For the past couple of years, IBM has made it unmistakably clear that it intends to be a world leader in advanced analytics and predictive analytics because it believes the related technologies that it has developed or acquired and assimilated can be harnessed by customers to provide unprecedented levels of foresight into future behaviors, probabilities, and outcomes, which thereby let those IBM customers make better business decisions about that not-so-unknown future.

By moving aggressively into that technology space with its huge commitment to advanced analytics and predictive analytics, and by moving subtly into that interrelated business space with Michael Haydock's retail-sales forecasting, IBM has elegantly extended its considerable market position from the vital business of technology products and services to the unfolding world of helping customers understand—and take full advantage of—the future.

You can learn more about Michael Haydock's work here (press release: IBM Forecasts Bump in U.S. Retail Electronics and Appliance Sales) and IBM's broader work with the retail industry here.

Related:  An interesting article in Retail Industry News (Meeting the Demands of the Smarter Consumer) by Patricia Vekich Waldron, worldwide distribution executive, business analytics at IBM. ]]> http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dxcomments/eweek-analytics-as-ibms-brilliant-trojan-horse-strategy-technology http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/eweek-analytics-as-ibms-brilliant-trojan-horse-strategy-technology?opendocument&comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:51:18 -0400 http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/eweek-ibm-business-analytics-20-ways-big-blue-rules IBM Adam Gartenberg http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/eweek-ibm-business-analytics-20-ways-big-blue-rules?opendocument&comments http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/eweek-ibm-business-analytics-20-ways-big-blue-rules IBM Business Analytics: 20 Ways Big Blue Rules."  Head on over to the site for highlights of IBM's innovation, capabilities, and the successes organizations are seeing with our solutions.

IBM has become a major proponent of business analytics. The emergence of smarter systems that are interconnected and streaming real-time information is presenting enterprises with a unique opportunity to transform decision making. New opportunities to use this data to predict business outcomes, optimize old systems and spot trends before they happen have become a reality. Overall, IBM views analytics as a strategic directive for the company, coming from its top management. The company's strategy includes a team of 5,000 consultants and a network of analytics solution centers, and it is backed by an overall investment of more than $11 billion in acquisitions in the last five years. This slide show shows 20 ways IBM is pushing the analytics envelope, including several industry-specific and customer examples.

• August 19 - Los Angeles
• August 24 - New York
• August 25 - Cincinnati
• August 26 - Toronto
• Seotember 2 - Atlanta
• September 8 - Washington DC
• September 15 - Indianapolis

Predictive Perspectives offers a variety of tracks and sessions to help you gain bigger returns and better results.

Track 1 - The Predictive Analytics Overview Track is perfect for those who are new to predictive analytics or to IBM SPSS products.

Track 2 - The Technology Deep Dive Track offers in-depth information for current users of IBM SPSS predictive analytics software.

Track 3 - The Business Intelligence and Performance Management Overview Track shows how to add value to your IBM Cognos software by incorporating predictive analytics

For more information, please visit http://www.spss.com/perspectives/ ]]> http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dxcomments/free-predictive-analytics-seminars-cities-and-dates- http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/free-predictive-analytics-seminars-cities-and-dates-?opendocument&comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:40:17 -0400 http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/ibm-helps-nc-state-university-bring-innovative-technologies-to-market-by-harnessing-big-data IBM Adam Gartenberg http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/ibm-helps-nc-state-university-bring-innovative-technologies-to-market-by-harnessing-big-data?opendocument&comments http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/ibm-helps-nc-state-university-bring-innovative-technologies-to-market-by-harnessing-big-data announced a new project that will take advantage of Big Data analytics technology to match academic research with potential investors.  The biggest challenge in this process today is being able to quickly and easily comb through a large amount of data to uncover potential investors and partnerships.  From the press release:

To address this challenge, NC State will use IBM's advanced analytics technology to streamline the time consuming process of searching and matching potential university research projects with investment and partnership opportunities.

Analytics technology allows NC State researchers to search through massive amounts of Web data, such as blogs, forums, reports, industry related news sites and government websites to produce a short list of potential investors. By streamlining the matching process with business analytics, more advanced technologies are expected to be brought into the market.

