report that says there are at least nine qualified vendors that provide mature products for predictive analytics. On the other, you have survey results that say most executives are still primarily trusting their instincts. In fact, their organizations are encumbered with "siloed data, outdated technology and a lack of analytical talent." Are most businesses in a hopeless situation, buried in data, organized chaotically and too overwhelmed to find insights? Or are there still opportunities to re-prioritize and start making decisions based on predictive insights? Continue reading "It's not too late for predictive insight" Friday, February 5. 2010Pick one from each column: A CFO's post-conference to-do list
When I attend a conference as a participant, one constructive practice I have acquired is to, immediately after completing the post-conference evaluation form, create my own personal “take away” worksheet. Nothing complicated, just two columns which can be labeled left/right, debit/credit, sooner/later, or plain/peanut. Don’t attempt to create this worksheet until after you’ve seen all the presentations and participated in all the discussions, workshops and roundtables - there is too much of a tendency to get overly excited about what you are immersed in at the moment; wait until you have gained some perspective.
The left hand column consists of those things that you’ve learned you are doing wrong and need to stop doing, or need to replace with an easy to implement change/alternative, and those things you feel you need to change or improve that can be accomplished without a project plan. The right hand column consists of those areas where you want to improve, enhance or make major process or cultural changes that might, and probably will, require a project plan. Three to five items in each column, and once completed, circle ONE, and only one, from each column, for immediate action. This circled item is the one to which you will commit yourself to accomplishing no matter what; even if most or many of the others turn out to be impractical or inapplicable, you WILL commit to one short term and one medium term result. Lastly, write the words “WATCH IT!” underneath the list (to be explained). In my participant ‘role’ as head of finance at the CFO Corporate Performance Management Conference held earlier this week in New York, this is what my final list looked like: Continue reading "Pick one from each column: A CFO's post-conference to-do list" Wednesday, February 3. 2010Nine optimization lessons from TARGET
I kept hearing that the Big Ideas session at NRF was standing room only, but until now I hadn't read a good recap. Retail TouchPoints comes through, describing the guest intelligence presentation from Eric Bibelnieks, group manager for guest data and analytical services at TARGET Corporation.
Pre-conference materials said, "In this session, you'll learn how Target uses guest intelligence to optimize marketing and merchandising processes – with the ultimate goals of enhancing guests' shopping experiences, driving store performance and creating brand cachet that's the envy of the industry." Read the Retail TouchPoints article to find more details about these nine lessons TARGET learned along the way about optimization:
Tuesday, February 2. 2010SIM City for business decisions
Day one of the 2010 CFO Corporate Performance Management Conference in New York is in the books, and while the day’s presentations and discussions should rightly merit being the prime subjects of this post, those events have been overshadowed by one of even greater magnitude: dinner with Thornton May. Where does one start? Where does one end? Before the salad course was finished the topic for the evening had been laid on the table for critique: “SIM City for business decisions.”
Thornton and I were joined in this dialogue by Douglas Hubbard, a specialist in decision analytics and the author of several books on the subject. The impetus for this topic was the acknowledgment, supported by Hubbard’s data, that very few businesses are measuring and monitoring metrics and KPI’s that actually matter. Most businesses are completely surprised to find that the primary driver of their principle objective is one that they have not considered nor recognized as being even slightly important. While many organizations struggle to trim their initial 400 KPI’s down to a more manageable 30 or so, a statistical analysis of their data would generally show that fewer than a dozen are truly meaningfully significant from a cause and effect perspective, and would suffice to manage their performance against. The unreliability of human judgment is borne out with studies that show judgment-only forecasts are less accurate than the most basic of simple forecasting techniques, and further, that a model that simply averages these human judgments is more accurate than the judgments themselves. In short, human judgment tends to be too optimistic, too confident in its own abilities, and completely miscalculates associated risks. As they say, “Experience is inevitable, learning is not.” The conversation narrowed its focus a bit during an informative discussion regarding the high efficacy of Monte Carlo simulations in aiding forecast accuracy and in improving decision making. Nuclear power plant simulators are a great example of using simulation to train operators to make better decisions under pressure and over a wide range of simple and multiple system failures. Captain Sullenberger’s heroic landing of his plane on the Hudson was most certainly not a case a good fortune; it was a case of hours and hours in a simulator practicing just such maneuvers.  As the final coffees were being cleared from the table, the consensus was building that management science, and specifically decision making, would only come to fulfill its promise when the power of analytics and simulation was brought to bear. “SIM City for business decisions,” was Thornton’s summation of what is needed to augment human intelligence and judgment in order to significantly improve business decision making. The learning may not be inevitable, but with analytics it certainly becomes much more probable.
