Numbers Speak for Themselves, But Who’s Listening?

The NBA professional scouts saw little in (Harvard University graduate and NBA star Jeremy) Lin. But a FedEx delivery truck driver, Ed Weiland, was paying attention. Weiland was a contributor to the website HoopsAnalyst.com blog.

Weiland predicted that Lin would be an exceptional talent based on the combination of two statistics: two-point field goal percentage and RSB40. The first stat is obvious, but the second completed the picture about Lin. RSB40 is a combination statistic measuring rebounds, steals and blocked shots (the RSB) per 40 minutes. Lin’s high index for these two stats revealed his dominance at both ends of the basketball court. Weiland’s prediction was initially ignored. Now he appears to be clairvoyant.

Who knew? Was it Ed Weiland? Or were the numbers already there, and Ed Weiland was listening?

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Don’t Trust a Single Number in This Jobs Report (or Any Jobs Report)

It is a sad statement about either American politics or American sanity that when today’s jobs report showed the unemployment falling below 8% for the first time in Obama’s presidency, the reaction from some administration critics was: The numbers are cooked!

The conspiracy claims are beyond silly, as my colleague David Graham explained today. But the employment-truthers are right about one thing. No number in this jobs report is to be trusted.

They’re all wrong, probably.

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A Little Knowledge Management Can Be a Dangerous Thing

The value of most organizations today is less determined by their physical assets than their intellectual assets. Intellectual property such as patents, technologies, ideas and designs are what keep leading companies like Bose, 3M, Medtronic and Boeing ahead of their competition. A big challenge for many organizations is to document and pass on important knowledge to others in their organization so that they can benefit from the discoveries of others. According to the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), knowledge management (KM) is defined as: “a systematic process of connecting people to people and people to knowledge and information they need to effectively act and create new knowledge.”

3 CommentsBiz Intelligence, Finance, Management, Risk Management

Financial Risk Systems — So Nineties. Why Are They Back?

…some firms have found that tactical approaches — doing just enough to meet the reporting requirements — have not been sufficient for increasing regulatory demands or the needs of internal business users.

Apparently risk wasn’t entirely solved during the 1980s and 1990s when big systems went into banks from Algorithmics, SunGard and other major players. SAS recently ranked in the upper right quad of a Chartis report on risk systems, along with Algorithmics, now part of IBM; Moody’s analytics; SunGard and Oracle.

An Austrian bank took the tactical approach to create reports from existing infrastructure, Rogers said by way of example.

“But tactical can mean not necessarily considering all the elements you need. You meet the reporting for your regulator, but you don’t have the long term infrastructure to extend those reports to areas you really want to work on for stress tests, capital planning or overall risk management reporting.”

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When Data Collaboration is an Emergency

Hospitals are supposed to be safe places.

Unfortunately we do hear about mistakes that severely disable patients or even cost them their lives. There are probably many reasons why this happens, but in my experience I witnessed how patient information is not easily retrieved or shared—and therefore poorly analyzed—among a healthcare team. All of us depend on the medical community’s expertise as well as proper management of our personal medical data.

As I found this to be quite disturbing, I took it upon myself to gently ask one of the nurses about the management of their patient data. Here is what I discovered:

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Overcoming Unproductive Time in Budgeting, Forecasting and Planning

It’s no secret that business and finance professionals are spending too much time on mundane tasks, and not enough on delivering insight and other value-added activities.

A recent survey shows that while the process of generating budgets, plans and forecasts has stayed relatively static, business professionals are spending increasing amounts of time wrangling data and manipulating inadequate toolsets to deliver the budgets, forecasts and strategic plans that drive company decision making.

Where does all the time go?

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Death By a Thousand Analytics

There are facts, we are told.

And if we have all the facts and we apply comprehensive analytics, we will discover the past, understand the present and predict the future. We are told this is the scientific method; the truth is in the numbers. Is this a valid way of interpreting the way the world works? I would argue that it is so far from reality that we are in danger of creating a fantasy world worthy of Tolkien.

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The Voice of the Customer Lies Hidden In Your Unstructured Data

Why is the customer’s voice so important?

First of all, you want to keep them as your customer. Secondly the customer has become your unpaid sales staff. It is called word of mouth. Happy customers will recommend you to others, and consumers tend to listen to their friends (especially millennials).

Lastly the customer is a testing ground for your products and services by providing feedback on new offerings. You don’t want to believe that you are conducting tests on your customers but that is exactly what happens. Customer feedback is necessary for continual improvement, and continual improvement is necessary to keep pace with your competitors.

All the information we gather about our customer’s experiences is important when it comes to improvements, reputation and ultimately, the bottom line.

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