CORTEX Forums - Blogs http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/ This is a Data Warehouse, Data Quality, Business Intelligence, Information Managenent, Information and Performance Managenent and Analytics discussion forum. en Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:51:57 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/images/styles/tbig/misc/rss.jpg CORTEX Forums - Blogs http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/ The blogs are moving! http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/36-blogs-moving.html Wed, 13 May 2009 11:57:06 GMT I have incorporated this blog into the main forums on the CORTEX here (http://www.tbig.com.au/forums//forumdisplay.php?f=47). This is because we are... I have incorporated this blog into the main forums on the CORTEX here. This is because we are now using Typepad to create richer blogs.

Take a look at Oz Analytics for an example. What you see in the CORTEX forum is an RSS feed of the blog entries.:)

Look out for new CORTEX bloggers in the coming weeks!

So if it all works out, this part of the CORTEX will be archived. ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/36-blogs-moving.html How Not To Do An IT Transformation http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/35-how-not-do-transformation.html Tue, 12 May 2009 00:24:20 GMT I read with great interest a recent post on the departure of Telstra's Senior vice-president of transformation Tom Lamming. This Accenture partner had been taken into the company by CEO Sol Trujillo as a part of the US Executive influx at the start of his time at Telstra.

Lamming started out at Telstra as a consultant where he was paid up to $15,000 a day. What do you get for that sort of money?

But first, what was he paid to do? According to reports, his stated objectives were: a $12 billion, five-year transformation program that sought to develop common business processes for Telstra's operating support, customer care and billing systems. The aim was to save the telco hundreds of millions of dollars as 1,500 legacy systems were switched off.

What is particularly interesting is the report card for the transformation project 4 years into the 5 year project:

On the plus side:
  • Seven million Telstra private customers have migrated to the new platform (an application that crashes a lot is still an application)
  • 400 of the 1,500 legacy applications have been retired (with one year to go).

And on the negative:
  • Only 250,000 business customers had been moved across
  • Reportedly, the budget is blown by more than $1 billion
  • Of the 1500, by 2010 Telstra hopes to reduce that figure by 80 per cent. But with a year left, only 400 have been switched off.
  • More than 3,300 change requests have been issued
  • Related to the last point, the 'fixed price' contract with Accenture has reportedly blown out from $350 - $400 million to almost $600 million. Plus there must be a significant cost to keeping all of the remaining 1,100 legacy applications running
  • Presumably no net savings have been made so far (given all of the figures reported).

On the face of it, this is a pretty poor result. Don't be fooled: it is a poor result. No wonder CEO's, CFO's and CIO's are so worried about starting major transformation projects like this.

Telstra are not alone in achieving this level of poor performance, but it makes me weep when avoiding these problems is so easy.

Can anyone spell 'fiscal discipline' anymore?

So where was the effective governance in this story? Why was such a transformation project agreed to in the first place? Apparently performance tracking of the project was missing.

Transformation is always difficult. You succeed by breaking the problem down into small, measurable chunks that are delivered on an agreed schedule throughout the life of the project. Big bangs are bad. Period.

When you've done this you then put into place people with the backbone to govern the project and demand that the project deliver as promised - and if they don't then to understand why and judge whether-or-not investment continues.

Why is this so difficult?

The point about all of the above is that hopefully Telstra will learn something from this experience and bring the transformation project to a successful conclusion. I for one will cheer for a Project Manager that delivers this outcome. Even at a starting rate of $15,000 a day - that would still deliver bottom-line profits to Telstra.

I'll be brushing-up on my American accent for my next interview!

I'll leave you with Mr Lamming's own opinion as reported in the papers:

Quote:
"Telstra's transformation is the largest, most comprehensive and successful I have ever seen, and we have implemented it at speed," Mr Lamming said.
May he be as successful in a future engagement - but hopefully not in Australia! ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/35-how-not-do-transformation.html Reflections on Building BI http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/34-reflections-building-business-intelligence.html Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:57:55 GMT Recently I have just finished a long stint building an analytics capability in a large organisation. This has given me time to reflect on the... Recently I have just finished a long stint building an analytics capability in a large organisation. This has given me time to reflect on the experience and I'd like to share some of my conclusions.

First off, the analytic capability is very successful and is driving better decisions in many areas of the organisation. That's the easy bit to say - and I would say that anyway :).

What's more interesting are the lessons that I have learned - because they will help me do better next time. What are the lessons and how do I intend putting them into practice?

Lesson #1 - Get the Data Right

You can't achieve advanced analytics if the data isn't right.

Investing in high performing Business Analysis and Data Integration teams is the first step towards delivering a high performing organisation.

