About UsThe Decision Factor offers insightful comments and observations on analytics—from views on new technology approaches and market dynamics to the latest industry trends driving demand for faster, smarter information analysis. This blog contains personal views, thoughts, and opinions from SAP employees, mentors, and friends working in the area of analytics. It’s not endorsed by SAP nor does it constitute an official communication of SAP. |
Posted by: Scott Jeffries May 7, 2013  Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored three key activities to driving enterprise value through analytics. In this final installment, we’ll discuss the path forward.
Many times, the immediate need for business insight is scattered around the organization, and the response is addressed in isolation rather than as a company-wide imperative. Employees often perform their analysis in spreadsheets and resort to manual workarounds when existing tools and processes are inadequate.
Today, however, the requirement for financial and operational insight is growing …
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Posted by: Scott Jeffries May 2, 2013  In my last two blogs, we discussed two of the three key activities to drive value through analytics—gaining control of your data and delivering the right information to the right people. Now it’s time to explore the third activity—enabling real-time analysis.
Business issues are on-going. Companies must continuously monitor business performance against established targets to identify areas for appropriate action and further analysis. In addition, business users are bombarded on a daily basis with questions that require quick investigation. And many of these questions …
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Posted by: Markus Schunter April 30, 2013  Yesterday’s Analytics
Until recently, financial analysis-based decision making relied on a historical view of aggregate data –understanding yesterday’s events to influence tomorrow’s performance. Highly skilled data scientists took summary-level information – analytic engines would be quickly overrun by larger or more detailed volumes of data – and analyzed promotion effectiveness, capital ROI, or quarter-end results.
While useful, this approach posed several problems:
Analysis was by definition backward looking. Summary-level analysis could easily mask anomalies that, if identified, would change the …
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Posted by: Patricia Saporito April 29, 2013  Everyone is talking about “Big Data,” but what they really want are “Big Insights.” To realize significant insights requires an effective analytic strategy.
Many companies believe they have an analytic strategy when what they actually have is an architecture, which is important but certainly not all you need. An analytic strategy requires continuous strategic and tactical business alignment, defining and updating your analytic strategy in view of your business goals and objectives, and analyzing and updating your current analytic roles, analytic skills, business processes and …
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Posted by: Lance Holbert April 25, 2013  Business analytics has evolved dramatically from its humble beginnings in core data warehousing more than 30 years ago. It’s evolved from simple, decision support solutions to advancements in business intelligence (BI), enterprise performance management (EPM), and, most recently, intelligent data concepts and predictive analytic applications. Companies have embraced the value of analytics – solutions that combine data and analysis to drive insights – to help them differentiate, become more competitive, and make better business decisions.
A Pervasive Culture of Analytics
Almost everyone in your company can benefit from …
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Posted by: Scott Jeffries April 23, 2013  In the first two blogs of this series, we discussed the three key activities to drive value through analytics—gaining control of your data, delivering the right information to the right people, and enabling real time and predictive analysis. Today, I want to delve deeper into the second activity.
It’s not enough for an organization to simply have consistent data. It also must agree on how to use and deliver that data – preferably at a …
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Posted by: Kouros Behzad April 16, 2013  There are many presentations and discussions about how analytics and “Big Data” can improve decision making—a simple Google search on the terms returns close to 8 million results. Organizations find their workforce analytics especially challenging as human resources (HR) departments attempt to grow beyond creating reports for the sake of reporting. When you think about it, on any given day, HR gets many questions about your workforce that data could address or improve. But which do you try to answer?
Sales, marketing, …
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Posted by: Scott Jeffries April 11, 2013  In part one of the series, I introduced you to three key activities to drive value through analytics. Today, we’re going to explore the first activity—gaining control over your data.
Gain Control Over Your Data
Since the advent of the internet, information resources available to businesses have exploded due to increasingly sophisticated information technology. This creates a terrific opportunity to support business decision-making with a very rich data set, but first, companies must be able to assimilate all relevant information—whether structured …
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Posted by: Scott Jeffries April 4, 2013  Over the next several days, I’ll be writing a series of posts aimed at helping you better leverage analytics to create value for your enterprise.
Create Value from Big Data
There’s no doubt that companies today face an information explosion and a variety of devices to consume that information. But does this data profusion represent an invaluable resource to your business, or is it simply information overload?
Effective business insights can help you spot trends early …
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Posted by: Byron Banks March 28, 2013  Mobile phones allow us to always stay connected and deal with just about everything on the fly — we text friends to find them and meet up, for example, and use mobile phone apps on the way out the door to check traffic and transit schedules, make restaurant reservations, and buy movie tickets. However, many interactions still aren’t as “real-time” or as “smart” as most consumers want them to be.
Real-Time Room for Improvement in Old School Service
Recently, I was downtown on a weekend trying …
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