Entries tagged as analytics
Entries tagged as analytics
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The recent article, Data-Driven Crime Fighting in Intelligent Enterprise reminded me of the feature we published in sascom earlier this year from Dr. Colleen McCue, a consultant who specializes in the provision of public safety and national security research, analysis and training.
From the Intelligent Enterprise piece:
If there was a time when law enforcement agencies suffered from an information deficit, it's passed. Of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States, the vast majority has some form of technology for collecting crime-related data in digital form. The biggest city agencies have sophisticated data warehouses, and even the most provincial are database savvy.  From the sascom piece, Criminal Justice in the Post-9/11 Era:While information sharing requires a cultural change and paradigm shift in the larger public safety community, advanced analytical techniques are available now. The same tools that were being used to prevent people from switching their cellular telephone service provider and to stock shelves at our local supermarkets before Sept. 11 can be used to create safer, healthier communities and enhance homeland security. Thursday, November 19. 2009George Jetson stops pushing the button
In September, I published a few posts from the Midwest SAS Users Group (MWSUG) conference, including coverage of presentations from SAS VP John Sall, SAS CIO Suzanne Gordon, SAS Consultant Kirk Paul Lafler and JMP Marketing Director Jon Weisz.
Now that the MWSUG organizers have published the conference papers online and announced the best paper winners, I want to highlight my favorite talk from the conference: Revolutionary BI by Charles Kincaid. Charles, an Engagement Director at COMSYS, describes the ways he thinks analytics and business intelligence will be used and shared inside organizations in the future, and I think even George Jetson's employer Spacely Sprockets could benefit from his ideas. If you've ever wondered how Web 2.0 will affect reporting and analytics in the future, Charles lays out the most comprehensive predictions I've seen yet. He looks beyond social sharing features like those you find on Facebook and Twitter, and describes intelligent reporting systems that will recognize common users of single data sources and allow report users to favorite or suggest changes to reports that are created by other users. In addition to the MWSUG talk, Charles has presented his paper at other conferences, including SAS Global Forum 2009 in Washington, DC. In fact, he says his presentation at SAS Global Forum inspired one conference attendee to try some of Charles' ideas in his own banking organization, and that user is now presenting his results at SAS conferences too. Read the full paper to understand Charles' vision for the future of business intelligence. Maybe you'll be inspired too. Wednesday, November 11. 2009Analytic truths or analytic myths?
Over at The Data Mining Research blog, Sandro posted a link to the presentations from a recent SAS Forum Switzerland. While browsing the presentation slides, I came across this great list of questions from a UBS presentation by Daniel Rüegge, Head of Business and Client Analytics.
Daniel calls these the top 10 paradigms in analytics to be questioned and asks, "Are they true? Are they of help? How do you apply them?" What do you think? Which of the ten are true, and which are complete myths?
Wednesday, November 4. 2009Analytic translation
I love this idea of the analytics community being the "translation layer" within an organization. Customer Lori Bieda introduced the concept in the fourth quarter 2009 sascom column, Lost in translation:
For large organizations with many lines of business and deep, rich databases, making sense of information has become a business itself. What is needed now is a “translation layer” to ground businesses in fact-based decision making. The analytics community is ideally positioned to become the translation layer.Bieda, who leads a team of 80 analysts at Canadian bank CIBC, explores this idea further in the new white paper, The Translation Layer. The paper includes a useful chart defining and describing three roles for analytic workers in the tranlation layer:
Friday, October 30. 2009Uneasy bedfellows: analysis and intuition?