I say teams but even one of each is enough to kick-start things. I also mention two teams because together they give you an unbeatable combination of analytic power within your team.

Lesson #2 - Deliver Fast

If you are delivering a complex thing like an enterprise self-service analytic capability then you have to deliver value much faster than is possible.

How do you overcome this?

The method I use is to identify existing information problems that are long standing issues. They are never hard to find and the application of a little logic and creativity invariably delivers a tactical solution that you can implement in a matter of months.

We found a number of these problems (over 40 if I remember) and we delivered solutions to 20 or more in the months before we were able to deliver the enterprise data warehouse.

Lesson #3 - Deliver to the Direct Beneficiaries of Quality Data

There will be one or two groups within the organisation that can benefit directly from the high quality data that the Data Integration team make possible. The key point here is that these groups do not need the presentation layer (reports, dashboards, etc.). This makes it much quicker to deliver. Find out who they are and make them the second customers you deliver to.

In this case, Risk Management and Securitisation were departments that were identified and fit this bill. Delivering to these areas also gave us time to build the self-service analytic tools to other areas.

Lesson #4 - You've Got To Build An Exclusive Club

In the corporate world (the 'big end of town' we say in Australia) you are faced with people with a range of skills and talents. Some very, very good people with great skills and attitudes that I admire. The majority quite capable and with leadership can also deliver exceptional performance. The remaining 10% however are just not good enough. Nothing surprising in that I hear you say?

Well I disagree. I spent 10 years starting, growing and selling start-up companies and the 10% 'not good enough' don't last long in that environment. This makes a fundamental difference in the speed at which a team can deliver. Just as importantly - it's less fun for everybody. I think that you should have fun, be proud of the work and learn from your team. All of these things are diminished when you don't have a high performing team.

The organisation I worked for had an admirably cooperative and positive culture. To illustrate: you could approach just about anyone in the company and ask them a question and their first thought would be "How can I help this person?". Fantastic!

So what is the lesson?

I let the 'cooperative and positive culture' influence me to keep the 10% on in their jobs. On reflection, it would have been much better for all involved if I had done what I usually do: quickly and fairly get rid of them. Delaying or avoiding doing this hurt the performance of the analytic team I was building. Ultimately this also hurt our ability to get analytics adopted by the wider business.

Lesson #5 - New Tools Are Required

My final lesson has to do with the underlying technologies employed. I inherited a set of 'big tool' platforms (you know - the ones like IBM, Oracle and SAP). Early on I decided to keep them and go the upgrade path. I think this was wrong in a couple of areas - mainly around reporting and end user analytics.

I should have looked at more agile alternatives. Ultimately I believe they would have been easier and cheaper to deploy.

What are these alternatives? Here's is a list of a few that have caught my attention:
  • Open Source - tools are ready for the big time. Don't hesitate, start experimenting with them today.
  • QlikView, Zap and others - support more rapid deployment of analytics than the mega-platforms like IBM, Oracle and SAP.
  • Cloud9 Analytics - a role-based, on-demand business intelligence applications using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
  • eThority - a web and desktop based, user-focused, accessible and scalable approach to business-driven analysis of enterprise data.
  • illuminate - a correlation database that brings agility to the back-end data integration tasks that are barriers to agile analytics.
  • Lyzasoft - depolarizing and “filling the middle” with desktop-based data gathering, data analysis, reporting and analytic publishing.
  • Netmap - a visual approach to discovery-based analysis.
  • PolyVista - extending OLAP with prepackaged, easy-to-use data mining and discovery automation capabilities.

Lesson #6 - Ignore Service Providers and Recruitment Consultants

There are many good BI specialist Service Providers and Recruitment Consultants out there and they all want to develop a relationship with you. This is great and they can add value but when you are doing what we were doing there is not enough time to allow relationships to develop.

The lesson is to be more disciplined in what you spend time on. Building an analytic capability is a full time job. So be firm and resist the chance to have 10 coffees a day! ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/34-reflections-building-business-intelligence.html Another test http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/33-another-test.html Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:32:47 GMT Testing for the second time. Got no errors. Testing for the second time. Got no errors. ]]> admin http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/33-another-test.html Testing mov upload http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/31-testing-mov-upload.html Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:58:03 GMT For the second time For the second time ]]> admin http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/31-testing-mov-upload.html Why Are We Here? http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/30-why-we-here.html Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:53:39 GMT I recently came across an interesting online video entitled 'What Is Business Intelligence?' An interesting question and it does a very good job of introducing the history of BI.

The video was made by a guy in BI Solutions at Microsoft.

