What Words Tell Us about Analytics and Performance Management

What trends have developed over the past century for enterprise and corporate performance management methods and business analytics?

One way to find an answer is if we performed research using a Google database that was unveiled in 2011. It includes 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. With this database, one can input search words and phrases and discover how frequently those different terms were used during different past time periods.

With this Google database, researchers have been learning about interesting and possibly relevant shifts in social values or cultures. For example, one study revealed that between 1960 and 2008 self-centered phrases about an individual increased while group-related communal phrases declined. That is, phrases like “I come first” increased as “community” and “common good” decreased.

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Reading Emotions in a Call Center

Check out this video of Steve Jobs talking about the origins of the iPad. The text that appears as Jobs talks is how a computer program developed by a firm called Beyond Verbal is interpreting Jobs’ emotion. That is, the program is judging whether Jobs is feeling fatigue or nostalgia based not on what is…

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Analytics – Equip the Man, Not Man the Equipment

Have you ever noticed how we often get things backward? At a dinner restaurant some order their entrée before their appetizer. During a job interview some employers are biased with their first impressions of the candidate, such as by their clothing attire, before learning the skills and competencies of the individual.

Please allow me provide some background before I make my case as to why some less experienced “data scientists” get things backward. Then I will explain why.

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AWOL: Putting “Business” back in the “Business Case”

According to many CFOs, the firm really needs to set aside more of this money for investments that will move the business forward in growth and profits. This frustration is a reasonable sentiment. Diverting scarce capital into projects that merely “keep it running” are hardly awe-inspiring.

But what jumped out at me was one culprit, or should I say scapegoat, that many CFOs blamed. One respondent was quoted saying that the “basic foundational structure of IT is inadequate to take the company forward, but no one can build the business case to tackle it.” (emphasis added)

Really? The current infrastructure is holding the company back but no one can demonstrate the value of improving it?

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Baking and Computers, a Surprising History of Analytics Pioneers

Perhaps surprisingly, bakers have a history of being analytics pioneers, from the first business application ever to the latest in-memory technology.

In 1951, the J. Lyons company, famous for their tea-shops throughout the UK, built and used the LEO “Lyons Electronic Organizer” computer they had built to run the very first business application ever: bakery valuations.

[And], it wasn’t just the first business application, it was also the first example of actionable, computer-powered analytics and business intelligence.

How’d that happen?

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Top 10 Reasons to Use Treasury Technology

1. Man is a tool-using animal, and treasury technology is a tool that allows more work to be accomplished 2. Properly used, Treasury technology allows a company to operate in 3 dimensions, simultaneously managing profitability, liquidity and risk 3. Improperly used technology allows a company the opportunity to make its mistakes faster 4. Today’s technology (spreadsheets, emails, multiply…

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