A/B Testing

Jerome Boyer of IBM presented a methodology – Best Practices for Managing a Cognitive Business Operations (CBO) Journey Proven Method. Cognitive, in this context, is about extracting intent from unstructured text using natural language and thus improve process execution. By adding Watson services to a BPM/ODM installation, organizations can improve interactions, improve assignments, improve advice and deliver faster reactions. For [...]

Sparkling Logic is focused on enabling business and data analysts to manage automate decisions better and faster – what they call Analytics driven Decision Management. Sparkling Logic was founded in 2010 and I have blogged a few times about their decisioning platform (most recently here). Customers include Equifax, Paypal, FirstRate, Accela, Northrop Grumman and others [...]

Bill Fair, one of the founders of Fair Isaac, once said that to succeed with analytics you had to “grab the decision by the throat and don’t let go”. As Big Data and analytics become ever more central to organizations, and as more and more money is spent on analytics, this advice seems particularly timely. As [...]

I got an update from CRIF recently. CRIF is headquartered in Italy with $450M in revenue and 1,884 employees. They have customers in over 50 countries, offer credit bureau services in over 15 countries and credit decisioning solutions worldwide. Most customers are financial institutions though they have customers in other industries such as telco, utilities, [...]

I recently got an introduction to the Provenir Big Data Listening and Engagement platform. Provenir is a cloud-based platform that serves as an omni-channel engagement hub, allowing brands to proactively listen for real-time events and comments across Big Data and leverage these moments to orchestrate real-time customer journeys for individual customers. It accomplishes this by [...]

Neil focused his session on Analytics. Analytics, he says, has roared to the front office in recent years (driven in part by the explosion of data and data management technology). Big, as in Big Data, is relative. The rate of increase has not particularly changed in recent years but the rate of increase is being [...]

Matt Gershoff, CEO of Conductrics (a product we reviewed here) wrote a nice piece on A/B Testig over at the Analyzing Media blog – It’s all One Big Decision: Testing, Analytics, & Targeting. Matt discusses the role of A/B testing, of predictive analytics and of optimization in a nice, straightforward piece. Well worth reading. I wrote [...]

I got a chance to catch up with FICO’s Marketing products as part of our ongoing blog series on Marketing Decision Management solutions. FICO has been transitioning from using its tools to build custom marketing solutions to delivering a complete solution specifically for marketing. They also acquired Entiera about a year ago and have integrated [...]

Josh Prismon and Matt Beck came up next to walk through a 5 step plan for Big Marketing – Marketing in the era of Big Data. Admit you have a problem Stop interrupting and start understanding Create a personal dialogue guided by analytics Continuously improve your decisions Push out by building network effects The context for this [...]

As part of our ongoing series on Marketing Decision Management solutions I recently got a briefing on some of IBM’s Marketing Solutions – specifically IBM Real-time Interaction Management. IBM’s Real-time Interaction Management offering is part of IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management suite. This has been a real focus area for IBM in the last few years with [...]

I was chatting with our VP of business development today and she shared a great phrase that she had heard recently – “the tyranny of the anecdotal.” This refers, of course, to the terrible tendency of people to use anecdotes and stories to make decisions. The regrettable tendency for a doctor to ignore data about [...]

I caught up with a local real-time decision making start up recently called Inkiru. Inkiru’s mission is to revolutionize real-time decision making by using the increasing volumes of data available to drive both insight and action. The core team is ex-Visa, PayPal, eBay, Chase, amazon with a focus in payments, fraud detection and security. The [...]

IBM has two core Decision Management products, Operational Decision Management and Analytical Decision Management. As noted yesterday CIOs see a need to drive better real time decisions while CEOs see the need to differentiate their organizations by translating insight into actions (by making decisions). The Decision Management solutions are focused on optimizing decisions – not [...]

Have you looked at a packet of Epsom Salt recently? Here’s a product that describes itself as a soaking aid for minor sprains and bruises a saline laxative for the short term relief of constipation a plant nutrient for vigorous lawns, flowers, plants, vegetables and trees Three very different uses – after all, how many [...]

I got a briefing from Conductrics recently. Conductrics is a start up delivering an agent-based decision optimization solution focused on next best action or next best message. Designed for a website, mobile application or even a POS it uses machine learning techniques to optimize the behavior of the site/application to meet some overarching objectives – [...]

I just completed my presentation at RulesFest so here are the key points. For the RulesFest audience I assumed that either they were already using business rules or at least that they plan to be, and that  they knew what a rule engine is and how it works. Before going on to my five points, [...]

I am attending a few sessions at Oracle OpenWorld this week and the first one is an overview of Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD) in e-commerce. I have reviewed RTD 3.0 before. The context for using RTD is that consumers are harder to reach, satisfy and retain – their behavior evolves more quickly, there is more [...]

I received an update from IBM recently on IBM SPSS Decision Management 6 and IBM SPSS Modeler 14. IBM  sees organizations with many different data sources (inside and outside) that are moving from a traditional approach focused on reporting to one that involves “predict and act” – real-time, fact-driven decision making at the point of [...]

I did some work with Silverlink some time ago and was really impressed by their use of decision management to improve the communication of health plans and others in the healthcare space with members and patients. I got a chance to catch up with them recently to discuss progress and their use of adaptive control [...]