Rachel Alt-Simmons is a business transformation practitioner whose expertise extends to operationalizing analytic capabilities vertically and horizontally through organizations. As the Business Transformation Lead for customer analytics at SAS Institute, she is responsible for redesign and optimization of operational analytic workflow, business process redesign, training/knowledge transfer, and change management strategies for customers. Prior to SAS, Rachel served as Assistant Vice President, Center of Excellence, Enterprise Business Intelligence & Analytics at Travelers, and as Director, BI & Analytics, Global Wealth Management at The Hartford. Rachel Alt-Simmons is a certified Project Management Professional, certified Agile Practitioner, Six Sigma Black Belt, certified Lean Master, and holds a post as adjunct professor of computer science at Boston University’s Metropolitan College. She received her master’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Boston University.
Just this week, I had a whirlwind experience with three customer loyalty programs that left me scratching my head (and not necessarily feeling loyal): Loyalty Experience#1: No value The other day, I went out to dinner with a friend of mine. The restaurant we went to is part of a
Like many people, I had a bit of a break over the holiday, and like many people, I did a little early Spring-cleaning during my time off. But unfortunately, my house is still messy, because the cleaning I did was electronic: After recently merging my four email accounts into Outlook,
When we talk about digital customer services, it’s all about creating online self-service capabilities for our customers. This is great for everyone! We’ve made it easy for the customer to get what they need; it’s cheaper and faster for organizations to deliver the service to the customer. Need a copy
I recently worked with a company (we’ll call them ABC, Inc.) on a customer segmentation strategy. This particular organization has a predefined set of marketing campaigns that they would send to all of their customers. There was no differentiation in the messaging or channel. We created a number of predictive
For marketing analysts, one of the beautiful things about digital advertising is it’s “trackability.” Every interaction on the web generates a piece of data, so in theory, you know where and when your ad was seen, who clicked on it, and any subsequent conversion. But what if the online advertisements
Back in 2007, the NY Times published an article about “The Google Way.” The premise behind the Google Way is to give engineers 20% of their time to spend on new company related ideas and projects that interest them. For a while this became the management strategy du jour as
The online dating website OKCupid recently posted the results of some real life experiments that they had performed on their user community. The experiments included three tests to evaluate the influence of certain user profile changes in compatibility matching (manipulating compatibility scores, suppressing user profile photos and the impact of
I had the opportunity recently to attend the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) “Masters of Marketing” conference. In almost every presentation, each CMO credited their success in the marketplace with an ability to take risks. With the stratospheric growth in digital marketing initiatives and a need for speed-to-market, rapid innovation
Maybe you’re like me – you work with (or within) a lot of large companies with big marketing departments. Everyone is crazy for “customer intimacy,” but what exactly does that mean? As much as I preach about knowing and understanding your customer – they end up as an aggregate: a
As marketers, many of us work in siloed organizations. Some companies organize around products, other companies organize around functions, and still others around geographies (and even some can make silos out of all of those areas together!). The organizational structures, processes and systems supporting these silos keep us from seeing
I’m beginning to think that 2012 is the year of the customer. We’ve seen a huge increase in customer experience initiatives coming out of the financial services and insurance industry this year. As we’re working with these companies to help them through this journey, you can almost forget that you
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
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
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s that wonderful time of the year when people start anew and we all start making promises to ourselves about the things we want to accomplish in the year ahead. If you’re looking for some ways to ramp up your personal and professional expertise this year,
I started working with a large financial services customer recently that’s implementing an enterprise-level strategic analytic application. If they’re successful, these analytics will be a game changer for this organization. Unfortunately, I can’t discuss what they’re implementing, but the analytics enable a key business strategy, and this initiative has the
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
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
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
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
I’ve been hanging out in Canada again, eh? Just last week, I snuck over the border to meet with some of our insurance customers in the Greater Toronto Area (affectionately known as “GTA”). This was my fifth trip this year and I’m pleased to say that not only have I
Summer has almost come to a close – and thank goodness! Up here in the Northeast, we’ve been subjected to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. I’ve been waiting for the locusts to descend! And outside of dodging hail and charging my laptop with my car’s cigarette lighter when we lost
I am one of those rare people that enjoys process; not rigid process and military-like discipline, but order. Wasted effort drives me insane. I’ve been on projects all through my career where I feel like the project teams are constantly reinventing the wheel, because nobody bothered to capture any documentation
I have recently discovered “mind mapping.” Mind mapping is not a new concept, but since I (re)learned it, I’ve found it to be an excellent tool for analyzing business problems and processes. I thought you might find it interesting too! Here’s an example: The other day, I was thinking about
The SAS office in New York City has one of the best views in the city. Sitting on the 47th floor of a skyscraper on 7th Avenue, the Executive Briefing Room overlooks Central Park and it has a highly distracting view – especially on such a nice sunny day. What
A midsize regional health insurer with approximately 3,000 employees across 10 locations in the Western United States created a role for a business continuity manager (BCM) reporting to the chief operating officer. In this organization, the enterprise risk management (ERM) functions, established in 2004, are owned by the chief legal
The goal of enterprise risk management (ERM) is to eliminate the siloed approach to identifying, monitoring and managing risk practices throughout an organization. By applying a consistent approach to ERM policies and procedures through a clearly delineated organizational risk hierarchy, organizations can mitigate risk and identify new business opportunities. Insurers
Remember the old Reese’s peanut butter cup advertisement? Two people are walking down the street – one eating peanut butter, the other chocolate – they run into each other and the chocolate and the peanut butter get mixed up. They sample the new concoction and marvel at the wonderful mixture
Unlike any other software vendor, SAS has one of the most vibrant and engaged user communities in the world. SAS User Groups (SUG), communities formed and managed by SAS users, are in place all over the world. In the US alone we have regional and local SUGs as well as
While the first day of the SAS Global Forum Executive Conference focused on the business application of analytics, the second day was dedicated to analytics and IT management. One of the keynote presenters was Erik Brynjolfsson, the Schussel Family Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Erik’s research and
In this panel discussion, a diverse group of companies from different industries are finding profitable growth opportunities through analytics. We’re joined by: Jim Foreman, Director of Circulation Analytic, Staples Halina Karachuk, VP Innovation, AXA Equitable Life Barb Buettin, Director, CRM – Enterprise Information Management, Chico’s Nelle Schantz, Sr. Marketing Director,
