Michael F. Gorman, University of Dayton

I am pleased to present our third newsletter. Thanks to all who contributed! In this newsletter we discuss ruminations on analytics now and then - in the "bad old days." We also have two reports from Analytics Section-sponsored attendees, one from the Aberdeen Analytics Summit in Boston and one from the Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit in Chicago from last fall. (Many thanks to Lionheart Publishing!) Finally, see the free "big data workshop" announcement.

Also, don't miss the important announcements surrounding upcoming conferences and training programs!

I hope you enjoy reading it.

We look forward to the spring newsletter prior to the Analytics Conference in April. Our next issue will describe many analytics academic activities and programs from around the world. Feel free to suggest content! Contributors are needed and welcome. Please let me know if you have some insights to share.

Thanks for your support!

INFORMS is happy to offer a scholarship program for the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research. This is a competitive program, supported by SAS® and sponsored by the Analytics Section of INFORMS, that will recognize one outstanding student who would like to learn more about the practice of analytics at this conference in Huntington Beach, California, April 15-17, 2012 by covering the costs of attending the event and additional networking opportunities.

What does the scholarship cover?

• Round-trip flight to the conference
• Hotel (3-4 nights, depending on whether the student can catch a flight home the day the conference ends or must wait until the next day)
• Most meals (which are included in conference registration)
• Registration for the conference and for the Professional Colloquium 

Important Application Dates

• February 19, 2012 - application deadline is midnight
• February 29, 2012 - winner notified
• March 5, 2012 - deadline for student to confirm attendance

Eligibility

• Students enrolled in a full-time degree-granting program in analytics, operations research, management science, or a related field.
• Must be a student at time of application and at time of conference (April 15-17, 2012).

Criteria

• Interest in professional career in industry in the practice of analytics.
• Motivation to advance understanding of the practice of analytics through conference attendance.
• Financial need.

To apply, applicants should apply by sending an email to michael.gorman@udayton.edu. Applications must be received by midnight on February 19, 2012 to be considered. Your email subject line should be: SAS and INFORMS Analytics Section Student Analytical Scholar application and should include the following three items:

• Reference. The name, phone number, and email address of professor who can confirm your application.
• Resume/vitae. Be sure it includes your name, mailing address and phone number, email address, university, major field of study, expected degree (M.S., PhD, MBA, etc.), and expected date of graduation. Should be submitted in PDF format.
• Essays. The total submission should be no longer than one, single-spaced page submitted in a PDF format. Please provide brief responses to the following questions:
  • What do you hope to gain or achieve by attending the Professional Colloquium and conference?
  • Why should you be selected to be a Student Analytical Scholar?
  • What ideas do you have for how you would maximize this opportunity if you were awarded this scholarship?
  • What analytic techniques or approaches do you most hope to learn about by attending?
  • How do you expect to use analytics in your professional career?

In the opening remarks to the 2011 Aberdeen Executive Leadership Summit, Kevin Martin (SVP, Research Operations, Aberdeen Group) commented, "Data is not [just] the flavor of the day. It's the flavor of the decade." Today, in all business functions and verticals, organizations across the spectrum of industries embrace opportunities to extract the value of collected data through the power of analytics, to drive critical business decision-making and better performance.

Business Analytics Software
Event speakers illustrated the impact analytics has created for their companies. Their practical examples also highlighted applications of software presented by Summit vendors Board, Dimensional Insight, QlikView, TIBCO Spotfire, and Vertica. Vendors offered a broad range of business analytics solutions, including

• multi-platform analytics (hardware, virtual machines, the cloud),
• aggregation of multiple data types and systems,
• dashboards and interactive visualization,
• self-service reporting,
• analysis of customers, products, and transactions across channels and markets,
• real-time decision support,
• statistical analysis,
• data and pattern visualization analysis,
• ad-hoc analytics,
• BI and CPM integration,
• resource management,
• project management,
• operations management tools (e.g., budgeting, planning, forecasting, profitability modeling and optimization, simulation and scenario analysis, scorecarding and strategy management, financial consolidation, statutory and financial reporting), and
• inventory forecasting and adaptability to demand changes.

Analytics in Marketing
Justin Honaman, VP, National Retail Sales, Coca-Cola Refreshments
Coca-Cola's disparate sources of data reports presented a fragmented view of the business, limited leverage of customer insight across channels and actionable information to steward customer relationships. The company also experienced long lead times for reports from IT and sales that delivered insights after they were needed. Coca-Cola implemented a secure web-based integrated data collection, reporting and analytics solution that included features such as push and pull dashboards, mobile analytics, corporate summary views, and daily ad-hoc reports. The resulting sold-to and sold-through data integration supported a demand-driven value chain with real time demand information sent to all operations for adjustment to executional plans. Analytics helped address a number of challenges and enabled measurement of marketing effectiveness. This, in turn, made possible adjustment of product diversity and volume to demand and supported decision-making to choose target geographies for distribution.

Analytics in Sales
John Smits, Director, Sales Strategy & Analytics, EMC Corporation
EMC aligns activity to customer opportunities by fueling sales execution with analytics. Here, analytics are used 1) to build a common customer data model to unify customer records and how the company relates with key customers, 2) to focus on opportunities to maximize customer buying experience with modeling applied to segment accounts and estimate business-specific buying power, 3) to optimize resource alignment with sales coverage models, 4) to accelerate time to market by leveraging predictive analytics to identify which accounts may spend and when, and 5) to invest in the future through ongoing expansion of capabilities in data integration, transformation, modeling, and visualization.

