Monthly Archive for October, 2009

Bigger than the sum of its parts

Published on October 28, 2009 in Data Quality and Spectrum Technology Platform. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Filling a gap in intelligence needs

Business intelligence. Predictive analytics. Data mining. Businesses today are truly recognizing the power that lies in their customer data.

The challenge is in harnessing that power, and doing so efficiently.  BeyeNetwork blogger Krish Krishnan captures this issue – particularly as it pertains to the gap in solutions that can help to transform data into actionable information: 

“With market consolidation, companies are left with a mixed bag of solutions and now need to reassess their investments, new market offerings have not reached enough maturity and open source is not accepted yet as enterprise capable in BI. Where we need to go with this situation is to setup an interoperable solution where the vendor consolidation will not impact current investments. There were third party companies that used to offer these kind of solutions and we need a new series of such technologies to be recreated.”

He’s right in some ways: companies that want to better understand their customers have in many cases assembled a hodgepodge of different solutions to address different challenges. As the sources of those solutions thrive and consolidate (or wither and disappear), companies that have acquired them are left with a collection of parts built in silos that are condemned to stay in silos unless they find an “interoperable” solution to enable those parts to work in concert.

However, there are solutions providers, including Pitney Bowes Business Insight, who’ve recognized this issue and have been working steadily to create options – such as the Pitney Bowes Spectrum™ Technology Platform – to address this very issue.

Rather than sending companies back to “square one”, solutions like Spectrum work in tandem with companies’ core data quality platforms. Spectrum is designed to facilitate improvements in customer data quality, and augment/assess data for a range of purposes, from Enterprise Tax Management to Global Sentry Watchlist Monitoring to Enterprise Routing for Fleet Logistics. It also provides data quality connectors for SAP and Siebel – again, enabling companies to make the most of the systems they may already have.

We agree with Krish and the others who tout the need for solutions that can grow and change with the companies they serve – and help to provide the tools for enterprise-wide business intelligence and predictive analytics.  Today’s leading-edge data and software technologies should continue to grow and change to address those specific needs.

To learn how a common data enrichment and management platform can support needs across your entire enterprise, you can read more about our Spectrum™ Technology Platform.

Getting Business and IT on the Same Page

Published on October 23, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

The Business Intelligence blogosphere is abuzz with questions about how IT and BI personnel can become more effective in serving their internal customers.  In fact, a recent study by the Society for Information Management shows that even in today’s tough economic times “IT/Business Alignment” is right near the top of CIOs’ business concerns.

In the process of providing tools that help CIOs do their jobs and playing a consultative role in helping to bridge the gap between IT and business, PBBI often faces the issue of alignment as well. Over and over, we’ve found that the key lies in asking the right questions upfront.

Too often IT asks (or is told the answer to) the question: “What information do you need?” Armed with the answer, IT then goes off to ensure that they find a way to get that information back to the business as quickly and efficiently as possible.

However, if IT is to be truly business-aligned, the question that really needs to be understood before “What information do you need,” is this one:  

What problems are you trying to solve?

This is the place we always try to start with our clients, for three key reasons:

Reason #1: The information the business needs is invariably an outgrowth of the problems it is trying to solve. Questions – and the answers to them – evolve and beget more questions. The CIO and IT team that is actively participating in the process of defining and solving problems and questions rather than just taking orders for information is in the best position to provide true insight – and that has the greatest long-term value. 

Reason #2:  Information provided in a vacuum often has severe limitations. I’ll give you a good example: quite a number of factors, if not addressed up front, can limit the accuracy of any predictive analytics.  This point is illustrated in this recent PBBI white paper developed by our crime-mapping expert, which provides an insightful listing of the types of limitations that need to be considered.  

You’ll see that there are quite a variety of factors, ranging from underreporting of certain crimes to seasonality to data compatibility issues and more. Crime maps provided without acknowledgement of these limitations is just order-filling. And an IT team that fills these orders runs risks of running afoul of any or all of these issues.  However, crime maps produced with an understanding the problem(s) the business is trying to solve, and the nature of the impact these limitations could have, can be adjusted for a more accurate reflection of circumstances.

Reason #3:  Working collaboratively with the business also provides IT with a much greater opportunity to make its case for investing in necessary improvements in data quality. I blogged a bit about this back in August, citing a Information Difference Research Study, The State of Data Quality Today that reported that “a full 63% of organizations had no idea what poor data quality may be costing them.  By taking on a collaborative role, IT is likely to have better access to both the business’ ear, and its purse strings.  When you’re just taking orders, you’re less likely to be able to sell the importance of data-quality investments across the business.

 The bottom line:  Information can be valuable.  But Insight can be priceless.

In our experience, the best road to insight is collaboration between the business and IT, starting all the way back at the point of problem definition – do you agree?