Monday, February 1. 2010Articles about analytics top the list in January 2010Friday, January 29. 2010All about AnalyticsCamp
AnalyticsCamp is an unconference started by Nathan Gilliatt, after a networking meeting in Raleigh last year. The first AnalyticsCamp will take place at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill on Saturday, February 6th, hosted by UNC's MBA Marketing and Business Technology Clubs. It is themed around bridging analytics silos to bring analysts of all stripes together on one day.
SAS is a sponsor of the event, and several folks from SAS have volunteered to lead sessions and help organize some of the behind-the-scenes logistics. In this guest post, I'll be interviewing Nathan about the unconference:  Nathan Gilliatt, Net Savvy Executive AnalyticsCamp is a day for people who work in different analytics specialties to meet and learn from each other. We have great sessions lined up, but it's really about the people who show up and what they do with the day. How did the idea come about? Talk about AnalyticsCamp started after a panel on social media at Web Analytics Wednesday, when we realized that we had too many interesting topics for the quarterly meeting schedule. I had been to several unconferences, and the format seemed perfect for a day filled with all the analytics topics we wanted to talk about. We connected with a couple of the student clubs at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and soon we had a perfect place for the event. With a full day and multiple classrooms, we can explore 30 topics and attract many more participants than we get at weeknight events. Why the theme “bridging analytic silos”? I've noticed closely related specialties that seem to be kept apart by a modifier--web analytics, email analytics, social media analytics, customer analytics... and that's just in marketing! They're chasing similar objectives and using similar methods, but the modifiers keep knowledge and practices trapped in analytics silos. By de-emphasizing the modifiers and focusing on analytics, we're creating an environment for people to learn from the other specialties and, in the process, meet interesting people they might not otherwise meet. Continue reading "All about AnalyticsCamp" Thursday, January 28. 201011 reasons to invest in training
Bringing in a new software package or expanding the use of an existing one is an exciting endeavor for a company. The benefits SAS can bring your organization are extensive and will, without a doubt, outpace the expense many times over. But for SAS to fully deliver on its promise of immediate and significant ROI, your analytical staff must learn how to use the software. Training your user base on the effective use of SAS can be one of the highest return-on-investment endeavors you can make in your company.
In the paper, "Are you getting the most out of your SAS software," I describe the benefits of training your SAS users and the negative costs of not training them. Citing research from a number of well-respected groups including the Gartner Group, ICD, and the American Society for Training and Development, this paper outlines the 11 reasons to invest in training. You can download the complete paper for more details (and for a full list of references). Continue reading "11 reasons to invest in training" Monday, January 25. 2010Communications’ Survivor: Marketing Edition. Cutting Costs, Not Profits.
Welcome to Communications’ Survivor: Marketing Edition. I'm your host, Becca Goren. Today’s teams come to us from the marketing department within a large communications service provider with offices worldwide. The Chief Marketing Officer, Suzie Pass will be our judge. She’s been tasked to cut 15 percent of marketing’s operational budget.
To survive, these teams will need to do more than make cuts – that’s too easy. Instead, they need to ensure they don’t sacrifice long-term profits as well. Suzie has selected two divisions under her to take on the bulk of the challenge. The teams will be armed with a personal analytics coach from the company’s analytics team and an array of SAS business analytics to guide decision making. The survivor will get to keep his/her job. Episode 1: The team strategies Team 1: Business to Consumer Marketing led by Director Maxie Prospect  Maxie: Our inspiration came from a telecom service provider a lot like us. They use SAS to optimize monthly promotional campaigns for DSL, wireless, cable and phone service – maximizing customer lifetime value. The company reported $6 million a month profit gains during the trial phase alone.* Our strategy is twofold: 1. Reduce Costs: Analyze then eliminate our redundant and ineffective campaigns. 2. Grow Revenue: Restructure campaigns to offer the right product/service to the right customer at the right time with the right channel. This will improve our return on campaign and increase revenue flow - even with fewer campaign implementations. I really believe that if we have the analysis to support our theories we’ll be able to implement this strategy and overcome our cultural obstacles.  Suzie: That sounds nice. In theory. But you’re making quite a few assumptions. If this is such a great strategy, why didn’t you implement it last year? We’ll see if you really can turn this around.Continue reading "Communications’ Survivor: Marketing Edition. Cutting Costs, Not Profits." Friday, January 22. 2010SAS employee reactions to the FORTUNE news
Yesterday, I shared the news that SAS ranked No.1 on the FORTUNE '100 Best Companies to Work For' 2010 list. Today, I'd like to share the reactions to that news from some of my fellow SAS bloggers.
Clark Abrahams, Chief Financial Architect, explains how SAS helped him in his career long before he was even a SAS employee: You see, I was a customer of SAS for two decades prior to joining the company late in the Spring of 2003. At that time I had already come to know SAS as a company that would stop at nothing to help me achieve success in meeting my business goals. Indeed, my career in banking really accelerated when I joined what is now Bank of America, and began to apply the SAS technology to solving very complex business problems. Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer says this award should matter to our customers at least as much as it does to employees: Satisfied employees stay longer, get better at their jobs, learn more about SAS products and the ways people use them, develop stronger relationships with our customers, and are ultimately better able to do the work that provides real value for our customers. Mikael Hagström, Executive Vice President, EMEA and Asia Pacific, explains why employee satisfaction matters: To SAS, this is great news – but it is also great news to our customers, who can have the confidence of knowing that they are doing business with a company that not only has the formula right (employee satisfaction = customer satisfaction), but that they are doing business with a company that will continue to provide high-quality, leading-edge software and services far into the future Renee Harper from the SAS Support Site blog writes about the great people she's met working at SAS: If you ask a SAS employee to tell you why they like working here, most say healthcare, daycare, and the people. I'll agree with all of those things. But let me tell you about yesterday and you'll understand why I really like my job at SAS. Chris Hemedinger, from The SAS Dummy blog, likes being No. 1: Last year at this time, I downplayed the importance of being the actual #1 company to work for, stating that the "staying power" that SAS has in the annual ranking is more important than the actual rank. Okay, now that SAS is the #1 place to work in the Fortune ranking, I take it back. It's really better to be on top. John Sall, co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS, highlights four keys to SAS' success, including the company's ability to change: SAS has always changed. Most industries need to be kicked into growing into new opportunities, but SAS embraces change. At SAS, we have new initiative areas every year, and adapting to changing needs and conditions has been critical to continue our growth. In their new book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath say that most change management consultants work by introducing an artificial crisis that forces the company to change. The Heath brothers say that this may work in the short term, but that the best change comes with alignment of our elephant and our rider, our resource marshalling and our direction focus. I think that one of SAS' secrets has been in that alignment for change. David B. Thomas, Social Media Manager, asks if social media played a role in winning the award: I think it certainly helped. In 2009 we released our Social Media Guidelines and Recommendations. With a majority of companies still blocking employees from participating in social media, we told ours, “We trust you. Go ahead.” That was another clear and tangible demonstration of our commitment to employees. Thursday, January 21. 2010The benefits of being helpful
One day last week I received a one-line email from somebody with an AOL address that said, "Would like to find a SAS factory shoe store in the area of Clearwater/St. Petersburg, Florida area. Thank you."
We, of course, sell business analytics software - not shoes or flights to Europe. I thought it was funny, so I mentioned it on Twitter. And then, without even giving it much thought, I Googled the SAS shoe site, went to the Store Locator page, and emailed that URL to the requester, explaining how to find a store in her area.  No sooner had I sent the email, when I received a message on Twitter from a fellow SAS employee, Jeff Bailey, that said, " I bet you looked it up and sent her the info! SAS (Institute) helps people. Even people looking for shoes."When I told him he had me pegged, Jeff said, "I knew it. I would have done the same thing." That statement from Jeff sums up the culture here and explains in 140 characters or less why FORTUNE magazine ranks SAS as the best place to work. SAS employees go out of our way to help people out because SAS goes out of its way to help out its employees. Academic researchers have done scientific studies explaining the bottom-line benefits of treating your employees well, but to me it's really this simple: Be nice to your employees, and they'll be nice to everyone they deal with during the work day: customers, partners, colleagues and even random people looking for comfortable shoes. Wednesday, January 20. 2010Jim Goodnight: ‘Take the time to learn about analytics’
“The ability to predict future business trends with reasonable accuracy will be one of the crucial competitive advantages of this new decade," SAS CEO Jim Goodnight told students, faculty and business partners at a Jan. 15 Villanova University School of Business event. “And you won’t be able to do that without analytics.”
