+Alison Bolen is an editor at SAS, where she writes and edits content about analytics and emerging topics. Since starting at SAS in 1999, Alison has edited print publications, Web sites, e-newsletters, customer success stories and blogs. She has a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism from Ohio University and a master’s degree in technical writing from North Carolina State University.
At SAS, when we talk to customers about successful business analytics implementations, we hear a lot about the importance of executive sponsorship, aligning with business goals and continuing to build on your success by tracking and celebrating the successful milestones in your analytics projects. It's no surprise, really, that social
I painstakingly created my official schedule for Blogworld Expo earlier this week and realized half-way through the exercise that almost every session I'm planning to attend is part of the Social Media Business Summit, which, as far as I can tell, is like a conference within a conference. I probably
This is a fun and informative video from one of our partners, Sword Ciboodle. You can visit the Sword Ciboodle site to learn more about the partnership and how it can help you turn your customers into advocates.
~ Contributed by Courtney Peters ~ Next week I’ll be attending DMA10 in San Francisco, and I hope to accomplish a couple things while I am there. As a marketing professional, I’m eager to network with others in my field from all types of industries and market segments. I also
"Conversations pertaining to the oil and gas industry right now are toxic, to say the least," says Blake Jackson, Social Media Coordinator for Chesapeake Energy. Blake spoke today at a Ragan communications conference hosted at SAS headquarters in Cary, NC. In an environment where conversations about the energy industry tend
Next week, I'll be part of a blogging panel at the Ragan conference, "The Role of Communications in Creating Best Places to Work." I'm on the panel with colleagues David Biesack, Chris Hemedinger and Becky Graebe, and we'll primarily be talking about our internal blog program on the SAS intranet,
In blog posts, training courses and individual conversations over the past year, I've been challenging SAS employees to post one blog comment a day, every day. It's the kind of simple yet difficult challenge that can change habits and show long-term results. Why should you try it? A few reasons:
Presenter: Bert Dumars (@Bwdumars), Vice President E-Business & Interactive Marketing for Newell Rubbermaid From the program: Bert has worked with many departments through the Newell Rubbgermaid family to help transition social media from an online marketing tool into a company wide platform. Join him as he discusses the challenges and
How are you measuring your social media efforts? Whether you're just getting started or have spent years fine tuning your goals and measurments for social media, you'll learn something below from industry pros Katie Paine, CEO KDPaine & Partners, and Mark Chaves, Director of Media Intelligence, Customer Intelligence Product Marketing
~ Contributed by Stacey Alexander ~ So you’ve heard that Facebook is a great platform for business, and you’d like to use it, but don’t really know what to do past the initial step of setting up your account. Lucky for you, I wrote this blog post. Now, in case
If you need a quick, simple elevator pitch for why your company should have a blog, don't miss the post Corporate Blogs: How's Your Elevator Pitch These Days? from Conversation Agent, which includes elevator pitches from popular social media pros. If you'd like a longer explanation for why blogs matter
Here's something you don't expect to hear from a banking executive: "The best thing that happened is the financial crisis." Of course, Tonny Rabjerg is not your standard banking executive. He's the Vice President of CRM Systems at Danske Bank. "I know the financial crisis is not good for the
~ Contributed by Jens Olivarius ~ Wednesday at The Premier Business Leadership Series in Berlin, Futurist Thornton May challenged a group of international business executives with this question: Has the way people think about analytics changed over time? The response was a resounding yes, but for several different reasons. Yes,
Here's something you don't expect to hear from a banking executive: "The best thing that happened is the financial crisis." Of course, Tonny Rabjerg is not your standard banking executive. He's the Vice President of CRM Systems at Danske Bank. "I know the financial crisis is not good for the
I've always thought of myself as a doer. When other people are meeting and planning, I close my door, press mute and do things. For me doing means listening, experimenting, responding and writing - and it's nice to be recognized for what you do. I mention this because The Silicon
When you have favorite customers, you get excited to see them do exciting things. That's how I felt about seeing 1-800-FLOWERS.COM President Chris McCann on the CBS prime time show Undercover Boss. The reality show disguises corporate executives and sends them undercover as rank-and-file employees to learn what it's like
I realized as I was reading blog posts from the SAS Global Forum conference in Seattle earlier this month, that there was a lesson to share about all the different types of posts I was seeing. If you're like most conference attendees, you're thinking, "Who has time to blog while
Hi, I'm Alison. I've been blogging at the sascom voices blog for the past few years and recently moved into a new role as editor of blogs and social content for SAS. Right now, I'm focusing a lot of my time on developing our blogging program and coaching SAS employees
The SAS Social Media Analytics product launch was a huge hit with the press at SAS Global Forum. I wrote about it below, a lot of analysts and social media pros are blogging about it too, and it seemed for at least a few hours last Monday that everyone on
A lot of technology conferences are celebratory in nature. They showcase new products, highlight customer successes and provide a platform for authors, analysts and industry experts to praise these accomplishments. To be sure, there was plenty to celebrate at the SAS Global Forum Executive Conference. But this year’s conference -
A number of the sessions at today's SAS Global Forum Executive Conference included discussions about how IT and business leaders can best collaborate on business analytics projects, or how analysts and business decision makers can best work together. In one panel I attended, "Retail and Manufacturing Analytics: Driving Business-Building Insights
From posterous photos of Opening Session to the New York Times Bits Blog, the first blog posts about SAS Global Forum are starting to show up online. Writing on the Bits Blog, Steve Lohr says: Analysts who have looked at the new offering – and tried it out – are
A little less than two years ago on the sascom voices blog, I argued that even social media enthusiasts should be listening more to social media curmudgeons like Tom Davenport. Tom is best known in SAS circles for co-authoring the books Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning and
In a recent Datamation article, "Business Intelligence Software and Predictive Analytics," Jeff Vance asks, "What exactly is predictive analytics?" His answer, in part: "Take traditional business intelligence, combine it with data mining and add on statistical analysis and you have predictive analytics. Math geeks will squabble over the nuances, say,
The last time I mentioned Accenture on this blog, I linked to their recent survey results, which show that companies are recognizing the value of predictive analytics – and are planning for it. What does that mean for business analytics vendors? In a lot of ways, it means business leaders
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
~ Contributed by I-kong Fu ~ AnalyticsCamp is an unconference started by Nathan Gilliatt after a group of us met at a networking meeting in Raleigh last year called Web Analytics Wednesday. The first AnalyticsCamp will take place at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill on Saturday, February 6th,
It's been almost two weeks since I attended Podcamp Ohio, and I'm determined to publish a post today summarizing the event. I've started with my notes from Twitter as a base, and added in lots of links plus a few edits. I hope you'll find them useful. Creative Commons and
Do you remember the article, "This is your life ... with SAS" from the second quarter 2008 issue of sascom magazine? If you do, you'll remember how much information we were able to pack into two pages with the fun comic-strip format. If you don't remember it or never saw
We're working on an education piece for the second quarter 2009 issue of sascom. If that's an area that interests you, watch these videos to set the mood.
