Analytics

Graph Search: Cultivating Big Data in Facebook's Walled Garden
January 29, 2013

Facebook's recently announced beta of its new Graph Search resulted in the sorts of stories and headlines one has come to expect from a company whose every move is subject to media dissection. Some were skeptical about the value of the feature, especially its built-in restrictions: leveraging Facebook content alone and excluding well-established search entities like Google and Bing.

Bronto Remarketing Engine Slices and Dices Retail Customer Preferences
January 24, 2013

Bronto Software this week released a significant update to its Bronto Marketing Platform: a remarketing engine that helps retailers link online and in-store purchases in order to create targeted email messages that speak to the individual user. New features allow marketers to collect data such as purchase history and then use that information to segment customers and create email campaigns.

Machine Learning, TDA and the Future of Invention
January 23, 2013

Ayasdi came out of stealth mode and told the world it had a new way to analyze big data, and I think the implications for CRM and social are very large indeed. The new way is called "topological data analysis" and hearing about it has the feel of hearing about relativity for the first time and learning that space is curved.

Reading the Signals: 5 CRM Lessons From Moneyball
January 17, 2013

With less than a month to go before pitchers and catchers report to baseball spring training, I'm increasingly thinking of the national pastime -- and specifically, about Moneyball, the Michael Lewis book adapted into film two years ago. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's the tale of how Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane used data to build a competitive team.

Sales Productivity
January 16, 2013

We are at it again -- and why not? It's the start of another year, and people are doing predictable things like having kickoffs of all sorts of things. Many companies I speak with on a regular basis are briefing me on new product launches and engaging in a sacred rite of a new year: the sales kickoff. Both of these things make me think a lot. The messaging I hear in briefings is all about sales productivity.

SAP Gets Real-Time With HANA-Powered Business Suite
January 14, 2013

SAP last week released SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, which marries its popular integrated applications with its high performance business analytics platform. SAP Business Suite is the largest application SAP has in terms of customers, said Ken Tsai, VP, SAP Hana product marketing at SAP.

In the Cloud, Big Data Scientists Need Not Apply
January 11, 2013

All the hype about Big Data over the past year has succeeded in educating executives in organizations of all sizes across nearly every industry about the unprecedented potential to use analytics to improve operations, sales effectiveness and customer support. However, the hype has also too often made the path to success appear overly complicated.

Voice of the Customer: Analyzing What People Say and How They Say It
January 02, 2013

Call center software can now identify everything from anger to dissatisfaction in the voices of customers. Since call centers are all about voices, it makes sense to analyze those voices in order to provide better customer service. The field of voice analytics, in fact, has become a big business.

Getting Over Big Data Fatigue in the C Suite
December 08, 2012

Recently while presenting the findings of a Big Data survey to an executive team, I was a bit taken aback when the CEO stopped me and said, "I'll listen to what you learned from the survey as long as you don't use those two words again -- 'Big Data' -- I've already told my team there will be hell to pay if one more person tells me, 'we ought take a look at what Big Data can do for us,' that may be the last suggestion they make at the company."

Past, Present and Future Converge at EMC
December 07, 2012

This year's EMC Industry Analyst Summit included numerous highlights familiar to regular IT conference attendees: a self-generated report card on the previous year's activities and a discussion of plans for the year ahead, for example. Few, however, offer the level of access EMC does by holding candid and unscripted Q&A sessions with senior executives including Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci.

The Big Data Marketing Gold Mine
December 03, 2012

It's become clear that the true political star of the 2012 election was Big Data. There is much that marketers can learn from its meteoric rise. Trumping the old-school, gut-instinct days of electoral politics, today's campaigns employ data crunchers who mine the campaign's database for clues on what it takes to engage supporters and motivate them to donate, volunteer and vote.

Amazon Launches 'Profoundly Disruptive' Data Warehouse
November 29, 2012

Amazon Web Services on Wednesday launched RedShift, an on-demand data warehouse service that is optimized for the analysis of huge sets of data. RedShift is "profoundly disruptive," said Merv Adrian, research vice president of information management at Gartner. Its success will move the economic boundary between on-premises and cloud usage and "data will seek its lowest-cost home more rapidly than before."

The Most Desirable Customer Data Plays Hardest to Get
November 29, 2012

As a callow youth, I enlisted in the Navy and found myself at sea aboard the USS Gray as a bosun's mate. That meant standing a lot of watch on the bridge, and being on the bridge meant knowing how to report positions of other things based on a 360-degree arc. The idea was to have a 360-degree view of what was out there -- primarily so we didn't run into it.

It's Still Voting Season
November 28, 2012

Have you voted yet? Not in the presidential election -- this is more important! I am talking about voting in the CRM Idol competition. It's time! OK, I know what you are thinking: What is CRM Idol? It's the brainchild of Paul Greenberg, and its purpose is to find the hottest emerging company in the front-office market.

Savings in the Unlikeliest of Places: Accounts Payable
November 26, 2012

Accounts payable has been one of the last bastions of paper processing in many organizations, but now businesses are looking for efficiencies and money-saving opportunities anywhere they can be found. When the bottom line needs to grow -- even when the top line isn't growing -- many businesses choose to use automation and analysis in procurement and finance to find and take advantage of these opportunities.

Wicked Awesome Analytics
November 21, 2012

Incorporating analytics in a vendor's solution set was once enough to qualify the vendor as very forward looking and a leader in the market. I think that's true in CRM for sure, and this metric could be spreading. Ever since Salesforce introduced its Marketing Cloud at Cloudforce New York, however, that hasn't been enough.

What Mitt Romney Could Have Learned from EMC's Joe Tucci
November 19, 2012

We've had a couple of weeks to think about the election outcome, and both sides are positioning the results around the issues. This has become so divisive that there is a significant move by Texas to exit the United States and become a country. I've spent some time looking at this, and the real reason the Republicans lost is that the Democrats made better use of data analytics.

What the Election Says About Social CRM
November 14, 2012

I tried to wait a bit before commenting on the election and the Social CRM implications partly out of respect and in part to give everyone a chance to rev down. Besides, these observations have much more to do with social media than with any political party or policy initiative, so please believe me when I say, I come in peace.

EMC Grabs Silver Tail
October 31, 2012

EMC has announced it is acquiring Silver Tail Systems, a provider of real-time Web session intelligence and behavioral analysis. When the acquisition is closed, which is expected in the fourth quarter, Silver Tail will be part of EMC's security division, tasked with extending RSA's enterprise security portfolio.

It's a Mobile, Cloudy, Appy, Thingy World
October 25, 2012

It is that time of year again -- namely, prediction-making season. Gartner is the first out of the gate with its top 10 strategic tech trends for 2013 and a few years beyond. Among its forecasts: dominance of mobile devices; shift to HTML5; growth of the personal cloud; growth of private enterprise app stores; and rise of the Internet of things.