Yesterday at The Premier Business Leadership Series, I had the tremendous pleasure of attending the panel debate Balancing Intuition and Analytics in Decision Making. The panelists were: Malcolm Gladwell - Best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success, Blink and The Tipping Point; Tom Davenport - Best-selling author of Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning and President's Distinguished Professor at Babson College; and Thornton May - Futurist, Executive Director and Dean of the IT Leadership Academy . The panel continued a discussion that Malcolm had introduced in his keynote address earlier about Judgment - the ability to make decisions in seconds based on the acquired experience of years of practical application (or the 10,000 hour rule - the amount of time it takes to be truly great at something). As an aside, I really wonder about this - why are there so many young successful people if you need a minimum of 10 years of experience; are they drawing on something more than just experience or raw talent? At first glance, you would expect the panel to split pretty firmly into two camps: The "experience is king" camp led by Malcolm and the "you can't get enough data" camp led by Tom and Thornton. But what struck me as interesting was actually how close the two camps were: Malcolm admitted that experience needs feedback to be valuable (feedback from objective business analytics for example) and Tom and Thornton acknowledged that Analytics needs interpretation and judgment to put information into context and to formulate an appropriate response. As I paraphrased in Thornton's lunch, business analytics is the most powerful form of business decision-support not decision-making. In my opinion, when you get the mix of education, experience and (reliable) information right, you release executive creativity, not constrain it. What they all agreed upon was that there has to be a greater understanding of the power and limitations of analytics in the boardroom - there are too many executives who are woefully underestimating or overestimating what can be done with these powerful tools. As the panel agreed, models don't kill businesses; fools with models kill businesses. On the other hand, what can't experts with models achieve? Anyway, the panel was incredibly stimulating, all three panelists were insightful, funny, engaging story-tellers who could really get their points across and set us up for the afternoon Executive Workshops (I was in Thornton's). Although I must admit to some bias (Malcolm would pick me up on that anyway). I have to admit that, all things considered, this has been the best PBLS so far. If you were one of the unfortunate people who missed the conference (shame on you), I strongly recommend you visit the main site - the keynote sessions and panels were filmed and will be available as streaming video.It's not the same, but you would do yourself a disservice by not taking advantage of it. Here's looking forward to the next event in the series in mid-2010 in Europe. I hope to see you there. James Taylor's take on why analytics matters
Decision management expert James Taylor wins the prize for most prolific blogger from The Series.
James gives us thorough summaries of great presentations on:
Thursday, October 29. 2009The great debate: analytics vs. instinct
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Blink, and Tom Davenport, Babson College professor and author of Competing on Analytics, engaged this morning in a debate on a live Webcast onsite at The Premier Business Leadership Series at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. The theme of the debate is analytics vs. instinct: which works best for strategic decision-making.
I’ll share a few highlights here, captured from our position among the production crew in the control room. (You can view the archive here): Gladwell’s worry with analytics, though he does value them, is that there is a tendency for people to use them in areas where they don’t belong, and often say that there’s no room for gut instinct. But that doesn’t mean he’s squarely in the “gut instinct” camp. Gladwell says that intuition is most useful in the context of a great deal of expertise, and that expertise is most often grounded in data. Davenport still countered, however, by stating that analytical decisions have been proven in academic studies as more likely to be correct. Davenport elaborated on the types of decisions or situations that are appropriate for an analytic approach:
All in all, a fair fight. But this writer lands in Gladwell’s corner, because how many times has a pediatrician told a mother, when faced with those “mystery” symptoms, to trust herself to know when her child is really sick. Is it all about the data? What does your gut tell you? Friday, October 2. 2009Why small and midsize businesses need analytics
The SMB segment (known as SME in Europe) is the growth engine for national and global markets and easily accounts for over 98 percent of all companies. Despite their small to midsize statures, SMBs also employ 99 percent of the workforce around the world. You can see why governments are intent on policies that spur growth in SMB.
