Still think business intelligence (BI) and analytics are only for big companies? The truth is, small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from BI and analytics in a big way. Digital disruption Thanks to innovative new developments SME’s (and small teams who haven't yet gotten IT’s attention) can now
How is it that some companies can come up with a big idea and implement that idea successfully in the market, while others never get past the idea phase? "In the case of innovation," says Jill Dyché, VP of SAS Best Practices, "big ideas aren't enough." It's also not enough
For health and life sciences organizations, discussions about big data include gaining value from that data in the form of real-world evidence. Consider for a moment the amount of healthcare data that exists today thanks to the adoption of electronic health records. Then think about the future with data from
USA Today recently published an article titled 10 retailers take two-thirds of your money. The story highlights the revenue distribution among the Top 100 retailers in the S&P 1500. It was startling to see that such a small number of retail powerhouses take in such a large percentage of consumers’ income.
Alles wird zu Software : Wir hören es derzeit überall - Firmen erfinden sich neu. Ob Automobil, Kraftwerk oder Einzelhändler, alle Geschäftsmodelle sollen sich vom Produkthersteller oder -verteiler, hin zum Services-Geschäft bewegen. Über die USA weiss man ja, dass fast 80% des Bruttosozialproduktes aus den Dienstleistungen kommen. Oftmals weniger bekannt
Para nadie es un secreto que los ejecutivos están cambiando su percepción acerca del Big Data. Los líderes empresariales reconocen cada vez más la importancia de capturar y analizar estratégicamente los datos y esto se debe a una amplia serie de razones. Una de ellas es el acceso a nuevas
This month we take a fresh analytical view of our hypothetical VirtualOil portfolio by comparing the forward price of WTI (the green line) to the prompt month price (red line). The resulting graphic (chart 1) demonstrates the relative stability of the 48-month forward price in contrast to a very active spot
SAS software is used around the world in some of the most sophisticated ways, like ATM fraud detection and cancer research. But recently, I used it for a practical, and much needed, task -- replacing our break room coffee machine. Now, this is no ordinary coffee machine. It also makes
I saw an interesting graph on dadaviz.com that claimed Italians had gone from drinking twice as much as Americans in 1970, to less than Americans in recent years. The data analyst in me just had to "independently verify" this factoid ... But before I get into the technical part of this
A proof of concept (POC) is smartest way for customers to evaluate if a product meets the required objectives, and the best way for vendors to demonstrate why they feel they are best placed to resolve the current outstanding problems. However, not all POCs are successful. Let’s explore why. What is
Recently I had the privilege of hearing Nathan Falkenborg, Head of Consulting & Analytics, North Asia at Visa speak at the SAS Executive Forum in Singapore. Nathan has also spoken at SAS Premier Business Leadership Series where he talked about how the analytics guy won over the marketers at Visa.
The cottage industry was based on workers buying raw materials, bringing them home and producing hand-crafted items to sell. The system worked, but was slow, tedious and expensive, producing goods that were affordable only by the rich. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. The factory system brought machines and workers
In 1988 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May as National Foster Care Month as a way to recognize foster parents for opening their homes to and caring for children in need. This annual celebration has grown to generate awareness of foster care and a recognition of all involved. The children, foster
It seems like everyone is searching for ‘best practice’ these days. We are constantly looking to learn from what is being held up as good, leading and perhaps even the best itself. While this is a valid exercise, I believe we are missing an opportunity to take a closer look
Do you “buy and build as you go” with your analytics architecture? Most companies do, and have for decades. The result is a heterogeneous environment for analytics with a variety of hardware, software, databases and analytical applications used in silos. There’s tremendous duplication of data and inconsistency in the analytical
In recent releases of SAS, you can use Output Delivery System graphics or 'ODS graphics on' to produce nice graphical output for most of the analytic procedures. These default graphs are nice, but when you want your graphs to look "a certain way" SAS also lets you create your own custom graphs!
I was surprised to find that the size of the U.S. federal government is smaller today, than in the past many decades - let's graph it out, so it's easy to analyze... The way I got started on this little adventure was via Jishai's graph on dadaviz.com. Here's a snapshot
In my previous post I used junk drawers as an example of the downside of including more data in our analytics just in case it helps us discover more insights only to end up with more flotsam than findings. In this post I want to float some thoughts about a two-word concept
As the age old idiom goes, the early bird gets the worm and the early adopter gets the break. New technologies give clear advantages to those organisations that figure out before their early-adopting competitors how to use them effectively, an advantage that recedes as others catch up, and the technology
“What we do to our children they will do to society.” Greek philosopher Pliny the Elder said that more than 2,000 years ago, and it’s just as true today. In 2013, more than 600,000 children in the US were confirmed victims of maltreatment in the home, according to U.S. Department
In the era of big data, we collect, prepare, manage, and analyze a lot of data that is supposed to provide us with a better picture of our customers, partners, products, and services. These vast data murals are impressive to behold, but in painting such a broad canvas, these pictures
I've seen a lot of recent news articles purporting income inequality in the U.S. ("the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer") ... and I wondered if the graphs were a true/unbiased representation of the data. For example, I recently saw a couple of graphs in an article on the
“There’s no such thing as information overload - there is only filter failure”. ~ Internet scholar Clay Shirky Information overload is not just a recent phenomenon, it entered into human experience in the middle of the 15th century with Gutenberg and his printing press, and we’ve been devising ways to cope
If anyone knows how to finesse insight out of data, it’s Bart Baesens, professor at KU Leuven (Belgium), and a lecturer at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom). Not only has he written a book about it, Analytics in a Big Data World: The Essential Guide to Data Science and
Analytics as it pertains to the employees and the workforce is taking the industry by storm. Recently, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how companies are harnessing the power of analytics to help them identify staff who are likely to leave. In the past few weeks
Data about the monthly wait times at VA facilities in the US are now available, but it's a bit overwhelming to try to analyze them in tabular form - plotting the data on a map made it a lot easier!... Here in the US, when our soldiers finish their commitment in
There is no doubt that analytics is an overused and often abused term. So what does really analytics means? In part 2 of a series of articles on the analytical lifecycle, this blog will highlight some of the common and emerging techniques used to analyze data and build predictive models
Oil is bouncing around the $50 range as the market adds and loses value with each new headline, from potential new Iranian exports after the nuclear talks to the slowest month of inventory builds at Cushing since Thanksgiving. The US rigcount is down nearly 23 percent year-over-year, but the rate
Estamos ante la era del Big Data y las modernas soluciones que existen actualmente en el mercado hacen cada vez más fácil manejar los grandes volúmenes de información. Sin embargo, vale la pena preguntarnos, ¿son necesarios tantos datos? En otras palabras, si su solución de analítica puede organizarlos, consolidarlos y
This is a follow up to last week’s blog on understanding your customers’ perceptions of quality. As the world’s largest manufacturer of PCs and tablets, Lenovo is always looking for areas to reduce costs while increasing quality and customer satisfaction. Six months ago, Lenovo implemented the Lenovo Early Detection (LED) system