• IBM BigSheets, a software engine from IBM's BigInsights portfolio that helps get insights from really large data sets easily and quickly
• IBM LanguageWare, a text analytics tool created by IBM's Dublin Software Lab in Ireland for the purpose of harnessing unstructured data contained in text documents, Web site content and enterprise applications
• IBM Cognos Content Analytics, an analytics software for accessing and analyzing unstructured content
• These three components are running on IBM Distribution of Apache Hadoop

Blue CRUSH uses IBM SPSS predictive analytics software to analyze past and present information and create multi-layer maps of crime "hot spots" based on various arrests and incidents. MPD is able to evaluate incident patterns throughout the city and connect the dots — such as outside of concert venues; or crime trends, such as increased car burglary on rainy nights. The software enables Blue CRUSH to analyze an array of data in areas as wide as the city's entire nine precincts or narrowed down to a single block.

"We've aimed to transform the company culture from a farming business where you 'grow and hope for the best' to one that uses information analytics to provide an accurate measurement of the business," said Sun World's Director of Budgets & Reporting Steve Greenwood. "Before, we didn't know until 30 days after the month how our harvest costs were trending. By that time, it was too late to start financial planning because the crops had already been harvested. We've turned raw data into business insight, improved our order fill rates, and have gone from being a reactive company to a proactive company."

• 8.5% reduction in water usage (especially important in California's climate)
• 10-15% reduction in labor costs
• 20% reduction in use of fuel
• 8% increase in efficiency in farm labor
• 20% increase in sales to key customer segments, generating $3M in new business

• youtube.com/ibmbusinessanalytics
• Analyze This: DC Water

Students' perceptions have been profoundly shaped by the digital and interconnected world of their school years. What is the impact of those experiences? Given the world they inherited from previous generations, what do today's students believe about the role of public and private organizations? Most importantly, when they become leaders themselves, what are they likely to do differently?

We found that students who had the greatest sense of complexity put much more emphasis on the analytics and predictive capabilities of information.   They were 50% more likely to expect significant impact from increased information than peers who did not have the same sense of complexity.  And they were 22% more likely to believe that organizations should focus on insight and intelligence to enable their strategies.

• ibm.com:  Inheriting a Complex World [student study]
• ibm.com:  2010 Global CEO Study

Looking ahead, IBM needs to boost its BAO marketing efforts to demonstrate that its software and services can span industries and lines of business and show on its website more than just overviews of consulting on technologies. IBM needs to prove that it has a focus that line-of-business professionals can grasp easily and that integrates easily into collaboration and mobility where business need to full leverage the analytics. That said, IBM’s global efforts are the largest in the world, and its investments demonstrate its commitment to BAO. It will be difficult for other global providers to hire as many service professionals or amass the software portfolio of IBM.

• Mark Smith: BM Advances Business Analytics and Optimization in First Year
• ibm.com: Business Analytics and Optimization Services
• ibm.com: IBM Business Analytics Software

• The digital information created by every man, woman and child on Earth “Tweeting” continuously for 100 years;
• 75 billion fully-loaded 16 GB Apple iPads, which would fill the entire area of Wembley; Stadium to the brim 41 times, the Mont Blanc Tunnel 84 times, CERN's Large Hadron Collider tunnel 151 times, Beijing National Stadium 15.5 times or the Taipei 101 Tower 23 times;
• A full-length episode of FOX TV’s "24" running continuously for 125 million years; and
• 707 trillion copies of the more than 2,000-page U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into Law in March 2010. Stacked end to end, the documents would stretch from Earth to Pluto and back 16 times or cover every inch of the United States in paper three-feet deep.

By capturing viewer insights on certain programs from social media sources, RTL Nederland was able to gather timely feedback from viewers on the television programmes 'X Factor' and 'So You Think You Can Dance'. This helped the entertainment company to better understand audience needs and preferences and at the same time increase viewer satisfaction and involvement.

"Collecting and analyzing feedback from our viewers from any communication channel is of great importance to RTL in order to offer programmes that are fully aligned with the target audience," said Emilie van den Berge, senior Research & Intelligence project leader at RTL Nederland.
...
"This approach enables RTL to evaluate and adapt its television programmes on the basis of answers it is getting without asking any questions," added Annelies Verhaeghe, senior consultant at InSites Consulting. "In contrast to interviewing, more and more people spontaneously give their opinions about brands and products on the internet. RTL for instance analyzed the sentiment of over 71,000 online conversations on 'X Factor', which provided them with a powerful tool to measure attitudes indirectly, and quickly adapt the programme to better respond to viewer needs and keep the audience more involved."

Contestants on “Jeopardy!” have to understand the clues in light of the Category (context) and then quickly sift through their accumulated knowledge over their lifetime to come up with potential answers, decide if they have confidence in their answer, and then quickly respond by hitting the buzzer.   Except for the buzzer, does that sound familiar and relevant to your job?   Would a computer that could do all that plus cite the evidence backing up its answer be helpful to your job?  If so, then read on. 

