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: Norman Marks March 5, 2013 
A report from the consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, shares valuable insights on the topic of “How ‘social intelligence’ can drive decisions.” Not only is this an interesting read, but governance, risk, and assurance professionals should recognize the risk of not being intelligent and failing to mine the information available in social media. As the authors say, “The costs of navigating without a social-intelligence map can be substantial.” They should also understand the …
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Posted by: Thierry Audas January 22, 2013  It’s no secret that the amount of data businesses must manage is growing dramatically. Business applications, sensors, consumer devices, and social networks are generating a huge volume of information— a trend known as “big data”— at a faster pace and with greater variety than ever before. On top of this mountain of data, customer expectations are shifting dramatically.
Consumers no longer make purchasing decisions based on great advertising or on information from a single source. Today, consumers have access via social networks to …
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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: Byron Banks February 14, 2012  When it comes to Big Data, people up and down Highway 101 in Silicon Valley talk about technologies such as NoSQL, Hadoop, and MapReduce as though they’ll solve all of our problems. While these are certainly exciting new capabilities, technology alone isn’t the answer to Big Data. Follow us on a six-part series of blog posts to learn more.
First, though, let’s not discount the contribution of technologies in solving the Big Data dilemma. Hadoop, MapReduce, and other recent innovations are helping companies deal with ever-increasing amounts of data, …
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Posted by: Ted Luchsinger December 22, 2011  I always seem to be writing my blogs in airports or on a plane. Sitting in my seat at 30,000 feet, listening to Arturo Sandoval seems the perfect occasion to contemplate the state of customer intimacy, what has been achieved, and what is still needed.
I wonder if my bank knows how much I travel? If they did, could they create an offer that I would value and make me feel good about the banking relationship? After all, in these turbulent times, feeling good about anything—much less your banking …
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Posted by: Sonny Dasgupta November 15, 2011  The recent financial crisis has changed the corporate landscape; today we live in a world of crowdsourcing and “doing more with less.” Cloud computing, social media, smartphones, tablet computers, and the thousands of apps that run on them are designed to do just that. All that sounds good on paper, but is there another side to this story?
As a risk and compliance professional, I tend to focus on the risk aspect of each situation (yes that puts me in the minority, as most of the business world focuses …
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Posted by: Hugh Anderson September 22, 2011  Thankfully, the damage from Irene proved to be lower than predicted. However, coming on the heels of a series of catastrophic tornados and even a strong East Coast earthquake, insurers have been reminded that in today’s reality, they need to act in new ways—before, during, and after the storms. Insurers who wish to separate themselves from the pack are now making innovative use of social media, mobility, and real-time analytics. They’re not doing so just to be prepared financially for servicing claims or reaching out to their customers after …
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Posted by: Dipali Mehta September 13, 2011  Recently, I met a friend for lunch in San Francisco’s Union Square. In deciding where to eat, I reached for my iPhone, while she grabbed her latest Android device, each of us surfing the Web and consulting our preferred review apps. In just five minutes, we processed the available information and decided to try a new Vietnamese restaurant that had been reviewed a hundred times in the month since it opened. We even knew what items we wanted to order.
My friend and I …
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Posted by: Marie Goodell September 1, 2011  Building positive relationships with thought leaders, customers, and vendors is critical to every organization’s success. With the popularity of social media, we now have the amazing ability to foster these relationships in new ways.
Sharing information via social media is the easy part—we can tweet about an upcoming event on Twitter, generate a conversation on Facebook, blog about the latest trend, or post an instruction video on YouTube.
But listening to feedback can be more challenging—requiring companies to implement new solutions or extend existing information management frameworks to discover …
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Posted by: Rani Goel August 30, 2011  The growth of social communities like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn gives us a preview of how the Netizens (citizens on the Internet) of tomorrow will communicate with each other. CTIA survey results released in Dec 2009, showed Twitter had hit 50 million tweets per day during 2009; however that traffic grew substantially per Twitter’s blog, which showed 177 million tweets were sent on March 11, 2011. There are also almost 700 million users on Facebook.
All of these people are willing to live their lives and communicate on a …
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