Analytics in Supply Chain Management
Tom Dadmun, VP, Program Management Office, ADTRAN
ADTRAN has significantly boosted efficiency, synchronization, and foresight across the supply chain through business analytics. A shared vision was a key goal. Therefore, incorporating BI into the culture, the very DNA, of the company was critical to achieving a truly integrated supply chain. In addition to culture change, ADTRAN solution strategy engaged industry expert analysis, benchmarking, and BA software (s.a. a sales portal and an executive dashboard) to anticipate cost savings, and implement 106 KPIs to gain actionable insights into demand visibility, performance tradeoffs, supply chain performance management, and operational effectiveness. Early results are already impressive. For instance, this approach brought 100 hours per week in savings to early adopters in accounting and operations alone!

Analytics in Human Resources
Kevin Martin, SVP, Research Operations, Aberdeen Group
Analytics can drive effective human resource management by correlating efforts and results for strategic impact. In the face of challenging economic conditions and growing competition, organizations continue to struggle with rising operational costs, shortage of key skills, identifying and retaining key employees, and maximizing workforce productivity and utilization - all critical to a company's strategy execution.

To address these challenges, HR is increasing its focus on effective talent management as a true business imperative. The ability to connect HR efforts to business priorities is the most critical skill of today's HR leaders and effective talent management is a leading indicator of business growth. This is where BA enters to align business and talent strategy, identify and more rapidly address gaps between business demand and workforce supply, while fostering a culture of innovation and creativity. By measuring and acting on what matters to the business, on anything that touches the customer, BA can help understand and replicate characteristics of top performers, leverage and optimize training and appraisal data, and apply metrics in succession planning, while reducing costs and improving agility.

In summary, Kevin recommended the following HR management approach: integrate talent strategy and data with overall business strategy and data, speak and report in terms that the business understands, hold managers accountable for employee engagement, and know where the business is going to make proactive recommendations based on identified gaps.

Analytics Connects Executive Vision and Operational Execution
Kevin Chynoweth, SVP, Supply Chain Management, Fairchild Semiconductor
In the semiconductor industry, time-sensitive planning and alignment are among key challenges. Fairchild sought an integrated business plan linked to industry specific challenges as a solution that would also deliver inventory projections and manufacturing plans consistent with revenue outlook. With the help of BA, the company ensured high level corporate alignment at all stages of the business cycle, to match output to demand.
Fairchild introduced improved analytics and pricing forecasts, demand communications to the floor, and more user-friendly interfaces. Concurrently, it implemented more accurate capacity analytics and a better demand-supply match algorithm that improved response time and accuracy. In addition, Manufacturing and Finance began using a shared plan for coordinated forecast analysis and adjustment to execution strategies. The successful demand and response clean-up with an integrated plan that tied together every element of daily operations and heavier analytic content with fewer people tending spreadsheets freed up more time for decision-making.
As a result, Fairchild enjoyed shorter planning time with improved transparency, quality, and consistency, better trend detection and agile response, advance signaling of need for output ramps, rapid adjustment of manufacturing plans and inventory strategies, a tighter control and alignment of demand and supply, market share gains in key markets, and a record number of Customer Awards and Recognitions that followed.

Effective Data Visualization
Dana Zuber, VP, Strategic Planning Management, Wells Fargo Bank
While the potential power of analytics is evident, effective communication and visualization of BA findings is no less important. To maximize the value of data visualization, maximize data-ink:

1. tell a story by gauging presentation to how the audience would answer the WIFM question,
2. prioritize function over form,
3. reduce complexity (ex: no 3D in charts, reduce outlines, eliminate redundancies, keep the number of variables in a pie chart to within 3),
4. use appropriate graphs (ex: a bar graph for a standard comparison, a line chart for a time series, a bar chart for a ranking, a histogram for a distribution, a scatter plot or a bar chart for a correlation, a pie chart for maps or secondary data).

Unfortunately, schools typically do not teach how to present visual data well. To address this need, Wells Fargo has developed and offers to its employees a course on data visualization. Dana's own PowerPoint was a memorable example of elegance and impact.

Challenges in BA Implementation
With growing data volume, complexity, and disparity, more diverse and frequent data users in different roles across the organization, and the window for decision-making shrinking, analytics has become pervasive. However, when it comes to implementation, "behavioral change... is one of the most difficult" (Tom Dadmun, ADTRAN). Lack of IT resources and implementation management are additional challenges in the partnership between IT and Business.

Concurrently, organizations struggle with unclear definitions of business needs, inadequate understanding of BA benefits, difficulty in quantifying ROI of BA implementation, and perception that analytics tools are too difficult for average business users. A legacy of poorly adopted projects also hinders acceptance of new initiatives. However, improved cross-education and communication about IT capabilities and business needs may maximize the utility of BA tools and address some of these challenges (Dr. Ira J. Haimowitz, EVP, Intelligence and Analytics, The CementBloc).

Future Directions
The need for business analytics solutions that are both, simple and immediate, is growing, with emerging emphasis on mobile BI and self-service. Moreover, while social media is already an integral component of analytics strategy for many organizations, it is anticipated to become even more widely integrated across industries during the next few years (Michael Lock, Sr. Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group). These were among the top trends noted at the Summit. Ultimately, however, it will be up to the user to make the data come to life (Tom Dadmun, ADTRAN).

Elena Cavallo is a member of the INFORMS Analytics Section and focuses on Systems and Strategic Innovation in Medical Research and Healthcare. She attended the Aberdeen Executive Leadership Summit in Boston, MA, on November 16, 2011.