information

IBM IMPACT Day 2 Keynotes

May 1, 2012

Johan Gerber of MasterCard kicked things off on day 2. MasterCard does not actually issue the cards with their logo on, they are a technology company that provides a network to link consumers, 32,000,000 businesses and 22,000 card issuers. The network is very high performance, handling 100 pieces of information and processing each transaction in [...]

Read the full article →

IBM IMPACT 2012 Opening Keynotes

April 30, 2012

After a great introductory session from Walter Isaacson (biographer of Einstein, Franklin and Jobs), we kicked off the main session at IBM’s largest IMPACT conference with over 8,500 attendees with a focus on re-thinking IT.
Marie Wieck started by discussing how core applications are changing. IBM claims that $5Trillion run on IBM hardware. These systems must [...]

Read the full article →

Target variables matter but so do decisions

April 8, 2012

Dean Abbot wrote a great post recently “Why Defining the Target Variable in Predictive Analytics is Critical” in which he referenced the CRISP-DM approach to building predictive analytic models and talked about the importance of target variable selection in building an effective model. The thrust of Dean’s post was the crucial point that because
The target [...]

Read the full article →

Is Machine Learning v Domain expertise the wrong question?

April 5, 2012

KDNuggets had an interesting poll this week in which readers expressed themselves as Skeptical of Machine Learning replacing Domain Expertise. This struck me not because I disagree but because I think it is in some ways the wrong question:

Any given decision is made based on a combination of information, know-how and pre-cursor decisions.
The know-how can be [...]

Read the full article →

Decision Management boosts AP performance

April 3, 2012

There was an interesting little article on the Institute of Financial Operations site last week – In relentless pursuit of productivity: Index tracks traits of best-in-breed AP operations. This reported on some results from the Accounts Payable Productivity Index study. What struck me about this was the role of automated decision-making (using business rules) among [...]

Read the full article →

Smarter Analytics Leadership Summit Opening #smarteranalytics

March 20, 2012

Steve Mills kicked off the IBM Smarter Analytics Leadership Summit. Business Analytics matter, he says, as shown by the focus of CEOs (8 out of 10 expect complexity to increase, enterprises applying analytics are more successful etc). The need for analytics is pervasive, with every industry seeing a massive expansion in the volume of data [...]

Read the full article →

Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business (Baltimore)

March 19, 2012

[ April 18, 2012; 5:30 am to 9:30 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.”  The seventh is in Baltimore, MD on April 18 and the main session starts at 8:30am ET. I will be kicking off the session with “BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler and More Agile [...]

Read the full article →

Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business (Orlando)

March 19, 2012

[ April 17, 2012; 5:30 am to 9:30 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.”  The sixth is in Orlando, FL on April 17 and the main session starts at 8:30am ET. I will be kicking off the session with “BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler and More Agile [...]

Read the full article →

Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business (Long Beach)

March 19, 2012

[ April 12, 2012; 8:30 am to 12:30 pm. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.”  The fifth is in Long Beach, CA on April 12 and the main session starts at 8:30am PT. I will be kicking off the session with “BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler and More [...]

Read the full article →

Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business (St Louis)

March 18, 2012

[ April 10, 2012; 5:30 am to 9:30 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.”  The fourth is in St Louis, MO on April 10 and the main session starts at 8:30am ET. I will be kicking off the session with “BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler and More [...]

Read the full article →

Documenting decisions separately from use cases

March 14, 2012

There is a nice article over on Modern Analyst on documenting decisions separately from use cases in which Mark Monteleone lays out the case for this. As he says:
I do propose making decisions visible. By visible, I mean aseparate and explicit step for each decision being made. These steps help the developer identify where possible alternate and exception [...]

Read the full article →

Book Review: Knowledge Automation: How to implement Decision Management in Business Processes

March 13, 2012

Some time ago I got a pre-release copy of Knowledge Automation: How to Implement Decision Management in Business Processes, Alan Fish’s new book on the analysis and design techniques of decision management. I was delighted to write a foreword for Alan and with the arrival of a printed copy I wanted to extend this with [...]

Read the full article →

First Look – Dymatrix DynaMine

March 6, 2012

Dymatrix started in 2000 as a spinout from Computer Sciences Corporation. Focused on analytical CRM and campaign management they have done many projects and identified a number of challenges in the use of predictive analytic models. They have customers across utilities, retail, telecommunications, banking, insurance and life sciences. This work led to the development of [...]

Read the full article →

Market Development at SAS

February 27, 2012

SAS has spent the last four years moving its partnering strategy forward – making partnering a core part of how they do business, partnering with Teradata and Accenture, and most recently a push towards 30%/$200M of first year revenue impacted by partners. Russ Cobb reported out how this has been going in terms of partners:

From [...]

Read the full article →

First Look – GDS Link Update

February 20, 2012

I got an update on GDS Link recently, having last written about them in 2010 (see this First Look on GDS Link). Since 2006 they have been helping banks and other credit issuers to build custom, tailored, customer-centric risk applications.
DataView 360, the core product, was designed to address what they regard as the key problem [...]

Read the full article →

New webinar series for those in Europe (or on the East Coast)

February 8, 2012

Working with our European partners (BCS), Decision Management Solutions has scheduled a series of three webinars at 7am Pacific/10am Eastern/16:00CET. Designed to be  live events that work for those in Europe, this is a foundation series on three core topics – Decision Management, Business Rules and Predictive Analytics. There is no restriction on attendance – [...]

Read the full article →

Workshop: Decisions and Decision Management (Berlin, Germany)

February 8, 2012

[ June 4, 2012 to June 5, 2012. ] I am giving a live 2-day workshop in Berlin, Germany this summer on Decisions and Decision Management.

Organizations must understand how to identify and classify decisions and how to assess the potential for business rules and analytics to support and improve those decisions. They need to understand the available technologies and approaches and the long and [...]

Read the full article →

Webinar: An Introduction to Decision Management

February 6, 2012

[ February 29, 2012; 7:00 am to 8:00 am. ] This webinar is at 7am PT, 10am ET and 16:00 CET to support our European customers.

This webinar will introduce the key principles of Decision Management Systems and explain their role in a modern information systems architecture. You will learn what it means for Decision Management Systems to be agile, analytic and adaptive. The four principles [...]

Read the full article →

Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business (Denver)

February 2, 2012

[ March 22, 2012; 8:00 am to 9:00 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.” I will be speaking on BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler, and More Agile Business. The third  is in Denver, CO on March 22nd and the main session starts at 8:30am MT. I will be [...]

Read the full article →

Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business

February 1, 2012

[ March 7, 2012; 6:00 am to 7:00 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.” I will be speaking on BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler, and More Agile Business. The second is in Columbus, OH on March 7th and the main session starts at 8:30am ET. I will be [...]

Read the full article →