I suspect that it is designed to be a viral advert setting us all up for Microsoft's new 'BI 3.0' offering. Now that doesn't make what's in the video wrong per se. So take a look at the video and see if we can agree that the characteristics of 'BI 3.0' will be:
  • built into the desktop (ubiquitous)
  • work on structured and unstructured data
  • combine private with public data sets
  • be zero cost (at least built into the cost of your 'other' desktop software)
For me the next question is what does this mean for my area of BI - medium and large organisations? Here are my predictions:
  • The mega vendors (IBM, Oracle, SAP) are going to be under much greater price pressure because Microsoft Office, DBMS products, the new more nimble (and much cheaper) vendors like Zap, Microstrategy, etc. and google analytics will offer much improved performance and tools than today. This reduces the 'value add' of the mega vendors.
  • SAS will be less impacted because of its successful line of vertical applications and concentration on high-end analytics. Similar to the way Teradata concentrates on the big-end of data warehousing. SAS will still see some cannibalisation of sales at the low end and in government due to increased adoption of languages like R.
  • Analytic appliances will become more commoditised as high performance universal data extract and transformation appliances - similar to how web servers are used today
  • Microsoft will gain market share if (and only if) they simplify the accessibility of data from within the Office Suite.
So today, my BI platform is typically:
  • High-end ETL tools: DataStage, Informatica, Oracle
  • Mid-range database: DB2, Oracle, SQLServer
  • Enterprise Analytics: SAP (BOBJ), IBM (Cognos), SAS
Tomorrow:
  • Still high-end ETL tools because data (volume, complexity and number of sources) is expanding faster than the platform capabilities. The biggest change will be in extending the ETL function to include less and unstructured data from both internal and external (public) data from the internet
  • Database will see me move more into SQLServer and open source such as MySQL because of the significant cost savings and the small amount of functionality that is surrendered
  • Enterprise analytics will see the most significant cost change as the new vendors like Zap offer low cost (purchase and deployment) and ease of use.
Bottom-line impact? What costs me today $1 million plus in hardware and software licensing will be cut in half. That's a significant saving. For the small and medium sized enterprise the savings may be even more significant as there is greater opportunity to use open source databases and analytic/presentation software - something I would not yet risk in a major BI platform.

It will be interesting to review these predictions in 2 years time to see how good they are.

See you in 2 years time?? ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/30-why-we-here.html Data Quality Part 2 http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/29-data-quality-part-2.html Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:54:16 GMT True to my last blog, I talk about data quality at ING Direct in today's Australian newspaper.

While the article is not what I imagined it would be, it does cover some of the practical benefits of improving data quality.

For anyone interested, I am talking about data quality in much greater detail at the coming DQ Asia Pacific conference later this month. ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/29-data-quality-part-2.html 2009 The Year Of Data Quality? http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/28-2009-year-data-quality.html Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:09:09 GMT I have just been taking a look at the DQ Asia Pacific conference happening on 24 - 26 March in Sydney and it got me wondering about whether-or-not this is the year of data quality.

The recent Gartner BIIM Summit also touched on this subject.

Is there renewed interest in this 'dry' subject? I spent many of the 00 years hiding DQ activities from my stakeholders as I knew that they a) wouldn't understand their importance and b) didn't care! I still spent a lot of time and effort on improving DQ - but it was largely done 'under the radar'.

Is it time to change strategy and make DQ a headline item for the Board members? Or have I been drinking the kool aid?

Maybe, maybe not. Currently I am hedging my bets and concentrating on 2 closely related issues:
  1. Data Governance - establishing an effective framework and ensuring the right people are involved.
  2. Data Ownership - working on a model of ownership based on producers and consumers of information.

I look forward to attending the DQ conference later this month and comparing notes with others. Let me know if you will also be there. I'm also giving a talk on the Wednesday. Avoid or attend - your choice ;)

PS: The alternative titles for this year are:
  • Year of Data Governance
  • Year of Government Regulation
  • Kevin Rudd's personal favourite: Year of The Recession That's Not My Fault
]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/28-2009-year-data-quality.html Judgement Versus Analytics http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/27-judgement-versus-analytics.html Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:25:42 GMT TDWI has posted an article entitled "Judgement Versus Analytics" and it gave me another perspective on a problem that I have been grappling with for some months: how do I get decision makers to trust my analytics?

The original article can be found here.

I'm posting this here but I don't agree with most of what is stated - but it is a good conversation to have, even if it is only with yourself!


Quote:
2/18/2009

By Ted Cuzzillo

Survey results from Accenture made BI-industry stomachs turn late last year when it reported that business users' trust in analytics still had a long way to go. The headline alone was alarming. About 40 percent of surveyed companies said their important business decisions relied mostly on judgment instead of analytics.

