Tag: decision support

Tom Stock 0
Decisions first!

I moved to Australia from Belgium two months ago for a short-term assignment. I am very concerned by the exchange rate. My dollars have lost over 15% of their value in euros and I share my frustration around me. People tell me, "Just wait, it cannot stay so low, the

Leo Sadovy 0
Why analytic forecasting?

Because you are already halfway there and you should want the entire process to be data-driven, not just the historical reporting and analysis.  You are making decisions and using data to support those decisions, but you are leaving value on the table if the analytics don't carry through to forecasting.  In the

Leo Sadovy 0
External data: Radar for your business

How much of your business performance (profit) is driven by external factors versus internal?  A figure of 85% compared to 15% was mentioned at last month’s Manufacturing Analytics Summit, and although I could not find the study mentioned to confirm, it feels about right to me.  Certainly more than half,

Leo Sadovy 0
FP&R, or, Why we kicked the spreadsheet habit

Are you missing the “A” in your FP&A (financial planning and analysis)?  Maybe missing some of the “P” as well?  Are you and your department getting a bit tired of the “FR” gig you seem to have landed? I just got back from chairing last week’s IE Group Financial Innovation

Analytics
Leo Sadovy 0
Strategic workforce planning

I have been privileged to have had the opportunity to contribute to the recently published, “Positioned – Strategic Workforce Planning that gets the Right Person in the Right Job”, co-edited by Rob Tripp, Workforce Planning Manager at Ford Motor Company. The list of contributors is a Who’s Who of strategic

Analytics | Risk Management
Leo Sadovy 0
The skeptical CFO

During a recent presentation on performance management I had an audience member ask me if perhaps I had minored in cynicism along with my degree in finance.  I replied that, with the science, psychology and philosophy I’d taken, I probably had minored in skepticism, but that the cynicism came later,

Analytics
Leo Sadovy 0
Having a strategy, versus being strategic

Clarence So, Chief Strategy Officer for Salesforce.com, opened last month’s Chief Strategy Officer Summit in San Francisco (by the IE Group) with a challenging statement: ‘Your strategy is nothing more than the sum of your tactics’.  I found this to be less than satisfactory as an explanation, but considering the

Analytics | Risk Management
Leo Sadovy 0
A Plethora of Black Swans

I was under the impression that Black Swans were supposed to be rare. Rare enough to be effectively non-computable by standard methods. Nassim Taleb’s formulation of the Black Swan Theory is comprised of the three traits of: outlier (rarity), extreme impact, and retrospective predictability (i.e. 20/20 hindsight). I write this