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: 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: David Rathbun November 1, 2012  What’s the purpose of a business intelligence (BI) dashboard? It’s not just to look sexy. The primary purpose of a dashboard is to convey information. A secondary purpose is to inspire a behavioral change based on the information that’s being conveyed. Nobody wants to be “red” on a dashboard reviewed by executives, so they’ll change their behavior in order to get into the “green” area.
But humans are a creative species. What happens if their behavior changes in an unanticipated way?
Unintended Consequences
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of
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Posted by: Simon To September 20, 2012  While not every corporate executive understands what business intelligence truly is, every executive wants dashboards because they’re sexy and beautiful. They transform boring data into an attractive visualization. But how many executives know exactly what a dashboard is for and what it should be? Very few. It’s just like those hot trendy spring fashions that everyone wants to have but don’t exactly know why. To make things more complicated, every Jane, Jack, and Harry thinks they know how to build a dashboard or what it should look like—or perhaps they’re simply …
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Posted by: Derek Loranca August 23, 2012  Have you ever thought about using business intelligence (BI) to rally around a common goal? Sometimes a bit of out-of-the-box thinking can make a difference.
My daughter’s school has several fund-raisers every year, but the biggest is the “Ladies Basket Raffle.” Volunteers spend several months gathering donations and putting together hundreds of baskets filled with prizes. Attendees then purchase and use auction tickets to try and win the basket(s) of their choice. Two years ago, the school used a laptop, LCD projector, and an Excel spreadsheet to put the …
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Posted by: Christine Mykota July 19, 2012  It’s a fact. Putting intelligence back into business intelligence (BI) can boost your career – forever. Sure, I’m biased, but I’ve seen it – and it wowed me. A few clicks to a portal for the latest and greatest insights; a quick, informative check of my marketing dashboard; and I’m a believer. It’s so much better than fussing with spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet.
A well-known marketing executive, who has been CMO for a few top software companies in Silicon Valley, catapulted her career when she introduced a BI solution to …
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Posted by: Kristin McMahon August 16, 2011  Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates—some of us see and interact with them every day. If you’re in business, do you ever find yourself wanting to take those thousands of free-form, unstructured little nuggets of sentiment and opinions about your event, competition, or product launch (think about the tweet storm that goes on when Apple releases a product) and aggregate, analyze, and use them to influence your next move? Would harnessing all that information make your business better?
Lassoing Unstructured Data: The Cool Factor
I don’t …
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Posted by: Pierre Leroux April 26, 2011  “My basic idea is that the world has changed so much, what people need isn’t more data but a new mindset.” Hans Rosling
Hans Rosling is an exceptional individual. He’s the Swedish medical doctor who cofounded Gapminder. He can make statistics dance and break apart your preconceived ideas with hard facts and great passion. If you’re not familiar with his unique presentation style, catch his TED presentation about life expectancy and fertility rate around the world in the past 50 years. …
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