sascom voices - The sascom magazine blog

Performance Management expert (and SAS product marketing manager) Gary Cokins blogs regularly here at SAS on the latest developments in enterprise performance management. We always look forward to his insights and interesting take.

Just back from the Palladium (formerly Balanced Scorecard Initiative) 2009 Americas Summit, Gary noticed three major shifts in balanced scorecard messaging - particularly as articulated by balanced scorecard co-creators Dr. Robert S. Kaplan and Dr. David P. Norton and analyst/advisor Howard Dresner. Gary summarizes them as:

• Institutionalize BSC with software automation
• Create a culture for alignment of strategy to operations with metrics
• Apply business analytics to optimize

Click over to Gary's blog for details, and stay tuned to find out how he feels about the shifting sands.

Decision management expert James Taylor wins the prize for most prolific blogger from The Series.

James gives us thorough summaries of great presentations on:

• Balancing Intuition and Analytics in Decision Making.
  
• Analytics & Innovation, Analytics in the Executive Suite.
  
• SAS Media Day customer panels on fraud detection. and optimization.

By the time you read this, there will likely be more.

Analytics maven (and SAS product marketing manager) Tammi Kay George hosted the panel on optimization that Anne-Lindsay Beall wrote about from Monday’s international SAS Media Day, which preceded The Series in Las Vegas (as it does every year). If you read TK's blog, you know that Tammi Kay's insights on analytics have a flavor of their own that spices up any topic.

Don't miss her post, Optimization, Fraud and a fun SAS Media Day, which includes videos of her panel and the subsequent discussion on fraud detection and prevention between Rex Pruitt from PREMIER Bankcard and Chris Swecker, former G-man and corporate security expert.

I’m jumping in here to keep the blog balls in the air. With The Premiere Business Leadership Series in Las Vegas in full swing, there’s so much great material to share. We’ve tasked communication team members at the event with capturing and sharing as much of the great insights, advice and best practices we can with those who couldn’t attend.

But let’s not overlook what others are finding interesting enough to share. Stacey Hamilton has been providing day-by-day highlights from M2009, and The Series. Her reports and reflections are on the SAS Publishing blog. M2009 is the world's largest data mining conference.

When not busy giving away books, having her photo taken with Penn, and pitting Bobby Flay against Joe’s Seafood and Prime Steak, Stacey writes about some of the really smart people sharing their expertise, including SAS Press authors Randy Collica and Bobby Hull (not the hockey player, the optimization expert). Take a minute to check her videos, photos and other links.

Like any good SAS employee, I monitor the social Web for conversations about analytics. Not that I’m an analytics geek – far from it. As a lifelong writer and marcomms veteran, the quants view me as about as comprehensible (and as substantial) as navel lint.

It’s for precisely that reason that I look for articles and conversations that address analytics, particularly business analytics, in ways that everyday people can understand. Whether you’re a consumer, business owner, bureaucrat, board member or investor, analytics affects your success.

So I giggled with glee when I stumbled on this new blog from down under. Oz Analytics , by Business Intelligence expert Steve Bennett (note to Steve – I had a very tough time finding your bio and business info on the blog. Would love to know more), is one of those gems. Steve writes in very down-to-earth terms about such lofty concerns as data quality (how to convince the big guys that it matters), web analytics, social networking, information as an asset (and a living one, at that), all with lots of graphs, grams and visualizations. I actually understand what he says.

But here’s my favorite – because it gets at what undermines effective business practice at every size, every level, every industry. The post, 10 Signs that You Need Analytics pinpoints the insider pains (we’re not even talking about the money dumped on poorly targeted campaigns or misguided loan policies – just the day-to-day little cuts) caused by lack of effective analytics. I guess it’s the flip side of SAS’ “This is your life” video from last year. Here are Steve’s top 10:

1. You have to wait longer than a day for either IT or your business intelligence department to make/change a report for you.
2. Across the organisation there are more than 100 requests pending for reporting /dashboard /scorecard changes waiting for a specialist to deliver them.
3. When you attend meetings, there are multiple numbers being quoted for the same thing – and you don't know which of them is correct.
4. When you talk about fundamental things like transaction, account, balance or available stock – and you discover that the person you are talking to is using the same words but means something different to what you mean.
5. You can't get an instantly understanding when glancing at a report/dashboard/scorecard and what it is telling you.
6. The commentary is larger than the automatically generated report.
7. The report is not generated automatically but is a handcrafted labour of love by either yourself or one of your staff, or you spend hours trying to locate the right data and then have to consolidate it manually into Excel.
8. It takes longer than 5 minutes to view a new report.
9. You can't access the report when and where you most need it.
10. There are hundreds of reports available to you but you don't trust them and you spend time trying to manually validate key numbers.

Anything look familiar to you? Go read Steve's entire post, which includes his definition of analytics.

As media companies continue selling off their newspapers to cut losses and news organizations succomb to the revenue tease of infotainment, it’s refreshing to see at least one positive trend in journalism moving forward.

With a nod to my friend Craig Carroll, who is doing his own innovative work at University of North Carolina in measuring new media and associating business value with PR, I point you to this timely piece in Miller-McCune’s December issue: “Deep Throat Meets Data Mining.”

Author and Editor-in-chief John Mecklin turns the data-mining-equals-big-brother rock over for a look underneath at the lush, maybe microscopic life flourishing where the sun don’t shine. Sure, he agrees, data mining in the wrong hands can threaten privacy, but that’s what the constitution and laws are for. In the right hands – in this case, the treasured digits of the investigative journalist – data mining may be no less than the savior of democracy.

Here’s a world where money man and motor mouth Sam Zell explains away his strangulation of the Chicago Trib by observing, "I haven't figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize." But with investigative journalism responsible for revealing everything from Nixon’s election shenanigans to warrantless wiretapping and dereliction of moral duty at Walter Reed, we need to get creative to save the free press that defines the real real America.

Mecklin reminds us that data mining is simply a fast and highly efficient way to filter through impossible piles of data and find associations, trends and outliers that surface important insights. One that might save our intrepid investigators countless (paid or unpaid) weeks and months of paper (or digital) shuffling.

It's not just that data mining is SAS' sweet spot. Duke University is dedicating an endowed chair to the cause of computational journalism. Looks like a trend well worth investigating.

The announcement that SAS’ new conference center will support LEED standards is a great opportunity to ponder some of the converging trends in environmental sustainability. With evidence that the economic benefits rival the environmental gain, companies are really taking notice.

The Climate Counts Scorecard showcases companies taking steps to mitigate their carbon footprints and directly encourages consumers to patronize (and promote) them. That’ll get CEOs to look up from their stock charts. And studies such as “Measuring the Transparency of Environmental Sustainability Reporting” from Brad Rollins, Katie Delahaye Paine and Peter Kowalski, help put some context and credibility around the claims, using companies’ public communications as data points.

SAS CEO Jim Goodnight said at the launch of the company's SAS for Sustainability Management last spring that it no longer matters what you believe about the causes of climate change. Addressing it has become a business reality, thanks to media attention and consumer concerns.

What’s important here is moving the discussion beyond “greenwashing” to achieving real improvement, from both an economical and environmental perspective. Economical? That’ll get the CEO to do more than just look up – how about sign up!

As for SAS’ own credentials, SAS is putting its money where its mouth is by using its own SAS for Sustainability Management to begin to incorporate green initiatives into the company’s overall performance management framework. SAS Canada’s LEED-compliant headquarters , which opened in April 06, was Toronto’s first LEED- registered commercial building. The new conference center in Cary will overlook a solar farm that feeds the grid on which it sits. SAS UK, which rests on the riverfront (lucky them!), is exploring hydro-electric power to supply some of its energy needs.

It will be exciting to see how analytics can not only validate and justify forthcoming efforts, but actually create new levels of incentives to do the right thing.

It’s been a big week of mirror gazing in the PR funhouse. What does this have to do with SAS? Let’s just call it a convenient excuse to congratulate our PR department for being recognized by IT journalists as one of the top PR teams in the country. For its third annual listing of agencies and inhouse teams, PRSourceCode surveyed more than 800 IT journalists to honor the IT PR industry's "best of the best."

