JT on EDM

I got my first chance to really see KXEN’s product a little while ago and, as I am off to Predictive Analytics World tomorrow, I thought I would blog about it. KXEN was founded in 1998. The product is designed to deliver automated data mining and predictive analytics at a function level – the user [...]

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Well that headline probably got your attention. It came from an article on CIO Magazine:To Hell with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut.
According to recent research from Accenture, nearly half (40 percent) of major corporate decisions are based on the good ‘ole gut.
Interesting. But why?
61 percent said it was because [...]

Eric Siegel is blogging in the build up to Predictive Analytics World (at which I am speaking and teaching a workshop). He posted Predictive analytics FAQ #1: Prerequisites for success.I liked his list but personally I would have added another:

Know the decision(s) you want to influence

Unless you have a decision or decisions in mind when you start it is all to easy to generate insight without any understanding of how you will make it stick – how it will make a difference. Starting with the decision in mind helps focus the analytic effort on improving that decision. If it is a strategic decision, it focuses the project on helping an executive. If it is an operational one, it means thinking about how the results could be deployed into production.

I would also add something to his point about “General understanding and buy-in of a predictive analytics initiative by stakeholders across business functions”. For many predictive analytics projects this needs to include the IT department and the folks working on BI/DW projects and all too often predictive analytics projects include neither.

Note that I am now blogging new posts here on b-eye-network.com and focusing only only BI and analytic topics. You can find my full feed on my personal blog JT on EDM. You can subscribe to the feed too – feeds2.feedburner.com/jtonedm.

I just went back to check and found no predictions on the blog for 2008 (so I get a 100% accuracy rating with no errors) so I thought I would make some for 2009. In no particular order then:

Cloud computing will impact decision management.
There are already at least two decision management vendors offering decisions in [...]

Joe McKendrick wrote a nice article on how EDM give companies a competitive edge for the Teradata Magazine this month. Joe did a nice job, as usual, of bringing out some key points and quoting me. My two favorite quotes were:
In addition, it’s inherently difficult to build actionable intelligence into most existing applications. “Enterprise applications [...]

An article caught my eye in the Teradata Magazine this month – Steve Brobst, CTO of Teradata, outlined 4 areas he thinks will drive data warehousing: Sensor Technology Pervasive BI In Database AnalyticsNon-Traditional Data Types I don’t disagree with Steve…

Marty Gubar presented on Deliver Depper Insight by Combining Data Mining and OLAP. Marty presented on Oracle’s analytic spectrum and how OLAP and Data Mining fit and can be combined. OLAP and data mining are embedded in the Oracle database and share security, the partitioning, ETL etc. All can be accessed using PL/SQL so cubes [...]

Tobin Gilman of Oracle presented on Oracle’s BI Strategy. Oracle views Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence as coming together over time and has a single strategy. They see ERP and CRM as having enabling operational efficiencies by driving a process-centric view across silos. Clearly BPM has completed this transition. Yet management processes – reporting, [...]

Usama Fayyad, previously Chief Data Officer of Yahoo, presented a keynote on From Data Warehousing to Strategic Data Assets – Case Studies on the Web: Social Networking, Direct-Response Marketing and Understanding Customer Behavior.
The number of users on the web continues to grow rapidly, approaching 1Bn. The data created as these users move around the web [...]

A panel of the keynote presenters discussed critical success factors for BI and analytics. Panels are tricky to blog so this is just going to be a list of thoughts generated by the panelists with no attempt to assign them to the individuals. Critical success factors, then, include:

You must understand what drives high performance for [...]