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Pattern Based Strategy: A New Trend That Will Impact CFOs
When the Financial Times starts writing about a topic, you know it’s going main stream. The article in FT.com mentions Gartner’s major trends that will dramatically alter IT and drive economic change over the next ten years.
The first three trends are – cloud computing, context aware computing and social networks. These three trends are “pure” technology trends that have already been the subject of much discussion and debate continue reading »
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Forrester Says “Text Analytics is Key Trend to Watch”
Analytics, as I understand it, reveals intelligence from information. I use the term information because Gartner educated me that data means it is structured. Having worked with data as long as I have, not only is it not structured, it is a MESS!
The rush over the last few years has been that every BI/reporting tool has claimed to be analytics. The input to these tools is usually numbers. continue reading »
Complimentary Products Or Services Are a Win For Everyone
Customer acquisition is expensive and for many companies their customers only do business with them once a year, once every three years, or sometimes only one transaction in a lifetime. This is especially true for industrial goods, electronics, service parts and so on.
"This Sells With That" – Complimentary Products Or Services Are a Win For Everyone
Complimentary Products Or Services Are a Win For Everyone. While this isn’t new it is amazing to me how many companies fail to offer complimentary products or services when a customer is in buying mode. ”This product also goes with…… “. OR “Would you also like X and Y with that? Most customers buy them together”. This increases service level, makes the seller sound very knowledgeable, and increases the invoice size. Now thats a win-win-win!
However it’s important to offer complimentary products that actually align with the customer’s buying patterns. Regardless of your product or service, this will help you increase the average value of each sale as well as differentiate yourself from your competition. Offering complementary products can be used for store sales, online, phone and direct sales.
DAY 3 #GartnerSym… What are They Saying??
Emcien is monitoring the tweets from the Gartner IT Symposium in Cannes (#gartnersym).
Same Engine…. different data stream….Emcien’s Pattern Recognition Engine extracts the core essence of what people are saying….
Here is summary for Day 3
#GartnerSym… Day 3… What Are They Saying?
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#GartnerSym….What Are They Saying?
Emcien is monitoring the tweets from the Gartner IT Symposium in Cannes (#gartnersym).
Emcien’s Pattern Recognition Engine extracts the core essence of what people are saying….
Here is summary for Day 1
What Are They Saying… (Day 1 Gartner ITXPO, Cannes)
Gartner Identifies Seven Major Projects CIOs Should Consider During the Next Three Years
Cloud Computing, Social Media, Pattern Based Analytics, Context Aware Computing
Cannes, France, November 9, 2010 — With 2011 predicted to be the year when the IT industry will reach nearly $3.5 trillion in revenue and show long-term growth for the next five years, Gartner, Inc. analysts today presented business and IT issues that warrant the greatest attention and demand the clearest strategies for the future.
Pattern Based Strategy
With the IT industry on track to show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4 percent for the next five years Gartner has identified seven business and IT issues that CIOs should act on during the next three years. “CIOs will need to begin implementing these technologies within three years to meet the six year predictions,” Mr. McGee said.
The seven issues include:
IT/Operational Technology Alignment — Inadequate software management of operational technology (OT) systems will result in a major business failure of a top Global 100 company by 2013.?Executives are realizing there are cost savings and management efficiencies to be gained by integrating the IT and OT groups together.
Business Gets Social — Through 2015, 80% of organizations will lack a coherent approach for dealing with information from the collective.?Today, social media is changing the way business is conducted. “Understanding the power of communities, the multiple personas of their members expectations, their aspirations and how to interact with them will become essential skills for business in the 21st century,” said Mr. McGee.
Pattern-Based Strategy — Through 2015, pattern-seeking technology will be the fastest-growing intelligence investment among the most successful Global 2000.?A Pattern-Based Strategy provides a framework to proactively seek, model and adapt to leading indicators, often-termed “weak” signals that form patterns in the marketplace. It will allow IT leaders to seek-out patterns amidst the burgeoning information sources and model future possibilities. “We have found that senior business and IT leaders see lack of information shareability as a barrier to growth,” Mr. Prentice said.
Cloud Computing — By 2016, all Global 2000 companies will use public cloud services. Cloud computing represents a shift in the relationship between the providers and consumers of IT-based solutions. It constitutes the basis of a discontinuity that amounts to a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. Gartner said worldwide cloud services revenue (including public and private services) is forecast to reach $148.8 billion in 2014.
Context-Aware Computing — By 2016, one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context-awareness-based?Context-aware computing will foster people to be more digital with the assets they have available. Context-aware computing is taking advantage of location and time and is a new era of augmented reality. More than $150 billion of global telecom spending will shift from services to applications by 2012, and the global market for context-aware services will amount to $215 billion.
Sustainability — By 2016, sustainability will be the fastest-growing enterprise compliance expense worldwide.?As long as the current science surrounding climate change remains credible, organizations should anticipate that the current focus on energy, water and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue, and this will draw attention to other environmental issues, such as resource depletion, species extinction, bio-diversity and environmental justice. Information systems will be critical to support sustainability.
New Realities of IT: Balancing Cost and Innovation with Risk and Governance — Innovation accomplishments will be among the top-three selection criteria for new CIOs by 2016.?With the recent global recession, innovative thinkers must find new ways to create growth — in revenue, jobs and industries — in this new business climate. Cost and value optimization must remain a top priority, while the search for growth continues.
