Note to self: Bring a hot water boiler next time. Check bathroom for Bengali tiger. Pack a vaporizer. And bring some 5 Hour Energy drinks.
Oh, and be sure to wear comfortable shoes.
Today, I missed the general session, as I was in my room preparing a presentation and also tuning into the Apple webcast where CEO Tim Cook announced the new iPad Mini, among other products.
IBM Business Analytics general manager Les Rechan explains to the audience how over 6,000 clients and prospects have now taken the "Analytics Quotient" quiz since it went live last year.
But I did make it down to the Business Analytics keynote, led by IBM Business Analytics general manager Les Rechan, and I was glad I did.
The session started with a motivating video featuring a number of IBM customers on the vanguard of using business analytics to improve their businesses. When Les came onstage, he first highlighted several of IBM's BA "Champions," clients from around the globe who were in the "Advanced" category of business analytics.
Les' birds-eye view centered on the Analytics Quotient, a self-analyzing quiz IBM created and released for customers last year. About 70 percent of the 6,000+ respondents year-to-date indicated they are in the "novice" or "builder" categories, and only 30 percent in the "leader" or "master" categories.
Where IBM can help move the needle is through a variety of resources Les pointed out, including the Analytics Zone, as well as through enablement services and training.
He also highlighted a new book, 5 Keys To Business Analytics Program Success,, a book recently published that features a number of IBM business analytics customer success stories (written by them!).
Over 70 percent of respondents to the IBM "Analytics Quotient" online exam find themselves in the "novice" or "builder" categories, indicating there's plenty of upside yet in pursuing basic business analytics capabilities across a great diversity of organizations.
Michelle Mylot, the Business Analytics team's chief marketing officer, then came onstage and pointed out that those organizations that integrated analytics into the fabric of their businesses are the ones that drive the most impact.
She highlighted a number of key areas around which IBM's business analytics team has been increasingly focused, including social network analyis, entity resolution, decision management, and operational analytics.
Doug Barton, whose interview I'm attaching below at the end of this post, came on stage and gave a brilliant presentation that should provide financial analysts everywhere (including CFOs and all their staffs) incentive to run directly to their nearest reseller and purchase Cognos Disclosure Management.
It's difficult to describe a demo, but basically, Doug presented a scenario where a company was preparing to announce its earnings and, rather than operating from a plethora of disparate spreadsheets, he demonstrated how Cognos Disclosure Management could create a symphony of collaboration as a CFO prepared for a quarterly earnings call.
Isolated spreadsheets and PowerPoints became integrated narratives of the earnings statement, where an update in one part of the report would magically alter the performance graph in another.
Pure financial geek magic. Doug, take it away in our Q&A below.
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The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
So here we are, the last day of the 2013 US Open Golf Championship at Merion, and Phil Mickelson -- who has been a US Open runner-up five times now but never taken the trophy -- is right up there at the top of the leaderboard.
The last time I saw Monaco, I was heading from Milan to Nice in a car-full of IBM colleagues with whom I was on a two-week long business trip throughout Europe.
Big-data has become a big point of emphasis for many businesses. While the technology is available to deploy these applications, the needed personnel often is not. As a result, analytic engineers' salaries have blown past the six-figure mark, and hiring these experts has become a challenge for IT managers.
Network complexity, cloud-based architectures, the explosion of apps, and the growth of bandwidth needs are among the reasons enterprises need to improve insight into traffic and data.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling of customer behavior to convert more site visitors into leads, says Brian Baron, director of business analytics, in an interview at the Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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