According to the April 2010 "IT Occupation Trends in Illinois" study conducted by the Illinois Technology Association and CompTIA, 65 percent of Illinois businesses see business intelligence and analytics as important jobs they must fill within the next two to three years. Firms rate these as important occupations, yet they lack confidence in finding the right workers for these roles.

• Press Release: DePaul University and IBM Team to Launch New Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics
• Analytic Certification in Education (ACE) program
• IBM VP Deepak Advani discusses the new DePaul Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics.

"Winning the Global Gold Effie is among the toughest in the Effie competition as a brand needs to demonstrate results across multiple continents, in at least four countries while competing with brands across all sectors," explained Mary Lee Keane, President of Effie Worldwide.  "Our panel of judges was blown away with the results, innovation and scope of IBM's business agenda set forth through the Smarter Planet campaign."

• IBM analysts estimate that the Smarter Planet strategy has expanded their market potential by as much as 40% globally, or $2.3 Billion dollars.
• IBM increased their brand value in the toughest economic climate since the Great Depression.
• According to BrandZ, IBM increased their brand value by 20% (representing $11.3 billion dollars), from $55.3B in 2008 to $66.6B in 2009, in a category that only grew by 2% overall. – BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2009.
• According to Interbrand, IBM increased their brand value by 2% (a number estimated to represent $1.2 billion). In an economic climate in which most brands’ share prices and brand values dropped (the combined value of the top 100 brands fell 4.5%). – 2009 Interbrand Best Global Brands Study
• Similarly, since the campaign launched in November 2008, IBM’s stock price has increased 64% against a Dow that grew just 14%, resulting in an increase in IBM’s market capitalization by approximately $50 billion dollars. And although some would say that such a grand achievement is hard to attribute to a campaign, an increase in brand value makes the case even stronger. – IBM, Q309

• Press Release:  IBM Smarter Planet Campaign From Ogilvy & Mather Wins Global Effie
• 2010 Gold Global Award:  "Let's Build a Smarter Planet" - IBM Corporation

• ibm.com:  BigSheets (on the jStart site)

• Telecom Call Records
• Election Results Workbench
• BPG Sustainability
• Data.gov Analysis

1967 was an interesting time for the team-up: two years before the Muppets’ national prominence would rise thanks to Sesame Street, and two years after the introduction of IBM’s Selectric typewriter, an electric device which was crucial in the transition from old Remington typewriters to the modern word processors which would soon make the Selectric look old-fashioned.

Built on open standards technology, IBM's Insurance Industry Framework provides the base upon which insurance carriers can seamlessly upgrade and transform their business models, without ripping-out and replacing legacy technologies. Connecting disparate systems across the enterprise and exposing key information to their distribution channels in a coordinated fashion, the framework enables a company's progressive transformation with proven technology capabilities already employed by dozens of insurance institutions. As a result, insurance carriers are now able to safely and securely update their infrastructure on the fly, more cost effectively and quickly.

• ibm.com: IBM Insurance Industry Framework
• Whitepaper: Accelerating process transformation in the insurance industry with the IBM Insurance Industry Framework
• Press Release: IBM Unveils Software to Help Insurance Carriers Get Closer to Customers, Improve Agility

Step #1: Instrument to manage. You’ve got to collect a lot of data; then understand it, manage it, and act on it. She mentioned a great example. It’s not a city situation, actually, but it demonstrates the power of instrumentation: In New Zealand, farmers discovered that dairy cows produce more milk when when they listen to music. But all cows don’t have the same taste in music, so farmers use the RFID tags attached to each cow to identify them when they enter the milking stall and play each one the music they like best. Who knew!

Step #2: Integrate to innovate. By combining data from many related sources, city leaders can draw superior insights. A good illustration is New York City’s Realtime Crime Center. The city gathers a tremendous amount of data about crimes and criminals and makes it available to police managers and individual police officers on a realtime basis. This makes it possible for police to respond quickly and to even anticipate crimes, and to predict where a person might go after they commit a crime. The system has contributed to the city’s incredible public safety improvements: The crime rate has dropped by 27% since 2001.

Step #3: Optimize to transform. All the data in the world doesn’t matter much if you don’t do something with it–have an impact on people’s day-to-day lives. A cool example here is Singapore. The tiny country is pushing public transportation hard. Working with IBM Research, it has developed a system that makes it possible for bus riders to find out  if their bus is going to be on time. In the future, they’ll be able to know if a bus is overcrowded. Maybe they’ll wait for one with open seats. It’s all part of an effort to make public transportation both a way of life and a pleasurable experience.

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