"'Oh, now what do we do?'" was how Michael W. Cristiani of Market Intelligence Group imagined the widespread response in the analytics community. "It must have been frustrating. [BI consultants] have tried to introduce some rigor and best practices into the data side of things, only to hear that these [survey respondents] don't trust the data or know where the data comes from. Yikes!"

Below the headline, data broke down the reasons. Of the 40 percent, 61 percent of decisions relied on guts because of a lack of good data. Sixty percent -- apparently overlapping the first group -- were from absence of past data, such as predicting acceptance of innovation. Fifty-five percent relied on qualitative or subjective factors. Only 7 percent of judgment-based decisions were done using "judgment" instead o f analytics.

Interesting data, but my gut told me something was amiss. As I expected, experts I checked with say "guts" and analytics aren't so easy to separate.

Cristiani advises clients to make decisions based on data but to audit them against experience -- that is, to use judgment. He tells about one set of data he presented on point-of-sale wait times to a group of experienced people. The data said the average wait time was about two minutes. The group didn't accept it. Something's wrong with the data, they told him. He says, "They could smell it."

People talk about "trusted data" becoming part of the gut feeling, he says, but what does it take for data to be trusted? "If it really is a lack of confidence in competence," he wrote to me via e-mail, "fix the competence." Lack of institutional memory also undermines trust. Users say to themselves, "'I hope I'm getting this right. Where are the old guys who knew this stuff? Oh, yeah, they took the early-retirement buyout.'"

Can we trust Accenture's data? It seems good enough. Results were based on responses from 254 managers and executives at companies earning $500 million or more in 2007. The question, however, is a problem. Question 7 reads, "Most companies make decisions to some extent based on employing business analytics and to some extent based on judgment gained from experience and knowledge of the business. What percentage of your company's important business decisions do you estimate are made by employing business analytics as opposed to relying mainly on judgment?"

Michael Goodman, an old hand at crafting surveys for a variety of uses and now president of Extra Mile Audience Research, says, "You ask questions like this to get a rise out of people."

Of the several bloggers to comment, Neil Raden, co-author of Smart (Enough) Systems (Prentice-Hall, 2007) wrote, "The proper phrasing of this question is, do they rely on it to the exclusion fact-based reasoning? I don't think you can separate gut from analytics, because all analytics can do is inform your decision and at some point you have to apply your gut to the analytics."

Dave Wells, former education director of TDWI, went further. "If you reduce analytics to just the numbers, then they're pointless," he wrote me. "The judgment to know which data to use, to know which questions to ask, to know where to probe deeper, to go beyond 'knowing what' and get to 'understanding why' … all of this is analytics the way that I see it."

Accenture looks at the flip side. In its press release and from a spokesperson by telephone, the company says the survey shows how much work must be done and what a high priority companies will give it.

Another message also seems to break through: don't quibble over the question's phrasing. If users don't believe they can use analytics with decisions, then they can't.

That portends work that should keep consultants' phones ringing well into the future.



Ted Cuzzillo, CBIP, is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco area. He can be reached at ted5@datadoodle.com.
To me, the article just highlights the failure to do analytics right. How can this be? I think that you just have to remember that most data warehouse projects fail. I you remember this then it is hardly surprising that analytics also has a failure rate.

So if there are so many failures, how can you get decision makers to use analytics rather than their 'gut'? Here's my 2 cents worth:
  • Build trust in the underlying numbers that you use. Do this by proving threy are correct. Examples might include:
    • Using agreed and transparent definitions for the numbers.
    • reconciling back to a trusted source - usually back to the source systems or the GL.
    • Allow the end users to explore the numbers through a self-service facility. This way they can prove to themselves that the numbers you are presenting make sense.
    • Actively measure and report on the quality of your data.
  • Track the performance of the decisions that are made. If your analytics add value, the analysis will show that better decisions would have been made if they had used analytics. If you include forecasts then track the performance of your forecasts.
  • Don't exaggerate what the analytics can do. It there is a particular sensitivity to external factors (like competitor interest rates for a Bank, or the weather for farming output) then say this up front. It's OK to confess limitations to your model!
]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/27-judgement-versus-analytics.html The Lighter Side of Analytics http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/26-lighter-side-analytics.html Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:25:46 GMT After the depressing topic of redundancies in my last post, I thought it would be worthwhile looking at a positive and innovative use of analytics in... After the depressing topic of redundancies in my last post, I thought it would be worthwhile looking at a positive and innovative use of analytics in the real world.