 Jim Goodnight, CEO, SAS He not only gave audience members a good look at where technology is headed, but how analytics are already being used to improve our lives in areas such as healthcare, banking and government. He discussed ways that analytics can create competitive business advantage, citing specific examples of customer loyalty program success and changes in the retail industry. “Pricing used to be an art,” Goodnight told attendees in reference to SAS’ work with mega-chain Kohl’s and online retailers such as 1-800-Flowers. “1-800-Flowers changes prices and offerings on its Web site, sometimes hourly. They can pull this off because they use analytics.” He added that the online retailer’s investments in analytics have paid off. “President Chris McCann recently told the New York Times that analytics helped him cut costs at the company by $50 million last year.” Developments in social network analysis intrigued attendees at Villanova as well. “By looking at historical data about customer transactions … we’re able to recognize and understand customer behaviors that, as isolated behaviors, might otherwise seem ordinary,” said Goodnight. Continue reading "Jim Goodnight: ‘Take the time to learn about analytics’" Tuesday, January 19. 2010Digital children are now anywhere adults
This past Wednesday was my son’s 20th birthday. His first two decades of life have been remarkably different than mine were. I grew-up analog, he grew-up digital. To appreciate and understand my son and his friends, I relied on the baby boomer’s essential field guides for understanding the Net Generation; the 1999 book Growing UP Digital; followed by the 2008 sequel Grown Up Digital; both written by Don Tapscott.
Coincidentally, Wednesday also saw the arrival of Anywhere: How Global Connectivity Is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business; the new book by Yankee Group CEO Emily Nagle Green. The forward by Don Tapscott begins by saying “The Internet has finally come of age.”We learned from Tapscott how the Net Generation spent their childhood. Anywhere describes the digital world these young adults have inherited, and offers a roadmap for how they will exploit digital connectivity to create a better world. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Emily Nagle Green several times. As the CEO of Yankee Group, she travels the world, interviewing thought leaders in the communications industry. She weaves insight from these leaders into a compelling argument that the Anywhere Revolution has just begun. The forces driving the revolution: a common digital network, broadband demand, and wireless ubiquity are nearing a tipping point. Once it tips, global connectivity will create tens of trillions of dollars in economic value between now and 2020. In the developed world, the way we work and play will be transformed, every industry will be impacted, leaving disruption in its wake as new companies emerge while others fail to transform themselves. In the developing world, connectivity will help break the cycle of inefficiency, corruption, and exploitation, lifting billions of people out of poverty. More than just painting a vision, Anywhere offers managers a practical assessment called; How anywhere do you need to be, as well as a roadmap for getting there. There is also a chapter on the hurdles such as spectrum reform, bandwidth bottlenecks, and the availability of electrical power. That grand vision is tempered with the humility that even the industry thought leaders don’t understand all the ramifications. According to Mike Muller, of chip maker ARM; “We can anticipate pretty well what technology will be available in the future; we’re less good at predicting what people will do with it.” Sentiments echoed by one of the icons of the telecom industry, Ben Verwaayen CEO of Alcatel-Lucent “as an industry we’re not a reliable source for knowing what people’s behavior will be. We’ve gotten it wrong many times.” So even the industry leaders admit, they can’t always predict people’s behavior. Good thing SAS will be there to help with predictive analytics. I was out of college before any adult ever paid me for something requiring a good education. Before that I bagged groceries, mowed lawns, and did maintenance work at the local Caterpillar dealer. Last week I used the Apple App store to buy an application written by the son of a friend. I paid 99 cents for his app, and he’s making several hundred dollars a week. I’d recommend Anywhere to all baby boomers. Many of us are going to be working for these kids one day, we might as well understand them and the world they will be creating. Friday, January 15. 201010 tips for successful knowledge flow management
I’ve been reading Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow: How to Make Knowledge Sharing Work by Frank Leistner, Chief Knowledge Officer for SAS Global Professional Services. It was written for Cheif Knowledge Officers and knowledge managers, but I also found some interesting truths for any area of an organization that is trying to motivate knowledge sharing.
