The last two weeks have been very focused on analytics, especially predictive analytics. First I attended the IBM Analyst Summit where they formally launched their big new focus on Decision Management (see my blog series here). This event was a big deal, I believe, because it showed IBM’s increased focus on Decision Management – moving from having some solid products (WebSphere Operational Decision Management and SPSS Analytical Decision Management) to having a core go to market strategy focused on Decision Management. IBM’s increased focus in this area, their increasing integration of their products and marketing to deliver Decision Management, and their investment in the whole range of technologies for Decision Management all point to the growing importance of Decision Management as a vehicle for analytics and analytics-led business innovation. Other posts on the IBM event included this one from Neil Raden at Constellation (who wrote Smart (Enough) Systems with me) and this one from Mark at Ventana Research.
This week I attended Predictive Analytics World in Chicago. I gave a presentation on business friendly data mining (below and on Slideshare). This was a quick run through on how to get business success with data mining:
- Have a clear decision-making target (Begin with the Decision in Mind) – especially a clear operational decision
- Understand how this decision impacts your business – the KPIs or metrics it affects
- Decompose decisions to better understand how they are made and where you can use analytics to influence them
- Deploy analytical decisions back into the processes and systems that run your business – build Decision Management Systems in other words
After Predictive Analytics World it was time for the International Institute for Analytics Executive Symposium. This was a great opportunity to meet both research clients and individual members from IIA as well its great faculty. It was great to help run an interactive discussion on Omni-channel retailing and participate in a panel on technology trends. It’s a tremendously knowledgeable faculty and a great bunch of clients. If you or your company are not already members you should definitely check out the Institute. Personally I am looking forward to my next pieces of research on decision inventories and on customer next best action approaches.
Finally I had a new white paper (sponsored by SAS) on Operationalizing Analytics. Helping companies figure out how to operationalize and industrialize their analytic approach is one of the services we offer at Decision Management Solutions and it was great to be able to bring that experience to bear writing this paper.
Have a great July 4th week!
