I am a shopper. I always have been. As a teenager, a fun weekend for me was hours at the mall, trying on cool clothes, procuring perfume samples from the department store make-up counters, and hanging out with friends at the food court. But my love for shopping doesn’t end
Tag: analytics
If you are interested in hearing firsthand about the benefits, business issues and challenges involved in implementing analytics you'll want to hear directly from an organization that is actively applying analytics and customer intelligence to create business value. We invite you to view this live webinar to learn how Verizon applied
At our latest Power Series event in Manhattan, one of the teams took a futuristic approach to addressing data challenges. They described the need for a “compliance box” that front ends the data management process that integrates, cleanses and ensure data integrity across a number of different, typically silo’d data
We had the third episode of the SAS Power Series in New York last night. The event was very well attended—including a few meeting crashers who apparently had nothing to do with analytics, but fortunately they left early. Jim Davis, the CMO of SAS, started the evening with a definition
The Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) have the best acronym ever, and they're putting on an amazing conference in San Francisco this week. The conference kicked off today with conference chairs Kathryn Valdes and Ginger Carey’s announcement that the Pacific Northwest Users Group is merging with WUSS next year, adding
I want to share highlights from a different kind of day I recently had at SAS that was spent with a customer, YouSee, and thought leader James Taylor, CEO of Decision Management Solutions. We all shared a "Deep Dive Day" at SAS Headquarters here in Cary, North Carolina. Read on
The Obama Administration and subprime lenders agree on one thing: Borrowers with bad credit lack the clout - both financial and political - to rebuild their lives without help from somebody ... somewhere. Where they disagree - royally - is over how. The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of
Tomorrow I was going to go visit one of our insurance clients. I was really looking forward to the meeting – a chance to share experiences with a strategic analytic team. Unfortunately, I got an e-mail from the team’s administrative assistant: “I’m sorry, but so-and-so needs to cancel. An important
Over my 32 year career in local government as a city and county manager I was faced with many difficult decisions during budget deliberations. Setting tax and utility rates, adding head count, determining compensation and benefits, calculating the appropriate mix of debt and cash for funding capital projects…these were all
A recent post on the International Institute for Analytics (IIA) site, Analytics Conferences Gone Wild!, is*not* about how statisticians are sexy. Yes, I'm recalling that memorable quote in the August 2009 NY Times story, "For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics,” which included the following quote: “I keep saying that
Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical. -Yogi Berra As Moneyball hits theaters on September 23, I know awareness and appreciation for analytics will spike. The thought of the little guy being able to outmaneuver their stronger, better equipped opponent resonates with many people and relates
Sometimes when you change a couple of words around, you can end up with an entirely new concept. In a conversation with a co-worker around analytic roles and responsibilities, she noted that we shouldn’t be talking about “business intelligence analysts,” but discussing ways to create “intelligent business analysts.” Brilliant!! One
Are you planning to attend WUSS 2011 or are you a data miner who will you be in the San Francisco Bay area on Saturday, October 15 and looking for an "Unusually," "Uninteresting" data mining Unconference? An unconference is an event where users suggest topics, get together and discuss them in
A women’s specialty retailer operating more than 1,000 boutiques, Chico’s FAS, Inc. was faced with a significant challenge: reducing the number of markdowns while more effectively targeting its middle- to high-income clientele. To achieve these goals, the company needed to optimize its prices and more effectively target its most valuable customers,
One of the hottest topics on today's agenda for financial institutions is FFIEC's recently released guidance supplement calling for layered fraud secuity and authentication. So, during the recent Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering Forum in Cary, North Carolina, a panel discussion on fraud was developed to discuss emerging trends in fraud -
The SAS Power Series Tour had its most recent stop in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose. This gave me another chance to test my hypothesis that firms in the Valley are not big users of analytics. My theory goes that high-tech firms are much more focused on creating
The downturn in the economy beginning in 2008 and continuing even to now has put tremendous pressure on local governments to do “less with less”. In the past when economic downturns caused service level cut backs the cry was to do “more with less”. The idea was to identify ways
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.
I’ve been hanging out in Canada again, eh? Just last week, I snuck over the border to meet with some of our insurance customers in the Greater Toronto Area (affectionately known as “GTA”). This was my fifth trip this year and I’m pleased to say that not only have I
Summer has almost come to a close – and thank goodness! Up here in the Northeast, we’ve been subjected to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. I’ve been waiting for the locusts to descend! And outside of dodging hail and charging my laptop with my car’s cigarette lighter when we lost
‘Context’ defined (as cited from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary): 1: the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning; and, 2: the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs: environment, setting. While context is clearly important, today it is consistently
I jotted down the following fact from a session yesterday at the Disney Analytics & Optimization Summit: Organizations that invest in analytics perform better in the market. That's quite an assertion. Tweetable for sure. But it was a late-afternoon presentation and I was hungry for supper. So I forgot about
Hurricane Irene impacted 20% of the US population and will cost billions in recovery dollars. Now that the water has begun to subside, the real long term work begins. And it is this work that can be another disaster, or, a real economic benefit to a state. How so? FEMA
August was a busy month for our SAS Text Analytics team, but I was very pleased to get the invite to attend this year’s CIO 100 Conference hosted by Maryfran Johnson, Editor-in-Chief of CIO Magazine. As Master of Ceremonies, she inspired lively discussions and shared insights on IT leadership, technology
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
Nobody wants to rub people the wrong way. We've all done it, even if word never got back to us that it happened. Having ample first-hand experience with this, I deeply appreciated the opening keynote by MIT's Michael Schrage at the 2011 Disney Analytics & Optimization Summit. Schrage, research fellow
Bengt Persson, the Senior Vice President of Quality and Tech Support, presented a session about driving quality across the globe during the 2011 Premier Business Leadership Series in Singapore. Persson told the story of how Volvo Trucks uses analytics and data flow to standardize and optimize warranty claims across Volvo’s
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
Notwithstanding the need to differentiate their value proposition in today’s highly competitive world, companies are sometimes forced to plagiarize even when it comes to public events. For attendees, it is generally the same ole, same ole agenda and faces, staffers drained of passion and exhibitors looking out of place while searching for a
After a couple of solid days speaking to business leaders, listening to some of the world’s thought leaders and leading a panel discussion with the analytics leaders from DBS Bank, Allianz and Volvo Trucks, what have I learned about business analytics and what it takes to succeed? The first clue