BI innovation

  • Metrics Matter

    I had a very interesting conversation last week with Dyke Hensen, SVP of Product Strategy for PivotLink.  For those of you not familiar with PivotLink, the company is a SaaS BI provider that has been in business for about 10 years (before the term SaaS became popular). Historically, the company has worked with small to

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  • When most people think of social networks they think of Facebook and Twitter, but social network analysis has its roots in psychology, sociology, anthropology and math (see Scott, John Social Network Analysis for more details). The phrase has a number of different definitions, depending on the discipline you’re interested in, but for the purposes of

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  • I had an interesting briefing with the Basis Technology team the other week.  They updated me on the latest release of their technology called Rosette 7.   In case you’re not familiar with Basis Technology it is the multilingual engine that is embedded in some of the biggest Internet search engines out there – including Google,

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  • I just got back from the SAS analyst event that was held in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.   It was a great meeting.  Here are some of the themes I heard over the few days I was there: SAS is a unique place to work. Consider the following:  SAS revenue per employee is somewhat lower than the

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  • With 2010 now upon us, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about five advanced analytics technology trends that will take flight this year.  Some of these are up in the clouds, some down to earth. Text Analytics:  Analyzing unstructured text will continue to be a hot area for companies. Vendors in this space

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  • There has been a lot of excitement in the market recently around business analytics in general and specifically around predictive analytics. The promise of moving away from the typical rear view mirror approach to a predictive, anticipatory approach is a very compelling value proposition.  But, just how can this be done?  Predictive models are complex. 

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  • I’ve been writing about text analytics for a number of years, now. Many of my blogs have included survey findings and vendor offerings in the space.  I’ve also provided a number of use cases for text analytics; many of which have revolved around voice of the customer, market intelligence, e-discovery, and fraud.  While these are

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  • IBM made a number of announcements last week at IOD regarding new products/offerings to help companies analyze content.  One was Cognos Content Analytics, which enables organizations to analyze unstructured data alongside structured data.  It also looks like IBM may be releasing a “voice of the customer” type service to help companies understand what is being

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  • Last Friday, SAS announced that it was partnering with Teradata and Elder Research Inc. (a data mining consultancy) to open a Business Analytics Innovation Centre.  According to the press release, “ Recognising the growing need and challenges businesses face driving operational analytics across enterprises, SAS and Teradata are planning to establish a centralised “think tank”

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  • I just got back from the IBM Information on Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas.  A key message was that the future is in analytics and predictive analytics at that.  IBM has already invested $12B ($8B acquisitions, $4B organic growth) in analytics since 2005.  Its recent purchase of SPSS has enabled the company to put

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