Some years ago, an interesting book was published called Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. You can find more details here in our Intel500 database. It was all about how the coach of the US baseball team the Oakland A's beat everyone by using analytics.

Well it looks like gridiron is also taking advantage of BI's benefits for this years Super Bowl:

Quote:
Tampa preps for Super Bowl with BI tools

Tampa-area officials are gearing up for the Super Bowl with a specialized BI (business intelligence) system.

Chris Kanaracus (IDG News Service)

30/01/2009 03:54:00

Half a million football-crazed fans will jam Tampa, Florida, for this Sunday's Super Bowl showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals, but a small army of law enforcement officials will be tracking the situation through a system that combines BI (business intelligence) tools and a specialized software application called E Team.

"People come for the excitement of it, the parties," said Tampa's emergency coordinator, Chauncia Willis, in an interview Thursday. "Most people don't have tickets. ... We are basing our plans on the worst-case scenario."

The E Team system, made by the El Segundo, California, vendor NC4, allows responders in the field to send reports back to Tampa's multi-agency command post, Willis said. Officials are also using the Crystal Reports software sold by SAP's Business Objects division, as well as videoconferencing software for "command-level briefings" twice a day.

The E Team system is Web-enabled, allowing users to log in remotely to send and receive information, such as duty logs, status of key infrastructure assets like roads and hospitals and information on planned activities.

"A lot of [Super Bowl] parties, especially the larger ones, need law enforcement present," Willis said of the last category. The system also includes mapping and instant messaging functionality, she said.

Meanwhile, officials are using Crystal Reports to create "incident action plans," which pull information from the E Team system into detailed reports. "Only the commanders get [them]. It's like a daily planner, but a daily planner on steroids."

The action plans provide the deepest level of information possible about a given event. For example, if a dignitary is scheduled to arrive in Tampa, the report would include the individual's planned route of travel through the city as well as what time local air space may be restricted, she said.

But now her focus is on game day.

"We think we're prepared," Willis said. "I hope it's a quiet event. We've been planning for the last two years. We feel confident we can make it happen and be successful."

But Willis and fellow officials won't get much of a break after the big game -- Tampa's annual Gasparilla Pirate Fest, which draws more than 500,000 people -- is scheduled for the following weekend.
I haven't heard of E Team, but I'm sure that NC4 rings a bell. It's nice to see that SAP's Crystal Reports gets a mention.

I don't think that sports in Australia will see something like this - but am I being too harsh? What do they do in cricket with all those ball-by-ball stats you see them entering? ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/26-lighter-side-analytics.html Testing missing token error with attachment http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/25-testing-missing-token-error-attachment.html Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:22:19 GMT Attachment uploaded ok. Will it be posted ok? Attachment uploaded ok. Will it be posted ok?
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version Name: map.jpg Views: 132 Size: 27.8 KB ID: 1  
]]> admin http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/25-testing-missing-token-error-attachment.html Again testing security token http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/24-again-testing-security-token.html Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:16:06 GMT After upgrade to 2.0.1 After upgrade to 2.0.1 ]]> admin http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/admin/24-again-testing-security-token.html Difficult Times http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/23-difficult-times.html Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:00:52 GMT January is now behind us and I'd like to think that the summer holidays are all behind us (read: all our New Year resolutions are broken and we can get back to behaving normally).

So now's the time to take stock of the state of the local Analytic market. There is a palpable climate of fear out in the job market, but I still believe that the demand for good BI and Analytics people goes on. Am I deluding myself? Well, we're analysts right?! So what is the evidence?

First: I came across an interesting table of redundancies on ZDnet Australia's site. The whole article is here. It reports the following ICT redundancies:



(Company How many Date)
  • eBay 18 07/10/2008
  • HP/EDS 450 Three-year plan
  • Optus 115 20/10/2008
  • Cellnet Undisclosed 31/10/2008
  • UXC 12 04/11/2008
  • KAZ (Telstra) 100 24/09/2008
  • Telstra 800 18/09/2008
  • Elders 40 06/08/2008
  • Engin Undisclosed 05/08/2008
  • Freshtel Undisclosed 29/08/2008
  • Commander Undisclosed Ongoing
  • Optima Undisclosed 23/10/2008
  • Yahoo!7 About 10 18/08/2008
  • National Australia Bank 443 Ongoing
  • PacNet 22 14/11/08
  • Alphawest 33 01/12/08
  • Ericsson 300 02/12/08
  • IBM Unclear 02/12/08
  • 3 Mobile Unclear 02/12/08
  • Integ (UXC division) 6 04/12/08
  • Goldman Sachs JBWere About a dozen 03/12/08
  • ANZ Bank Unknown 08/12/08
  • Dialog Unknown 09/12/08
  • Oakton Single digit % 11/12/08
  • Websense 25 03/12/08
  • Logica Unknown 15/12/08
  • Lenovo Unknown 08/01/09
  • Vodafone NZ About 20 15/01/09
  • Nokia Siemens Networks Less than 15 16/01/09
  • AMD Unknown 19/01/09
  • Microsoft 1 23/01/09
  • Citrix Unknown 29/01/09
More specifically I have heard that a number of companies are in the market for Analysts:
  • Westpac
  • AMP
  • Pfizer
  • ING
  • Bupa
Does anyone know of other organisations? ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/23-difficult-times.html Social Mining http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/22-social-mining.html Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:40:21 GMT I have recently been asked to develop a new media strategy for the Sydney Symphony and as a result I am revisiting some old ground and finding new... I have recently been asked to develop a new media strategy for the Sydney Symphony and as a result I am revisiting some old ground and finding new nuggets in the ever evolving internet. As proof I mention three of the emerging class of social mining services. Check out:

What is social mining I hear you say? Here's one definition I like:

search services or activities performed to find information about people on the social web


And who is going to want this? Just about everyone who wants to make money on the web. More specifically (and in the words of Rapleaf) "retailers, telcos, political organizations, hotel chains, social networks, and other consumer facing companies".

Rapleaf claims to have processed over 350 million unique searches to date.

The really neat, emerging uses of social mining are experiments showing how large groups of people feel about particular topics, issues or events, with the aim of measuring the mood of the web.

If you are interested in something more cutting edge (read experimental) check out the felling finder wefeelfine. Start-up the applet and explore. It's a bit different from the SAS interface to say the least ;)

None of this is likely to go mainstream this year in my opinion, but my gut tells me to keep an eye on the field. Click on the links above - it's worth it!

Enjoy. ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/22-social-mining.html Claims and Counter Claims Part 3 http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/21-claims-counter-claims-part-3.html Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:06:16 GMT I was just talking to someone about this blog and in the interests of full disclosure I should mention 2 things to you all: 1. I am a current SAS... I was just talking to someone about this blog and in the interests of full disclosure I should mention 2 things to you all:
  1. I am a current SAS user (or at least I manage teams that use it).
  2. I used to work for Gartner (as a Research Director of Business Intelligence and Information Management) and I worked on a past BI Magic Quadrant.

I don't regard these as conflicts of interest but just in case someone does think this :eek:

I've also purchased most other vendor tools and services at some point in my career.

Consider this the end of my disclosures! :) ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/21-claims-counter-claims-part-3.html Claims and Counter Claims Part 2 http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/20-claims-counter-claims-part-2.html Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:54:44 GMT Ok, I've checked out the full Gartner report mentioned in my last post and I can start eating my hat. Gartner gives SAS a very strong push - including stating that SAS' strength is:

Quote:
While most other BI vendors in the Magic Quadrant focus on historical analysis, SAS's
approach to BI originates with forecasting, predictive modeling and optimization, and
embedding them within cross-functional and industry-specific applications. The survey
data collected shows clearly that SAS is the only BI vendor of any scale whose
customers use data mining or predictive modeling extensively.
An interesting snippet about SAS was that they are selling more "packaged analytic applications" and the Gartner report states that this is in areas like "risk management, warranty analysis or anti money laundering". All areas close to my heart but I haven't actually used any of their packaged apps - well at least not since having some problems with the campaign management application they sold a few years ago!

I don't always agree with Gartner's analysis but amongst the many academics they employ there are some amazing people with practical experience and razor sharp skills. So I read a lot of Gartner - but only after checking the names behind their reports.

The report is not all positive of course, so I suggest you read the whole thing yourself if you can access it. ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/20-claims-counter-claims-part-2.html Claims and Counter Claims http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/19-claims-counter-claims.html Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:27:09 GMT Gartner has published their latest BI Magic Quadrant and apart from the fact that almost every vendor can claim leadership I wonder about the latest... Gartner has published their latest BI Magic Quadrant and apart from the fact that almost every vendor can claim leadership I wonder about the latest claim that SAS has made today. This is the headline from the SAS PR machine:

Quote:
Gartner says SAS is the only vendor of any size whose customers have extensively deployed data mining and predictive modeling
The original post is here if you want to read the whole thing.

I find the claim a bridge too far - but am I wrong? The actual wording of the claim is:

Quote:
[SAS} ...includes more customers that depend upon predictive analytics and data mining than any other BI vendor.
I will investigate the original Gartner report and post the results this afternoon.

Stay tuned ... ;) ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/19-claims-counter-claims.html <![CDATA[What's Hot and What's Not]]> http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/18-whats-hot-whats-not.html Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:40:22 GMT Someone sent me the following list:

What's In ................ What's Out
Oversight ................ Regulation
Integration................ Centralization
Front-to-Back Linkages ................ Point-to-Point Solutions
Business Semantics ................ Data Dictionaries
OWL................ XML
Ad-hoc Reporting................ Compliance Reporting
Value at Risk Metrics ................ Operational Metrics
Data Tax ................ Begging Business Units
Cost Containment ................ Business Development
Source Mark-Up................ Interactive Data
IGI ................ IBEI
Performance Analysis ................ Variance Analysis
Root Cause ................ Find and Fix
TARP ................ TARP
Financial Stability Forum ................ Financial Services Roundtable
Providence Over Data ................ Shareholder Interest
Regulatory Cooperation ................ Regulatory Silos
Core Services ................ Short Term Profitability
Internal Reference Data Utilities ................ Managed Data Services
Consolidation ................ Acquisition
Downsizing ................ End-of-Year Bonuses
Systemic Challenges T................ actical Solutions
Compulsion ................ Business Logic
Tags and Identifiers ................ Cross-Referencing
Principles-Based ................ Prescriptive
Supply Chain Management ................ Data Transformation
Transparency ................ Accuracy
Data within Risk ................ Data within Operations
Content Management ................ Data Management
Capital Adequacy ................ ROI
Process Engineering ................ Functional Myopia
Interoperability ................ Mapping
Fit-for-Purpose ................ Reconciliation
Data Manufacturing ................ Data Sourcing
Data Culture ................ Governance
Enlightened COO ................ Data Czar
OSI ................ Vendor Symbology
Source Systems................ Transformed Truth
Data Accountability ................ Data Ownership
Brushfire Management ................ Strategic Route Map
Unravel and Connect ................ Clean and Consolidate
Automation ................ STP
Central Banks ................ Regulators
KYP ................ KYC
Internal Alignment ................ Internal Competition
Data Definitions ................ Metadata
Wicked Problem ................ Curse of the Short View

The last one got me interested and a colleague pointed me to the wiki definition of a wicked problem:

Quote:
"a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems."


Interesting. Welcome to my world! It got me thinking about the core intractable problem often faced by the BI practitioner:
"Making a complex situation simple removes important information from the decision maker - thereby risking ill-informed (i.e. bad) decisions"
Sort of defeats the whole purpose of what I try to do. Am I alone in thinking this? ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/18-whats-hot-whats-not.html <![CDATA[I'm in the Wrong Area of BI]]> http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/17-im-wrong-area-business-intelligence.html Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:46:18 GMT *Signs of shady Russian share dealing* *Mark Hawthorne *December 12, 2008, The Age Image:... Signs of shady Russian share dealing

Mark Hawthorne December 12, 2008, The Age


Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

YOU can forgive Cape Lambert's Iron Ore boss Tony Sage for feeling like a man under siege. Ever since the executive chairman secured $400 million in cash for the company's iron ore assets in Western Australia from China Metallurgical, the sharks have been circling.

Indeed, with each payment of $80 million from the Chinese has come even greater pressure to remove Sage from the Cape Lambert cashbox.

The first shark to circle was tenement dealer Mihran Shemessian. He's known as "Mick Manynames", due to the number of different spellings of his surname on documents.

Shemessian's Hong Kong-based company, Power United — owned in the name Shmazian — holds a touch over 10 per cent of Cape Lambert and, under a deal struck years ago, he is entitled to millions of dollars in royalties from the project.

Shemessian tried to have day trader Leo "The Gun" Khouri of Opes Prime fame installed as a director of Cape Lambert, but that attempt failed.

That play for the company had a colourful enough cast, but the next in line to try to seize control of Cape Lambert has some international names. The latest move seems to be coming from Cape Lambert's biggest shareholder, Russian steel giant Evraz group, which owns 16 per cent of Cape Lambert and is controlled by Roman Abramovich.

Sage says of the moves for Cape Lambert: "We've increased security at home, and at the office."

Cyprus-based Unicredit Aton International has unexpectedly emerged as a substantial shareholder of Cape Lambert. That detail only came to light after Sage and the board hired international business intelligence firm Thomson Reuter to investigate a large number of share parcels owned by Cyprus-based companies.

Thomson Reuter found that Unicredit Aton — a financier that provides "access to Russian and international stock exchanges" — now controls 36.8 million Cape Lambert shares, or 7.28 per cent of the company.