This comes amid a revived discussion among PR bloggers about the relevancy of PR in the Web 2.0 world. Famed blogger Robert Scoble may not have started it, but he summarized the discusion. Some lament that PR flacks who “don’t get” Web 2.0 are causing grief by sending misdirected pitches and misunderstanding new rules of engagement. A number bloggers disagree on whether PR pros are out of step or PR continues to provide a critical service.

The “industry” must change? I think that only happens in hindsight. Bloggers are saying what reporters have said for years (reacting to what bad PR people have done for years): Help me do my job or leave me alone. Use the tools available to you wisely and informatively or put them back in the drawer. In thee years we’ll be complaining that old hacks can’t shake the Facebook habit and are driving opinion leaders buggy with irrelevant tweets.

So what might SAS be doing right? I hope it’s as simple as using the same principles that have always worked: be respectful, helpful and informative. Build relationships, not hit lists. That’s it. Always worked, still does, and will next year – for far more than PR efforts.

What does it really mean to be a global company? From a communications perspective, it certainly demands that we all speak the same language, whether its in English, Chinese, French, Danish or Bahasa Malayu. For that matter, whether it’s US English, UK English, Aussie, Kiwi or South African. Challenge? You bet.

It was that challenge that carried me recently to Malaysia, my first foray beyond the western hemisphere. As the guests of SAS Malaysia , we – my colleague Bart Queen of C3 Communications and I – conducted two media training workshops with a group representing several SAS operations in southeast Asia.

Ah, media training, you say! Do you mean, spin and subterfuge? Not at all.

Have you ever listened to an interview with a brilliant, knowledgeable, experienced expert who – despite a barrelful of content that was insightful, intriguing and all those in-words – had you drooling in your blackberry before two minutes was up? Or who distracted you with tics, ums and repetitive air-chopping or spider pushups (picture a spider doing mirror image dancing) so you were riveted by his fingers instead of his facts?

Even the most polished presenter (mind you, I said “presenter,” not “communicator” for a reason) gets zero marks when the shine glosses over garble. I’m talking about knowing exactly how to say what you want to say, and practicing it. Over and over.

And surprise – it doesn’t vary from country to country. The same skills and preparation work, no matter where or to whom we speak. This kind of capacity is life-changing – the ability to communicate effectively and powerfully can open up new worlds in both personal and professional settings.

For SAS, it means that what we started eight years ago with our first brand campaign – The Power to Know(tm) – has changed who we are as a company because it changes how we say who we are, and thus how we are perceived. In every language.

And there’s more work to do to hone the message (remember, message and not spin!). We must communicate effectively who we are, what we do, and how we benefit customers – not just those who use our software, but those who enjoy the products and services our customers provide.

The best news is that it works. That it is universal. And that working across cultures to develop a universally accepted and understood voice is as rewarding in the process as in the product.

More on the message later!

In a recent issue of its e-mail newsletter, “CIO Minute Editor’s Pick,” CIO magazine listed its top five must-read management books for IT executives. I can’t imagine why I would be surprised that of the five authors, three have direct relationships with SAS. Each has written and/or spoken about the company, with the company, or for the company. But is this a coincidence?

Remember, we’re not talking about Microsoft or Google – EVERYBODY writes about them. We’re talking about highly-respected academics and experts who associate themselves with SAS, and use the company as a model for doing things right:

• Jeffrey Pfeffer has wondered for years (out loud, in front of countless Stanford students, and in writing) why everyone doesn’t understand that long-term investment in employees trumps short-term cost cutting. He uses SAS’ employee-friendly policies as examples. And then some.
  
• Babson College professor Tom Davenport has written (and co-presented with SAS CMO Jim Davis) on that competing on analytics is the last horizon for businesses battling commoditization of products and services.
  
• Gary Hamel, noted business strategist and author as well, is keynoting a series of SAS executive events this year in Las Vegas and London.

Either they have unimpeachable taste, or SAS does.