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
A common mistake in bad or misused software is choosing a forecasting model based solely on the model’s “fit to history” (often referred to as “best fit” or “pick best” functionality). The software provides (or the forecaster builds) several competing models which are then evaluated against recent history. The model
“Wise Enterprise: Best Practices for Managing Predictive Analytics” was the title, and the assignment to the panel at the recent Predictive Analytics World conference in New York was to share “poignant moments of failure.” Wayne Thompson from SAS began, going back ten years to describe a network intrusion project. He
I was recently asked the following question: I am using bootstrap simulations to compute critical values for a statistical test. Suppose I have test statistic for which I want a p-value. How do I compute this? The answer to this question doesn't require knowing anything about bootstrap methods. An equivalent
Most bloggers start thinking about blog editorial calendars from a planning perspective. You want to make sure you have enough content to keep the blog updated somewhat regularly, and you want to make sure you are publishing content that your audience needs, without overlooking any of your prioritized topic areas
As I mentioned when creating a user-defined format for Information Maps in a prior post custom or user-defined formats can be created and stored quickly in the default format catalog for all Business Intelligence products within "Lev1SASAppSASEnvironmentSASFormats". This is useful for custom sorting, reclassifying or grouping data as well as
When discussing fraud and abuse, it often (very often) becomes a philosophical discussion of whether aberrant activities are fraudulent or abusive. The quick difference being that fraudulent is intentional and abuse is not. The distinction quickly becomes an issue of legal and illegal as opposed to right and wrong. What
If you are feeling out of sorts, a bit down and out, and want to take it all the way to full-blown depression, have I got a book recommendation for you: “Normal Accidents”, by Charles Perrow (1984). Perrow’s premise is that we have designed certain systems, nuclear reactors being his primary
When you analyze data, you will occasionally have to deal with categorical variables. The typical situation is that you want to repeat an analysis or computation for each level (category) of a categorical variable. For example, you might want to analyze males separately from females. Unlike most other SAS procedures,
Of course, forecasting the stock market is not perfectly analogous to forecasting demand for a product. The asking price for a stock is largely "anchored" by the price of its most recent trades. While market values may appear to randomly drift up and down, or in a general direction, we generally
After enduring 18 months in a punishing economy, grocers have emerged in better shape than most retail segments according to the Fifth Annual Supermarket Benchmark Study from RIS News and IDC Retail Insights. Still, there are no expectations of returning to business as usual, and technology is a key linchpin
In this second of three flash reports from last week's Analytics2011 conference, we hear about a favorite topic of mine -- the relationship between demand volatility and forecastability. Rob Miller of Avantor Performance Materials, on Forecastability and Demand Volatility The "comet chart," illustrating the relationship between demand volatility and forecast
We'll interrupt the series on Why Forecasts are Wrong, with a report from the inaugural Analytics 2011 conference, held last week in Orlando. A2011 drew over 1025 attendees (from 44 states and over 25 counties). The Analytics conference series features a wide range of topics (including forecasting, optimization, data mining, text
In SAS/IML 9.22 and beyond, you can call the R statistical programming language from within a SAS/IML program. The syntax is similar to the syntax for calling SAS from SAS/IML: You use a SUBMIT statement, but add the R option: SUBMIT / R. All statements in the program between the
Today SAS employees are celebrating the news announced last evening by the Great Place to Work Institute. SAS is ranked No. 2 on the World’s Best Multinational Workplaces list! "This list recognizes global companies that have demonstrated a truly serious commitment to creating workplaces that foster trust, pride and camaraderie
This week's featured tip is from master SAS user Art Carpenter and his classic book Carpenter's Complete Guide to the SAS REPORT Procedure. In his review for the book, Rick Mitchell-senior systems analyst at Westat-said "I am green with envy for the newest generation of SAS programmers because I wish that I had had this book in
In 27 years at SAS, Keith Collins says his whole career has been about scaling to the enterprise. He wonders, "Why now do we call it big data? What will the next generation call it? Bigger data?" Keith led a panel of business leaders at the Premier Business Leadership Series
I was privileged to attend the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Board of Directors meeting in Washington D.C. recently. Attended by some 300 senior executives of American Manufacturing companies, it was like a who’s-who in brand names anyone would recognize. NAM is a very big influencer of public policy on
"I think that my data are exponentially distributed, but how can I check?" I get asked that question a lot. Well, not specifically that question. Sometimes the question is about the normal, lognormal, or gamma distribution. A related question is "Which distribution does my data have," which was recently discussed
My friend and colleague Amartya Bhattacharjy led a roundtable discussion today titled, Merging Art and Science in Marketing at #PBLS11, which I've tried to distill for you here. He began with the traditional view of marketing in terms of two types of activities that had their own mindsets: Brand marketing (mass
It’s bold, autumnal, and adorns team uniforms, frozen desserts, and hair. Wherever orange is used, it makes a statement. With changing leaves and Halloween approaching, it’s appropriate to call attention to fall colors and covers. For this post, I rounded up all of the orange SAS book titles that I
My colleague and friend Colleen Cruz led a roundtable discussion at #PBLS11, titled How to Boost Effectiveness with Marketing Operations Management (MOM). There was a robust discussion that brought out some of the main advantages of a marketing operations management solution, and I captured three main ones to provide a summary: Boost efficiency with
Before a group of reporters representing countries from as far away as Mexico, Brazil and Japan, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight touted the company’s continued growth, innovation and unmatched culture during its annual Media Day event at SAS world headquarters in Cary, Tuesday. “In 2011, SAS has continued to grow as
I’ve discovered that bestselling author Jim Collins is both a great writer and a great speaker because his keynote address at #PBLS11 has been absolutely riveting. And his lessons on greatness can certainly apply to marketing, so I’ve summarized it for us here: He started by stating that greatness is
Years ago and a seemingly far galaxy away, I wrote about how to modify 9.1.3 to start Enterprise Guide users in a different location for the File folder. By default, the user only can access their personal SAS Temporary File. Why change this? I would prefer to use a central
Andy Swenson, VP of Database and Revenue Management at Pinnacle Entertainment outlined their approach to customer loyalty, which included some great takeaways for companies in any industry. The gaming resorts leader partnered with Teradata to provide the database and with SAS to handle the marketing solution that enabled them to differentiate
When you Google “big data,” you get big data about big data. We are living in the age of information overload, which creates many challenges, including big data, information silos and integration issues. It was my great pleasure to introduce a panel of experts at The Premier Business Leadership Series
Scott Hudgins, VP of Customer Managed Relationships at The Walt Disney Company shared details about how Disney has approached CRM and the guiding principles and key learnings that have driven their success. They began their CRM process in 2001 knowing that most of their customers were somewhere in one of their
Jim Bampos presented in a session today at PBLS11 titled, Driving the Total Customer Experience with Data. He described the extraordinary journey he’s led his company on to manage customer experience and how it literally transformed EMC to be centered on the customer. Prior to embarking on that journey, EMC saw itself as a data
The Premier Business Leadership Series in Orlando was the backdrop for a number of news announcements from SAS. Here's a rundown: 1. Big Data research A new survey has found that organizations with formal data management strategies derive more value from data assets and outperform competitors. The survey, Big Data:
