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Predictive Analytics Vs. Reactive Analytics
Today everybody is talking about predictive analytics, and it’s undeniably desirable to be able to predict the behavior of customers, employees, voters, or other sources of uncertainty. However, while predictive analytics are always difficult, they are particularly difficult in the current economic crisis. If you’re trying to predict the future
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A Brave New (Financial) World
How will financial services organizations handle complex analytical decisions in the future?Our financial institutions made decisions about their operations and customers is at the heart of the financial crisis we’re in. Managers of these institutions entrusted decisions to analytical models they didn’t understand. Regulators allowed banks, rating agencies, and nonbank
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2010 Looking Good For Analytics
2010 is going to be a good year for analytics, if the survey of International Institute for Analytics members is any indication. 90% say analytics will have a greater impact on their organizations’ strategies in the coming year.52% believe they can achieve the impact with the same level of spending,
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The Importance Of Interfaces To BI Tools
Cindi Howson has a new report out about the importance of interfaces to BI tools.Cindi does good research, and I don’t disagree with her methods or conclusions. However, it’s worth pointing out a few issues with regard to interfaces for analytical software:Visual analytics are very appealing, but it’s difficult to
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Food Lion Exec Describes "Bootstrap" Analytics
At a “Competing on Business Analytics” event sponsored by SAS and Accenture in Chicago this week, Mike Haaf, former Food Lion SVP of Sales, Marketing, and Business Strategy, described a broad and successful program of analytical marketing and operations at the Carolina-based grocery retailer. When Haaf arrived at the company
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Geeks Make A Difference
I’m on my way home from the INFORMS Practice Conference in Orlando. A subtitle for it might be “Geeks who make a difference.” The meeting is a celebration of operations research (OR) and its application to organizations and decisions. If you’re not familiar with OR, it’s probably one of the
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Analytics Swings Both Ways
After another “Competing on Business Analytics” dinner sponsored by SAS and Accenture last night in Atlanta, what impressed me about analytics as a business resource is that it can support a very broad range of business strategies and conditions. Our two executive panelists were a great illustration of that range.
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Analytics In "Old Europe"
I’m in Europe on a “Leading with Analytics” tour sponsored by SAS, and facilitated by Harvard Business Review. So far we’ve been in Brussels and Paris (what Donald Rumsfeld called “Old Europe”), and Prague is next. While there may not be quite as much focus on analytics here as in
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Can We Master Data Management?
About 20 years ago, there was a movement afoot in the IT industry called “Information Engineering.” Promulgated by vendors and consultants—at first those trying to sell to the government, and then those seeking corporate bucks—it was one of those massive data planning exercises that never got off the ground in
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Semi-Automated Social Media Analytics
There is a lot of chatter these days about analytics related to social phenomena: social media analytics, social network analytics, etc. My impression (after talking about it with some folks who specialize in such things) was that there was more talk than action on the subject. But I keep hearing