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
“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
Customer segmentation is one of these topics that are defined in a multitude of different ways. And while all these definitions may be in some way correct, they tell more about the person‘s understanding of the subject than of the subject itself! The question is whether segmentation is a business application,
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
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 mid-October, at BAI Retail Delivery in Chicago, I went to one of the most widely attended sessions of the conference. It was a Q&A style interview of Randi Zuckerberg by Ron Insana, Senior Analyst, CNBC. Zuckerberg is the former Head of Marketing at Facebook and Founder and CEO of R
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
Well, that’s another year of PBLS completed and I have really enjoyed my first conference in sunny Orlando (when I would normally be worrying about the first winter frosts at home in the UK). With luck, I will be able to attend next year when the conference returns to Las
When companies launch innovation initiatives, they typically focus all of their time and energy on a feverish quest for the big breakthrough idea. But that initial spark of inspiration is merely a starting point. The real innovation challenge lies beyond the idea, in a long, complex journey from imagination to