Future Trends?Beyond 2020, Gartner analysts forecast that two emerging trends will become $1 billion markets. First, human augmentation, a technology that focuses on creating cognitive and physical improvements as an integral part of the human body is slowly but steadily becoming a reality and enhancing peoples’ lives. The second trend is wireless power devices. By 2011, there will be more than 1 billion PCs and 5 billion mobile phones in use in the world, and based on the levels of demand Gartner foresees cumulative sales from wireless power products surpassing $1 billion by 2020.
“A video that highlights additional views from Mr. Prentice is available at http://www.youtube.com/gartnervideo.
More exclusive content, expanding multi-media coverage, including Twitter feeds and comments from the Gartner Blog Network will be available at Gartner’s SymLive site at http://gartner.com/symlive.
BI is for IT, But Analytics is for the Business User!
I’ve just come out of a meeting with a business user who is passing up on a well-known BI software package. “It takes too many IT resources to implement. My IT guys love it but I cannot afford the cost/time,” he said.
As companies drown in data, BI is a very expensive route to try and gain value from the data. Mark McDonald, head of research for Gartner Executive Programs, has a very nice article titled Without the Business in Business Intelligence, BI is Dead!. Sounds like – “The King is Dead. Long Live the King.”
BI has been built for the IT community. It is an old-school solution built on the heavy weight model of technology. That model rests on the acquisition, installation and operation of technology based on a significant upfront investment that is earned out over a period of time. This has been the investment/implementation path for enterprise ERP/SCM/CRM/PDM software packages. BI is in this class of software solutions, and results in an expensive and less responsive solution. Mark McDonald calls this the “old ‘heavy weight’ model of technology”.
The top two categories for Gartner’s predictions for 2010 are Cloud Computing and Analytics – these are both directions that are a far cry from the old world of heavy/expensive/pay upfront software. BI in its current form is completely out of step with these predictions and where the market is heading. So, why did Gartner renamed BI to Analytics? In doing so is BI going to magically transform from its old heavy weight form to a new lean enterprise 2.0 form? Long Live the King?
Emcien offers pattern-based analytics that easily takes sales data in any form to reveal customer buying patterns and trends. The technology has completely eliminated the need for data models, structures, mapping, etc. Emcien’s pattern based analytics technology was created explicitly to overcome the ‘old heavy weight model of technology’. Pour your sales data in, and watch the customer buying patterns. “Like Google analytics for sales data”, our customers told us.
Mark McDonald has prophecy for BI that I think is dead-on (pun!?). “On a radical note, we are seeing some early signs that companies are looking to use social media/web 2.0 technologies to address business issues that were previously assigned to BI.
Lighter weight technologies handle tacit information and semi-structured process support better than BI solutions that rely on structured and standardized information.
Our customers completely agree with Mark McDonald. Quoting a VP from a Fortune 500 company, “We have lost the appetite for million dollar software and long implementations that consume IT resources”.
However, the need for harvesting intelligence from data is not going away. On the contrary, it has never been more important than it is now. The data hides jewels of intelligence that companies need to act on NOW. But that is only possible if Business Intelligence is not a technology but a capability for the enterprise. Long Live the King!
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Gartner: Cloud computing, Analytics Top 2010 Strategic Tech List …
Cloud computing and analytics have jumped front and center. Gartner renamed Business Intelligence (BI) to Analytics.
On the analytics front, Gartner said in a presentation: “We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation for each and every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions.”
Analytics named as the #2 most important category, behind Cloud Computing
Gartner names analytics as the #2 most important category, only behind Cloud Computing. Analytics is becoming more important to all aspects of every business.
So what is analytics? It is purposeful focus on data. It requires mathematical analysis and algorithms on data, to compute Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are valuable to measure the condition of the business.
Emcien offers analytics to detect product-buying patters with a focus to improve product mix and profitability. As product choices and market segments have grown to dizzying levels, companies struggle to have a finger on the pulse of their product mix, markets and profitability. What products are making money? What are customers buying? What are popular choice combinations? What is common across the market segments? What are the trends by market segment? What product choices should we offer?
Emcien’s analytics answers these questions with patented mathematical algorithms applied to sales data. Emcien’s analytics auto-detects what choices combinations customers are buying, the trends and which choice combinations are profitable. The product offering is the lifeblood of a company. At Emcien we equate product mix and choice mix to profit. If your product mix is not aligned with what customers are buying, you will not make profits. It is as simple as that!
Emcien’s analytics is built on sales data. Unlike web analytics, where is data is a bear, getting sales data is a relatively easy. This is usually the best quality data compared to anything else. The sales data is a true capture of the voice of the customer. It allows companies to see what customers are spending their money on. The value of Emcien’s analytics is visibility into customer choices, and more importantly, recommendations to increase profitability.
Analytics are very powerful as the data reveals Key Performance Indicators that offer continuous insight into the business. You can dispel a lot of beliefs that the company has based on gut feel and cooler talk. When you provide actual sales data driven insight, it has a profound positive impact on the company and the decisions. To convert analytics to action select KPI’s that are a part of your business process and budgeting process. This is key to showing improvement that is meaningful to the organization. As analytics gets more visibility in the C-suite, there is demand to produce KPIs that executives are measured on. This will help gain buy-in at executive levels as adoption of analytics grows.