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 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: Ina Felsheim March 19, 2013  Intrinsically, you know that you need good data. But how far do you need to go? What are the real costs incurred if you DON’T have clean data?
How Bad Can it Be?
The most common data quality question is, “We’re still making money, so how bad can it really be?”
Consider the following scenario. You made the “mistake” of hiring good people. Rock stars, even. They’re smart people, and they want to make sure you keep making money. As processes break and bad reports …
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Posted by: Trish Harman February 28, 2013  My eight-year-old daughter loves to do puzzles; she has since she was a toddler. When she first started doing the cardboard ones from a box, rather than the simple board type, we tried to explain how to put them together (e.g. start with the edge pieces, look at the box’s picture). Like most kids, she had her own ideas about how it should work, and of course, followed none of our instructions. But now she puts them together faster than most adults.
I happened to be …
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Posted by: Bil Khan January 31, 2013  Big data can help businesses gain new insights at incredibly fast, real-time speeds. However, making an informed decision based on accurate information is only the first step. You have to implement that decision across your organization in order to produce the desired outcomes. But how do you do that?
In order to fully realize the benefits of real time, you need to act in real time and bring both analytics and transactions to work at the same …
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Posted by: Kristin McMahon January 29, 2013  Those of you familiar with the children’s story, “The Three Little Pigs,” know that a big bad wolf visits each of the pigs’ houses in anticipation of a savory meal. However, (spoiler alert here) only one little pig’s house ends up being strong enough not to be blown over by the big bad wolf. Well, that’s because that smart little pig knew that having a strong foundation for his house—in this case building it with bricks and mortar —would shield and protect his investment …
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Posted by: Ina Felsheim January 24, 2013  USA reported an interesting story about a musician who ordered a Westinghouse TV from Amazon (purchased from a third party provider). Some of you probably did that yourself over the holidays. He anxiously waited for the big box to arrive. Instead, a much smaller box appeared on his doorstop. Hmmm. Perhaps, he thought, this is a single component for the TV? Cables or a stand? Reasonable guesses.
Nope. Not a TV at all—instead, it was a black, semiautomatic gun. Imagine his surprise! …
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Posted by: Jason Lovinger December 11, 2012  If you’re like me, you’ll spend many hours this holiday season shopping for gifts, as well as trying to snag bargains on a few items for yourself. The shopping period between Black Friday and the end of the year has traditionally been a boom time for retailers, and the impact of technology on the holiday shopping season is increasingly evident.
Every day, a myriad of advertisements fills my email inbox to inform me of each retailer’s deals. Multiple iPad applications were launched this year to help shoppers find …
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Posted by: Bil Khan November 27, 2012  The need for information is just as strong today, if not stronger, than it was hundreds of years ago. But the ways we access information, and the forms it exists in, are dramatically different. I like to compare the past two decades’ changing landscape of digital information to the California Gold Rush of the 1800s. As they did during the Gold Rush, droves of people are jumping on the band wagon with the hope of achieving unprecedented riches and their 15 minutes of fame. Today, they hope to do …
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Posted by: Ginger Gatling October 18, 2012  There are all types of applications available in the cloud today, including ones focused on customers, sourcing and suppliers, HR, business networks, analytics, and full business processing with ERP. So, where do governance and information programs fit within these cloud applications?
Ina Felsheim does a great job of talking about governance, including what it does for you and what happens if you don’t have governance. And if you follow her on Decision Factor or Twitter, you’ll see she talks about …
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Posted by: Ina Felsheim October 16, 2012  If you’re one of the many who isn’t yet tracking metrics and constantly reporting business value achieved through your efforts, you can use the Gartner whitepaper statistic below to help you quantify results.
How many business initiatives did you undertake last year? How many delivered on time, on target, and have increasing adoption? How many do you plan to undertake next year?
Ask your CIO or program management office for these numbers—then have a discussion. If you’re normal, 40 percent of those projects will fail. Investing in the quality of the …
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