Organizations begin a knowledge management flow initiative for various reasons, including:
“It is the knowledge in people’s heads that needs to be shared. So it is essential that you make participation in the initiative as attractive as possible and remove any potential barriers,” writes Leistner. Here are 10 tips for removing barriers to participation and ensuring a successful initiative: Continue reading "10 tips for successful knowledge flow management" Thursday, January 14. 2010Analytics for beginners and beyond
Business analytics vendors like to talk about enterprise solutions. And it’s not just because we want to sell more products. We’ve seen time and again that you can’t make good decisions about risk, for example, if you’re not anticipating potential hazards from every angle. Likewise, you can’t really understand a loyal customer if you’re just looking at her interactions with one of the dozen or so departments within your organization.
But what if your organization isn’t ready for a full-fledged corporatewide data integration and business analytics adventure? Where should you start if you want to begin simply and build as you go? The first quarter 2010 issue of sascom magazine includes a lot of great advice for getting started:
Cross-posted from the first quarter 2010 sascom. Wednesday, January 13. 2010Retail business analytics: Trends from The Big Show
Dozens of SAS employees and (it's safe to guess) hundreds of SAS customers attended this week's National Retail Federation Big Show. I wasn't in attendance, but I've talked to a few colleagues to get their reports, and I enjoyed following the event on Twitter.
Along with a reported attendance increase around 30 percent, I'm told the mood was also up this year. "Compared to the depressing mood last year, it seems retailers are relieved they survived and that 2009 didn’t turn out as bad as it could have," says Gul Ege, Director of R&D for Merchandise Intelligence at SAS. "The conference seemed focused on change, which is very refreshing for the industry, and thinking out of the box in all general sessions." Plus, says Gul, retailers seem genuinely ready to invest in change in 2010. The hottest topics this year, according to Mark Chaves, SAS Product Manager, were sustainability and social media. Mark was one of a handful of SAS product specialists manning the SAS booth and talking about SAS retail solutions with customers. Mark spent a lot of time talking to Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Information Officers and other corporate executives about social media, and how to incorporate social media analytics into their market research, merchandising and brand awareness efforts. The CMOs he talked to are interested in market research and customer insights available through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and discussion forums. "Retailers are using this data to learn what customer needs are, how to improve in-store experiences or online shopping, and what trends and concerns customers have that aren't being picked up in surveys." Likewise, says Mark, CIOs are interested in learning how to harness social media data and how to report that data out to decentralized retail organizations with shops around the world. One idea that sparked a lot of interest, says Mark, is the ability to monitor customer sentiment for sub-categories underneath the brand level. For example, measuring how customers feel about specific brand attributes (sustainability, community outreach) or specific store features (cleanliness, displays, aisle clearance). Continue reading "Retail business analytics: Trends from The Big Show" |
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Hello and welcome to sascom voices where sascom magazine's Editor-in-Chief Alison Bolen leads a conversation about notable people, products and ideas at SAS.
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Tuesday, February 2. 2010 CRM and the Hospitality Sector: It's All About Value Tuesday, February 2. 2010 Goodnight Sees Massive Growth in Technology Industry: Video Friday, January 29. 2010 Top 10 Things You Missed at The NRF Big Show 2010 | In This Issue | RIS News: Business/Technology Insights for Retail, Supermarket Executives Wednesday, January 27. 2010 Build your work-life hygiene Tuesday, January 26. 2010 Friend or follow meThe blog content appearing on this site does not necessarily represent the opinions of SAS. Your use of this blog is governed by the Terms of Use. |
Comments
Tue, 02.02.2010 15:48
Hi, Devra! I never thought about calling those stray doc offices back. Now that [...]
Mon, 01.02.2010 12:25
This post was mentioned on Twitter by alisonbolen: The benefits of being [...]
Mon, 01.02.2010 11:55
I worked at a Red Cross Shoes for a summer job, I know when those comfort shoe [...]
Mon, 01.02.2010 11:41
Thanks, Dan. I actually worked part-time in a shoe store for a few years when I [...]
Mon, 01.02.2010 11:02
Alison, On behalf of all of us at SAS Shoemakers, we thank you for providing [...]