After being flushed out by Thomson Reuter, Unicredit Aton lodged a substantial shareholder notice with the Australian Securities Exchange SX on Wednesday. But Unicredit Aton won't say on whose behalf it bought the Cape Lambert shares.

The board of Cape Lambert suspects that Evraz might be behind the Cyprus shareholding — putting it in control of 23.3 per cent of Cape Lambert and in breach of Australia's foreign investment rules. Evraz would need approval to move beyond 19.9 per cent ownership.

Cash-strapped Evraz may also be obliged to make a takeover offer for Cape Lambert — not a welcome thought for the biggest steel maker in Russia, as its share price has tumbled 90 per cent this year. "We've heard they are now shopping the Cape Lambert shareholding around and are trying to sell it," says Sage. "They need the money."
Abramovich is one of the world's wealthiest men and owner of England's Chelsea Football Club. According to reports from Moscow, Abramovich's holding company Millhouse owns 36.4 per cent of Evraz.

Newly installed Evraz chairman Alexander Abramov owns 24.3 per cent. The previous chairman, Alexander Frolov, has 12.1 per cent. Privat Group of the Ukraine, controlled by Gennady Bogolubov and Igor Kolomoisky, has 9.7 per cent.

It's a list of some of the most powerful men in Russia, and Cape Lambert's board has taken note of just where these men hold their Evraz shares.

The more Sage investigates, the more the evidence mounts that some of Russia's richest men flouted Australia's foreign investment and takeover laws in order to build a bigger stake in Cape Lambert. "We have informed Evraz that they may be in breach of Australia's foreign ownership laws," Sage says.

According to the latest annual report issued by Evraz, a Cyprus-registered company, Lanebrook, owns 69.5 per cent of Evraz's shares directly, and a further 6.8 per cent indirectly.

Lanebrook's shareholding structure is a mystery, but reports from Moscow and London suggest its owners include Abramovich, Frolov and Abramov.

The board of Cape Lambert is considering lodging a complaint with the Foreign Investment Review Board, but has so far been unable to link Evraz with Unicredit Aton.

"No query has yet been lodged with FIRB or any of the regulatory authorities in Australia," Cape Lambert spokesman David Tasker said.

A spokesman for the FIRB would not confirm if Evraz was under scrutiny, but confirmed that the board of Cape Lambert had not yet lodged a complaint. ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/17-im-wrong-area-business-intelligence.html Ode to Numbers http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/16-ode-numbers.html Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:32:29 GMT Ode to the Numbers by Pablo Neruda Such thirst to know how much! Such hunger to know how many stars in the sky! We pass Ode to the Numbers
by Pablo Neruda

Such thirst
to know how much!
Such hunger
to know
how many stars in the sky!

We pass
our infancies
counting stones, plants,
fingers, sand grains, teeth,
pass our youths counting
petals, hairs.
We count
the color and the years,
the lives and kisses,
bulls
in the fields, waves
in the sea. The ships
made ciphers which multiplied.
The numbers spawned.
The cities
were thousands, millions,
and the wheat came in hundreds
of units
each holding other integers
tinier than a single grain.
Time became a number.
Light became numbered
and however much it raced with sound
it had a velocity of 37.
Numbers surround us,
At night we would
lock the door, exhausted,
approaching 800;
below
having come to bed with us
in that sleep
the 4,000 and the 77
goaded our foreheads
with their wrenches and hammers.
The 5
would compound itself
until it entered the sea or the delirium
where the sun might greet it with steel
and we co racing
to the office,
the mill,
the factory,
to start fresh with the infinite
number 1 of each day.

Friend, we had the time
so our thirst could be satisfied,
the ancestral longing
to enumerate things
and total them,
reducing them
until rendering them dust,
dunes of numbers.
We are papering
the world
with figures and ciphers,
but
the things existed
nonetheless, fleeing
all tallies,
becoming dehydrated
by such quantities, leaving
their fragrance and memories,
and the empty numbers remained.

For that reason,
for you
I love the things.
The numbers
which go to jail,
move
in closed columns
procreating
until they give us the sum
for the whole of infinity.
For your sake I want
some
numbers of the way
to defend you
and you to defend them.
May your weekly wages increase
and grow chest-deep!
And out of the number 2 that binds
your body and your beloved wife's
emerge the matches eyes of your sons
to tally yet again
the ancient stars
and innumerable
spikes of wheat
which shall fulfill the transfigured earth.

(Trans. William Pitt Root) from NUMBERS AND FACES, Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, Issue # 24, June 2001, pp. 23 - 25. ]]> Steve Bennett http://www.tbig.com.au/forums/blogs/steve-bennett/16-ode-numbers.html