Why In-Memory Analytics is Like Digital Photography: An Industry Transformation

When was the last time you had a roll of film developed? If you’re reading this, you’re no technology luddite, so it was probably already many years ago. Film – a technology that had been slowly improved and perfected over 200 years  – was replaced in less than a decade by a much faster, cheaper, and more convenient technology approach. In an earlier post, I outlined why I think we’re on the brink of a real revolution in business analytics... [Read More...]

Affecto Corporate IQ Oslo

I attended the Affecto Corporate IQ 2011 event this morning, in Oslo, Norway, in the Thon Hotel overlooking the spectacular Opera House. The theme of the conference was “Revolution”, and was kicked off by Håvard Ellefsen, the CEO of Affecto in Norway. Morning Keynote I gave the opening keynote, on the “Big Leap Forward”. As usual here are the slides for download, in Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat format. During the rest... [Read More...]

Use Data, Not Your Gut Instinct

Two fun videos that portray why you should pay attention to the data, not to your gut feel, using sports metaphors – with links to online analytics of the sports stats yourself, on the ever-growing Experience SAP site. Baseball: “know it all – without being one” Play with the stats yourself at the Baseball section of the Experience SAP site. Rugby: “keep your mouth shut if you don’t have the data to back it up” Play with the stats... [Read More...]

SAPSA Impuls 2011 in Stockholm

  I presented yesterday at the SAP Sweden user conference “Impuls” at the green-foliage-decor Stockholmsmässan. Per Högberg of the SAPSA Board kicked things off with a welcome speech. José Duarte of SAP gave an overview of the key SAP directions: Michel Putnik of Microsoft and Jo Weilbach of SAP gave an overview of the Microsoft/SAP partnership, and key directions with the updated and improved Duet software. I gave a short keynote... [Read More...]

The Analytics of Terrorism

I’m a big believer in analyzing data in order to make sensible decisions. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, let’s take a quick look at how analytics might apply to terrorism in the world today: How Many People Die From Terrorism? The data seems to indicate that you shouldn’t get too worried about terrorism as a threat to your daily life. According to a 2006 Human Security report, there have been around 400 deaths a year from international terrorism,... [Read More...]

Business People Are Dumb On Average(s)

Here’s one real-life example of the limits in quantitative thinking observed in an average company, shared with me by Michael Thompson. He recently worked with Dan Rosenberg’s UX team on a SAP research project that isolated over 100 distinct, real-life uses of business analytics across dozens of roles and business functions. A retail analyst was attempting to figure out the success of product promotions on the “sales” page of a web site.... [Read More...]

Hadoop, Big Data, and Enterprise Business Intelligence

Many thanks to William Gardella and others for the content below: Traditional enterprise data warehousing and Hadoop/Big Data are like apples and oranges – the well-known and trusted approach being challenged by a zesty newcomer (sweet oranges were introduced to Europe sometime in the 16th century). Is there room for both? How will these two very different approaches co-exist? This post is an attempt to summarize the current state of play with... [Read More...]

Strategic Workforce Planning Demo

Launched late last year, SAP BusinessObjects Strategic Workforce Planning was the first HANA-enabled application – one of a new generation of analytic apps that use in-memory processing for fast processing and interactive simulation. A demonstration is now available showing some of the key features: For more information, see the product page, the brochure, or  read more about the need for workforce planning in this post by Henner Schliebs, Director... [Read More...]

Relying on Data Can Lead to the Wrong Decisions Says CFO.com

I just read a new CFO Magazine article called “That New Big Data Magic”, which contains the following opening paragraphs: Back in the 1980s, American Airlines (AA) was partnered with British Airways (BA), and AA’s marketing head wanted to know how many of the airline’s gold card members, its most profitable customers, were flying BA rather than AA. Larry Tieman, then a managing director in IT at AA, dove into the massive amounts of data AA... [Read More...]