From the category archives:

Analytics

Analytics in the call center

March 18, 2010

IBM announced an interesting new analytic product today – RAMP or Real-time Analytic Matching Platform. The idea behind this is to improve on the approaches currently used to route calls which typically rely on an availability-based approach to connect customers to agents. This doesn’t take an agent’s focus or availability nor what a customer is [...]

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Update from SAP Co-CEOs

March 15, 2010

Got a quick update today from the new co-CEOs of SAP – Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.
Jim focused on their innovation strategy – making significant steps into on-demand business applications, aiming to support a hybrid approach allowing customers to mix on-demand and on-premise software. In addition they aim to increase support for running the [...]

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Thoughts on Pega acquiring Chordiant

March 15, 2010

The news today is that Pegasystems (rules-based business process management) is acquiring Chordiant (decision-centric CRM). This is interesting news as it merges a company (Chordiant) with a very decision-centric/decision services separate from process mindset with one (Pega) that has mixed rules and process together much more.
Chordiant have been one of my companies to watch for [...]

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Predictive analytics – some tips

March 5, 2010

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
In a great post on 8 things to keep in mind on predictive analytics, some folks from Diamond Management & Technology laid out some things to keep in mind that I really liked. Here they are with my comments – you can get more detail on each from the series of posts [...]

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Oracle Data Mining on the Amazon compute cloud

March 3, 2010

I just heard from a colleague that you can check out Oracle’s Data Mining tools on the amazon.com compute cloud.  The Oracle Data Mining development team has set up an instance for prospective customers who want to try the in-database data mining algorithms via SQL/Java APIs or the Oracle Data Miner user interface. You can [...]

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A story about the power of rules to improve analytic decisions

March 2, 2010

I was traveling in South Africa last week (keynoting BI 2010) and my favorite online payment system demonstrated not once but twice, why business rules are so valuable in analytic decision making. First their analytics triggered a fraud alert – presumably based on patterns of problems from South African IP addresses. As I was trying [...]

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In-database analytics – a white paper

February 25, 2010

Syndicated from BeyeNetwork
My co-author on Smart (Enough) Systems, Neil Raden, has written a great white paper on in-database analytics that is available from Sybase – Analytics from the start. This paper introduces the key concepts, discusses some of the key issues (our book contains more tips in this area) and describes some strong case examples. [...]

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Great interview with Deepak Advani of IBM

February 24, 2010

Doug Henschen has a great interview with Deepak Advani of IBM, the new head of IBM’s newly acquired SPSS business (and I am not just saying that because he mentions Smart (Enough) Systems).  I am looking forward to seeing what IBM does with the combination of ILOG and SPSS, along with InfoSphere, WebSphere, FileNet and [...]

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BI 2010 – Optimizing revenue collection

February 24, 2010

Eugene from SARS, the South African Revenue Service, presented next on how SARS is using BI in revenue collection. He began by pointing out that there is a difference in how public sector organizations use BI – a focus on service delivery not profits, on taxpayers not customers, enforcement campaigns not marketing campaigns and so [...]

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BI 2010 – Optimizing revenue collection

February 24, 2010

Eugene from SARS, the South African Revenue Service, presented next on how SARS is using BI in revenue collection. He began by pointing out that there is a difference in how public sector organizations use BI – a focus on service delivery not profits, on taxpayers not customers, enforcement campaigns not marketing campaigns and so [...]

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BI 2010 – BI and Performance Management

February 23, 2010

Continuing at BI 2010, Jon Hill spoke on the combination of BI and Performance Management. Jon reiterated the constantly changing environment and the tendency of companies to spend large amounts of money on data infrastructure without thinking through the way this investment will make a difference. In one extreme example he had seen one company [...]

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BI 2010 – Making BI more strategic

February 23, 2010

I have just opened ITWeb’s BI 2010 in Johannesburg talking about decisions and importance of decision making in making BI matter (I will post my slides later). Great audience, nearly 200 people with a strong showing from end user customers (75%) and, very interestingly, nearly half considered themselves business / IT straddlers which is a [...]

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Two more analytics jobs

February 22, 2010

I recently spoke to an interesting company getting serious about analytics and looking for some staff. Drop me a line james@decisionmanagementsolutions.com if you are interested and I will forward your resume along:

Data Mining / Analytics Business Analyst
Senior Business Analyst with data mining and predictive analytics experience to lead the establishment of a decision support system [...]

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First Look – eBureau

February 22, 2010

eBureau is a predictive scoring and information service provider founded in 2004, focused on technology for very rapid model development and deployment. Using their own purpose-built modeling software, a small group of modelers developed 900 predictive models in 2009 alone. The company has been applying this capability for real-time and interactive marketing like contact centers, [...]

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Analytic Journeys #pawcon

February 19, 2010

Here’s my presentation from Predictive Analytics World, reproduced with permission from Predictive Analytics World and Rising Media.Analytic Journeys from Predictive Analytics World

View more presentations from Decision Management Solutions.

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SAS and Accenture announce partnership

February 17, 2010

Accenture and SAS announced today that they will jointly create an analytics group focused on financial services, healthcare and public service. They describe this as a “significant evolution of the existing relationship between the two companies”. The release is at  http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/AccentureSASAnalyticsGroup.html
This is obviously an interesting announcement. Ever since IBM announced its new Business [...]

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First Look – FICO Xpress and Business Rules

February 17, 2010

Optimization is a mathematical process for finding the best decision for a given business problem – usually highest profit, lowest cost given a set of constraints. Involve applying an algorithm to data, decision variables, constraints and an objective function. In financial services and insurance optimization is still fairly new (unlike, say, supply chain) but the [...]

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Marketing Mix Modeling at Walmart Financial Services #pawcon

February 16, 2010

Final Predictive Analytics World presentation for me – Walmart Financial Services and Mu Sigma talking about marketing mix modeling. Walmart Financial Services focuses on the unbanked or under-banked. Specific services like money transfers, check cashing can be quite high volume in some locations and some 1,000 locations have branded MoneyCenters. Mu Sigma is an Indian [...]

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Protecting the most vulnerable #pawcon

February 16, 2010

John McConnell of Analytical People presented on the use of analytics in the UK’s transition to digital TV. This is being rolled out region by region, trying to improve the process each time. Several regions have been converted already. There is a group of people, in the UK as in other countries, for whom TV [...]

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Optimizing customer service levels with predictive analytics #pawcon

February 16, 2010

Richard Boire gave a presentation on predictive analytics in customer service at the Canadian Automobile Association. Organizations that successfully adopt analytics are willing, and able to change. Richard’s focus then is on tools and techniques that help create the engagement needed to drive adoption.
CAA is the Canadian equivalent of the US AAA, providing insurance, travel [...]

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