Retail is one of the most time-sensitive industries. Find out how mega-chain Family Dollar Stores Inc., which operates more than 7,400 stores in 45 states, relies on high-performance analytics to shrink data processing windows from days to less than an hour and speed decision making. Scott Zucker, Vice President of
Tag: big data
The INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research kicks off April 15 in Huntington Beach, CA. I had a chance to preview a presentation by Glenn Bailey, Sr. Director of Operations Research at Manheim (the $3B wholesaler auto auctioneer). Glenn's talk is on "The Need for Speed: Responsive Predictive Analytics,"
“When I started using predictive analytics in 1991, I had a desktop computer with a 600 megabyte hard drive running SAS® 5.0 something,” said Olivia Rud, respected business intelligence thought leader and author of Data Mining Cookbook: Modeling Data for Marketing, Risk and Customer Relationship Management. Technology has vastly improved
I remember the first time I saw a Cirque du Soleil® performance—the artistry, the split-second timing, that repeating sense of WOW. I was an instant fan. Funny… but I got that same sense of awe the first time I saw a demo of SAS® Visual Analytics. I’d read the project
The first quarter of the fiscal year is the time that banking industry analysts provide clients with their vision on the key challenges and solutions in banking for 2012. TowerGroup’s Nicole Sturgill recently wrote that “understanding consumer use of the financial institution’s delivery channels is a critical element” for institutions
Macy's Inc. is one of the nation’s largest and most well-known retailers, with a loyal base of customers who shop at its stores and online. The company’s e-commerce division, Macys.com, is relying on big data and high-performance analytics software from SAS to better understand its customers and help increase overall
There's been a lot of conversation recently around SAS High-Performance Analytics. And, rightly so - it's incredibly cool and applicable to every industry imaginable, including financial services. What if your risk calculations had seen the '08 credit collapse in time? CBS SmartPlanet addresses this (and highlights SAS High-Performance Analytics, with
What is the solution for patient-centric healthcare? Big data, says SAS expert Alice Swearington in the post, Treat patients with big data insights. "Service providers throughout the healthcare continuum that become patient centric first will win the patient," she explains, citing the industry tends toward insurance exchanges and retail insurance
How can big data coupled with high-performance analytics (HPA) help retail companies tailor their offerings in a way that is beneficial to both the company’s bottom line – and the consumer? Eric Williams, recently retired Chief Information Officer at Catalina Marketing, explains in this interview. Alison Bolen: How do you define
In the last week, I have interviewed four retail executives about their predictions for big data and high-performance analytics in the retail industry. I hope to publish their thoughts here in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, here are six concrete benefits that big data can bring to retailers, if
In the beginning there was just raw data... rows and columns of numbers in strict, structured, disciplined formats generated by a variety of transactional and operational business systems. The volume - while quite large - was still manageable. And it was good. Well, good enough at least. Then, the “content
Big data is one of the hottest topics in business. When you hear those words - BIG Data - you almost surely think of: HUGE financial services firms scoring terabytes of historical and current risk data GLOBAL telecommunications companies mining petabytes of structured and unstructured data INTERNATIONAL retailers repricing hundreds of thousands of products across
That there is a growing shortage of analytical talent in most of the economies of the world is clear. In a May 2011 report, the McKinsey Global Institute put some numbers on the demand: “By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with
It's true. "Big data" can be a problem and an opportunity. Many organizations have struggled to manage, much less profit from, the deluge. In 2012, look for big data to spur demand for big data analytics. New developments in high-performance computing as well as increased demand for visualization and text
Big data has been a hot topic recently, but more often than not the topic is covered from an IT perspective. What do the analysts, data miners and statisticians think? I recall the old days discussing with statisticians what data mining is and how it fundamentally differs from statistics. In
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
We’ve talked a lot lately about the overwhelming tide of data – velocity, volume and complexity – that organizations are dealing with. SAS wanted to know how organizations are currently managing "big data," what resources would be required in the future and how to plan for those needs. The Economist
A current media hype phrase used to describe the ever-growing volume and size of corporate information is "big data." SAS hosts an annual series of business leadership conferences that bring together industry thought leaders, innovators, world leaders, challengers and inspirational speakers to discuss the dynamics needed for a competitive future.
A lot of ink is being spilled over Steve Jobs leaving Apple. Okay here is a little more. Some of my younger friends and colleagues are surprised I have purchased an iPad. Apparently, to younger folk, most persons of my advanced years seem technologically challenged. But I learned a valuable
Dr. Yachen Lin, Chief Risk Officer of China Guangfa Bank Credit Card Center (CGB), was interviewed while at the 2011 Premier Business Leadership Series in Singapore. He discussed the analytics culture at CGB - explaining how CGB uses analytics to know its customers and manage risk. There are only 14
There is a lot of talk hither and yon about a “double-dip” recession. Not at all uncommon when you consider past recessions. Let’s take a look at some data from the June 2011 survey of senior financial executives from the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI to dig into the double dip theories. MAPI
The promise of high-performance analytics, as I understand it, is this: Regardless of how you store your data or how much of it there is, complex analytical procedures can still access that data, conduct a series of calculations on that data and provide answers quickly, accurately and using the full
It's always important to remember your fundamentals. Sort of like a basketball player who practices lay-ups and free throws for hours on end, you need the fundamentals in the midst of the game. Having the skills or knowledge in the heat of the moment - when it counts - is
Rome was not built in a day. Similarly, high-performance analytics is a product of many cumulative architectural, computational and analytical advances. The ability to solve complex business problems by applying algorithms from multiple disciplines to increasingly large volumes of data of all types - both structured and unstructured - is
A popular custom among the diminutive hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth was giving away presents on their birthdays instead of receiving them. This week, SAS toasted its birthday, celebrating 35 years as an analytic innovator, by giving its customers a gift: the latest version of SAS analytics and data management
The basic big data problem is simple to understand: we create too much data to store and analyze it all. The problem gets bigger, however, when you consider the related factors: our problems themselves are getting bigger, the analytics needed to solve them are more complex and the data is
Bill Franks, Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) of Teradata spent some time with us this week to talk about next week's Predictive Analytics World activities! Predictive Analytics World that takes place during Data Driven Business Week March 14-15 in San Francisco. Any thoughts you would like to share about the upcoming
In a recent Dr. Dobb's Journal piece, Jim Starkey (senior architect for MySQL ) acknowledges that it's time to embed the power of applications within databases, instead of the other way around. Jim says (italics added by me): I think we can agree that context switches or network round trips