With those statistics in mind, you can also start to see why – on October 7 – SAS is launching the first of many webcasts for Small to Midsize Businesses. In the past year, we’ve seen the fall of hundreds of companies both large, midize and small. Down the street from my home there is a modest shopping mall called Saltbox Village. It contains a McDonalds and 10 retail stores. In the past year, 3 of the 10 have closed their doors. The ongoing focus for SMB survival has been about cutting costs and gaining deeper insights into customer behavior. The old rule remains true: it’s easier to sell products to existing clients than it is to find new ones. The questions that face many SMBs are daunting:
I encourage SMBs in any industry to attend our upcoming webcast called Driving Your Small and Midsize Business to Success with Strategic Analytic Investments. You’ll see how simple tools can change the way you do business. Learn what analytics can do for your company. And listen to how other SMBs obtained and ROI immediately after the solutions went ‘live.’ Wednesday, September 23. 2009Data mining and statistics are everywhereThursday, September 10. 2009How is analytics transforming your world?Monday, August 24. 200910 signs you might need analytics (thanks to Steve Bennett)
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. Anything look familiar to you? Go read Steve's entire post, which includes his definition of analytics. Wednesday, August 12. 2009Everyone likes a good sports metaphor
Moneyball turned the sports metaphor into a book. Likewise, Competing on Analytics included an interesting section about analytics in professional sports. In sascom magazine, we recently told you about three sports teams using analytics to make better decisions. There's even a Journal of Quantitative Analytics in Sports. Did you know that?
 The latest story I've seen about a pro sports team using analytics comes from the NHL. The Carolina Hurricanes hockey team is optimizing ticket sales revenues with IDeaS software. (IDeaS is a SAS company.) The full story says the NHL team has uncovered the secret to optimal ticket sales. Here's an excerpt: Among various observations about the 2007-08 hockey season, IDeaS ultimately found that Hurricanes tickets with optimized pricing could have resulted in a 4.5 percent revenue increase overall. After delving deeper into analysis of each consumer segment, including season ticket holders, promotional consumers and base price consumers, IDeaS found that pricing for the various consumer segments and relevant products was less than optimal. Additionally, there were numerous situations where the high number of promotional tickets sold, due to the deep discounts, actually resulted in revenue dilution and did not maximize revenue. IDeaS also found frequent occurrences where not enough discounts of promotional ticket prices led to lower ticket sales and missed revenue opportunity.You might not be managing a sports team, but if the pros in these leagues find value in using analytics to compete, I bet you can too. Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cadenl/ / CC BY 2.0 Tuesday, July 28. 2009Analytics is still our middle name
Big news in our industry this morning: IBM plans to buy analytics software vendor SPSS for $1.2 billion.
In one sense, I'm sad to see SPSS disappearing into the large IBM stack. Besides SAS, SPSS was one of the last independent analytic software companies. A colleague says, “It’s the end of the analytics cold war.” I've been saying all along that analytics is required for success. Yes, data integration, data quality, and query & reporting are important too but, as W. Edwards Deming says, “The object of taking data is to provide a basis for action.” If you collect data with a purpose (and even if you opportunistically collect data with no specific purpose), you need analytics to use that data to make the best decisions, take the best actions and foresee the best opportunities. Analytics is what helps derive the most value from data and what allows continuous learning and improvement SAS has always been focused on helping customers extract truths from data with analytics -- analysis is our middle name. Others are realizing the value of analytics, as reflected in this acquisition and in the interest around R and other analytical capabilities. Why do analytics matter now more than ever? The growing volumes of data — both structured and unstructured — and the business world's growing complexity and pace of change require analytics. Companies are under enormous stress. They're faced with surviving the recession, preparing for an eventual recovery, competing globally… analytics is relevant everywhere. Beyond providing validation for the analytics marketplace, what else does this acquisition mean? What do we think it says about the two companies involved? To be honest, it's not too much of a surprise. SPSS has been on the market for years. They've been unable to raise funds for innovation, and their growth has been stagnant. Unlike SAS, they have not provided the extensibility many require to meet evolving needs. IBM bought SPSS to fill a gap and to continue its strategy of buying the individual bits for a framework that lets them compete better with Oracle, SAP and others. IBM is primarily a hardware and services provider with a small fraction of their overall revenue coming from its software group. What about joint SAS, IBM customers? How does the acquisition affect SAS' partnership with IBM? Our partnership with IBM is sponsored within their hardware group, and this new IBM acquisition is being handled through their software group. The collaboration we have with IBM Global Services and the Hardware Group will continue—and this is in the best interest of customers. While IBM spends time integrating SPSS into its software stack, SAS will continue to innovate. We'll maintain focus on providing value to our customers, evolving with them to meet their changing needs. We'll keep listening to customers and keep coming up with new ways to solve their business problems. We are free to partner, collaborate and innovate with any partner to help deliver the analytics infrastructure needed regardless of environment, industry, level of expertise or application area. SAS will keep investing generously in R&D as we have always done and we'll continue to provide customers with many options. Overall, this acquisition further validates that there's a difference between plain old BI and business analytics. The ongoing differentiation in our marketplace will come from analytics. And last year, who led the marketplace in analytics? Companies chose SAS Analytics more often than the next most popular 16 analytics suppliers COMBINED (including SPSS). That's according to IDC's June 2009 Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2008 Vendor Shares report. Tuesday, July 14. 2009Gain insights to manage your Server Virtualization footprint in useful manner
Almost every other article or blog or survey I read nowadays discusses virtualization and cloud computing topics. Why? Partly because IT operations and infrastructure professionals are facing difficulty monitoring and managing computing resources in a distributed environment. They have to ensure that capacity is always available to be assigned as demanded by applications or users without affecting service levels and costs. This is easier said than done especially when your virtualized pool of resources will grow in size every year.
The benefits from server virtualization can’t be fully realized unless IT groups can track and analyze use, availability and performance from physical and virtual IT resources quickly and accurately. IT groups also need to measure virtualization successes in terms of what business units stand to gain – whether it is calculating reduced customer call waiting time or total cost per help desk contact per month. In a recent article available on BeyeNETWORK, I have described a step-by-step approach on how data center professionals can take an analytical approach to server virtualization initiative and get positive results. Two key steps are involved as you orchestrate large numbers of dynamically changing physical servers, network resources, and virtual machines:
Agree or Disagree? Let’s open up for comments, arguments, additions, questions. Stay tuned for my future entries on specific topics like data mining, analytics, business intelligence for IT, Grid Computing and more. Friday, May 22. 2009Breakfast in America (or Chicago to be precise)
Welcome to the first of what is intended to be a regular blog of what’s going on in the big wide world of insurance.
I recently attended a breakfast roundtable in Chicago by Mark Gorman and Tom Davenport on “Building a Business Analytics Culture in Insurance.” This event, organized by SAS, attracted several insurance executives, although the number was down slightly due to some last-minute withdrawals who were advised not to travel due to a possible outbreak of swine (sorry, H1N1) flu. Mark Gorman, a leading independent insurance consultant, led an open discussion on how insurance companies need to embrace the idea of an analytical culture within their organization to be successful, especially in regards to data quality and data ownership. Mark drew from his experience in the insurance industry. As Mark discussed his points, Tom Davenport, co-author of Competing on Analytics, spoke about how other industries have implemented similar ideas with much success. Finally, Mark pointed out that even though analytics is not new to the insurance industry, it has yet to be fully adopted by the majority of insurers. However, there are innovative companies, like Progressive, leading the way. He sees change on the horizon, but the influence for this change is likely to come from middle management who are more familiar with the technology than senior executives. Continue reading "Breakfast in America (or Chicago to be precise)" |
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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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Friday, November 20. 2009 Execs Want Focus On Goals, Not Just Metrics -- Smarter Executive -- InformationWeek Friday, November 20. 2009 Data-Driven Crime Fighting Intelligent Enterprise: Better Insight for Business Decisions Thursday, November 19. 2009 SAS chief: Hot on fraud detection, cool on cloud computing - Network World Friday, November 13. 2009 11 Ideas for Economic Recovery Friday, November 13. 2009 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
Thu, 19.11.2009 17:14
Alison Bolen posted a nice list of analytic truths, or perhaps myths, on the SAS [...]
Thu, 19.11.2009 16:52
1.F 2.F 3F (would be T if it were "most" not "every") 4 any of the above 5 [...]
Tue, 17.11.2009 19:28
Hi Ken, Your comments resonate strongly with our discussions with mobile [...]
Sat, 14.11.2009 14:57
It is all about job security. So far the market demand for R developers is [...]
Tue, 10.11.2009 16:03
There was another trend I noticed at our recent Premier Business Leadership [...]