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.
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,
How can you find and act on information hidden in customer interactions? How can you use this information to create profitable results and create a consistent customer experience? It’s not just about sales and marketing teams interacting with the customers anymore. The entire organization must align drive a good, consistent
At the SAS Global Forum Executive Conference, SAS’ very own Jim Davis, Chief Marketing Officer, gave a great presentation entitled “Analytics – See Business Possibilities You Never Imagined.” He started off by asking the audience a couple of questions: How do we take analytics and make a difference in our
Okay…I don’t usually do the rah-rah SAS stuff, but it was a really great week here and I wanted to share. The Analytic Cheerleader is getting out her pom-poms and cheering for SAS! Since I’ve been a SAS employee for exactly 3 months, I thought it was a good time
In the latest news from the frontier of Internet technology, the NY Times presented an interesting article about the work that high tech providers are doing to ensure maximum system availability. Companies strive for the "5 nines," or 99.999% availability, although a more realistic number is a "4 nine," or
One of the best things about writing for the sascom blog is the amazing number of people, both internally and externally, that have reached out to share their stories and perspective, and ask more questions. It’s important for us bloggers to remember that while we may not see published comments
If I think back to the training, education and networking opportunities in my business intelligence and analytics career that have made the most difference, SAS user groups (SUG) stand out. As a new user to SAS many moons ago local, regional and international groups helped me develop skills that I
Happy New Year to everyone! As we gear up to start 2011, I thought I would share a holiday story about Apple’s tablet device - the iPad! When it first appeared on the market last April, critics derided the device as being an Apple gimmick – it was, after all,
I have a confession: I am not very good at math. I know that will come as a terrible surprise and disappointment to some of you. You may even be astonished that SAS would hire someone who doesn't have a PhD in statistics. But math is not the only skill
The term "analytics" has become so overused that I'm not sure anyone really knows what it means anymore - or at the very least, it means a lot of different things to different people. Sometimes analytics gets blended in with "business analytics" which gets blended in with "business intelligence." What
A few days ago, I wrote a post on the "soul" of analytics - basically the careful balance we need to keep between qualitative and quantitative decision-making. I asked others to post their experiences and perspective, and I was fortunate enough to begin a "dia-blog" with Colonel Jim Markley, Director
