From the category archives:

BI

SAS – An executive overview

October 27, 2009

I am spending some time as a guest of SAS this week and we got started today with Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. He began by describing SAS Institute’s 33 years of continuous revenue growth as well as similarly growing reinvestment in R&D. SAS has not laid anyone off this year, for which kudos, and [...]

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Better customer service, better results with predictive analytics

September 16, 2009

Syndicated from Smart Data Collective
I recently hosted a webcast for Smart Data Collective titled “Putting Customer Value to Work: What Predictive Analytics Can Do for Your Bottom Line”. With Korhan Yunak of Vodaphone Group, Anne Milley of SAS Institute and Mike Rote of Teradata Corporation on the panel we discussed how predictive analytics can provide [...]

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IBM, SPSS and a sea change in decision management

August 25, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
I was attending IBM’s launch of its analytic appliances when it announced its intent to acquire SPSS. I did not get a chance to write much more at the time but I did not want to let the opportunity pass completely.I think the announcement represents a sea change in the decision management [...]

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Analytics simplify data to amplify its value

July 31, 2009

Syndicated from ebizQ
With IBM’s announcement this week that it was acquiring SPSS I have been talking to a lot of folks about analytics. Analytics is one of those topics that is often on the edge of what IT people know so I thought a couple of posts on analytics might be useful.
Now analytics can mean [...]

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IBM Analytics Appliance

July 28, 2009

The scheduled announcements today were about a new analytics appliance.
Steve Mills set the scene, pointing out that business optimization (a market in which IBM includes analytics projects) is getting client investment at 2x the general business automation market. Personally I think this is why decision management is going to be more and more important relative [...]

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IBM and SPSS

July 28, 2009

UPDATED BASED ON CALL – see below
In NY for IBM’s Analytics announcements. The original agenda has been overtaken by events – IBM bought SPSS this morning. Ambuj Goyal came on to talk about SPSS and focused on their predictive analytics software. SPSS is very widely used – 250,000 customers in all sorts of industries across [...]

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Update – illumuniate

July 21, 2009

Since I last got updated on illuminate (see the first look on i-lluminate) they have been focusing on their business model. While illuminate is a general purpose database they have been focusing on data warehousing as an initial market– with business analytics applications to follow. The data warehouse market has various segments based on size. [...]

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The answer to too much information and limited understanding is decision management (not experts)

July 7, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
The Evidence Based Management blog had a post on Why experts are so often wrong that discusses a book by Philip Tetlock (Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?)
In a world filled with expert predictions that are mostly incorrect, and filled with people who eagerly seek such predictions even [...]

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The election in Iran and some real data analysis

July 2, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
In 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad got 17 million votes and in 2009 he got 24 million.
The question is, where did all those extra votes come from?
The answer, according to this study, is not at all clear.
I don’t write political or personal posts and, despite first appearances, this is not one either. When I saw [...]

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First Look – IBM and SPSS

July 1, 2009

I got a chance to catch up with the folks from IBM/Cognos to discuss their (fairly) recent announcement of a formal OEM relationship with SPSS for PASW Statistics (briefly reviewed here). I discussed their original, less formal, partnership previously. IBM Cognos has a long alliance history with SPSS, often working with them to co-sell into [...]

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On supporting decision management and collaborative decision making

June 26, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
Timo Elliot had an interesting post Gartner on Collaborative Decision Making in which he discussed a report from Gartner called The Rise of Collaborative Decision Making (and thanks to Nic Smith of Microsoft for the link). This kind of ad-hoc, collaborative decision making is critical in companies and technology to support it is [...]

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First Look – Accord

June 23, 2009

I caught up with David Ullman of Robust Decisions the other day. Robust Decisions has an interesting product called Accord aimed at helping with decisions. While it is not aimed at exactly the same kind of decisions as the systems I usually review, I like the product and think there is some interesting synergy between [...]

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First Look – Vitria M3O

June 16, 2009

I got an update on Vitria for the first time in a few years a little while back. Vitria started back in 1994 with Enterprise Application Integration capabilities and has added Business Process Management, Business Activity Monitoring and ultimately Business Event Management/Complex Event Processing functionality over the last few years. They are using “Operational Intelligence” [...]

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Decision Management Event Calendar for June 12 2009

June 12, 2009

This week’s event calendar is below. The intent of this weekly post is to focus on web events coming in the next few weeks though I will start to add some longer term conference links. Anyone who knows about web or physical events around business rules, analytics, optimization or decision management, please let me know [...]

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First Look – Lyza

June 10, 2009

I got a chance to see Lyzasoft’s new product in action recently. Lyzasoft aims to provide a desktop product for business people to do analysis that can seamlessly scale up, unlike (say) spreadsheet based analysis. The product is based around a column store.
Workbooks are the core metaphor and these are used to assemble flows. Data [...]

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Users don’t have analytic skills? Try decision management

June 9, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
Last week I posted Use decision management to make systems smarter and I got two interesting comments. Ronald made an excellent point first:
I don’t think the lack of deep analytic tools is the prime reason for BI not being intelligent. In my opinion it’s the lack of education and skills concerning analytical methods [...]

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First Look – myDials 3.0

June 8, 2009

myDials is a company focused on optimizing operational performance by delivering timely, relevant, actionable performance metrics, contextual information, guidance and “every person” analytics. On June 8th they announced myDials 3.0. myDials is focused on helping all employees focus on the monitor/analyze/adjust cycle that helps ensure that operations remain in synch with company strategies and plans. [...]

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Use decision management to make systems smarter

June 5, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
Michael Vizard had an interesting post (via @merv) – Making Business Intelligence Applications Smarter in which he began with the great phrase:
One perplexing oxymoron of IT industry is the simple fact that most business intelligence applications are not all that smart
In Smart (Enough) Systems Neil and I argued that the way to make [...]

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Everyone makes decisions – your systems should too

May 19, 2009

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
Merv Adrian recently posted on Information Builders Prepares to Ramp It Up and this made me think of webFocus. Like Merv I recently spoke with Michael Corcoran and learned a little more about Information Builder’s attitude to decision making and information.
The webFocus page says “Because Everyone Makes Decisions” and pushing information access and [...]

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Beyond Predictive BI

May 15, 2009

Syndicated from ebizQ
David Linthicum’s recent blog post Approaching Predictive BI made me want to reiterate some of my thinking around BI (on which I have a whole category) on my blog. I often talk about going “beyond BI” with decision management. I distinguish between BI and Decision Management because BI helps you understand your business [...]

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