If asked a question: Statisticians will provide an answer, and Data Scientists will search for a better question and answer that question. Data Scientist understand the importance of asking the right question, not just providing answers.
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Tips for Predictive Analytics
A recent survey by SAS, the provider of business analytics and business intelligence software, shows the number one reason organizations are not planning on implementing Big Data is their lack of understanding of how Big Data applies to their business. The solution is predictive analytics. Predictive analytics is the application of Big Data.
It is easy to marvel at the amount of data that is currently being collected and organized. The total data supply in 2012 was 2.8 zettabytes (ZB) or 2.8 trillion gigabytes (GB). However, the volume of data available isn’t nearly as important as applying data to improve and automate existing business processes. Here are CAN’s Do’s and Don’ts for successfully applying Big Data using Predictive Analytics:
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Data Driven Decision Making & Camping
I was recently reminded of the importance of data driven decision making. I spent 6 days kayaking and backpacking in the wilderness on the US and Canada border. After living as a hyper connected technologist, disappearing into the backcountry was amazing and it lead to an unexpected realization. (more…)
Internet of Things
Eventually, we will digitize our bodies, information and objects; creating a network of everything in the world. All of the information in the world is digitized, the next step is to digitize our objects to create the Internet of Things. The concept of the Internet of Things was popularized by RFID’s helping manage Inventory flows, but that is just the surface of a far more fascinating application of technology.
Objects can now connect themselves to the Internet. Cisco Software estimates that as of July 29th, 2013 there are 8.7 billion connected objects, or 0.6% of all objects in the world. Embedded sensors and actuators allow them to sense, communicate and adjust to the environment. Objects are able to register and report pain, communicate and respond to humans and other objects.
The following are some examples of how these connected objects, the Internet of Things, will impact our world. (more…)
A Happy Halloween depends on knowing where to Trick-or-Treat
Once again it’s that time of the year when kids and parents prepare to hit the streets of Omaha in their ghoulish best looking for the most candy they can find.
For a kid, Halloween is one of the most (if not the most) exciting times of the year. They get to dress up, act like their favorite characters, and eat lots of candy. What could be better?
For a parent, Halloween can be a stressful event. Having to travel up and down several blocks to find enough candy while managing hyped up kids, and on top of that cold weather, can make for an awful mix on Halloween night. But what if you had a way to scout out the best neighborhoods around you to find candy before hand?
This year for Halloween, the data scientists at CAN took on this challenge to help parents and kids find neighborhoods with the most and best candy.
Using Block demographic and spatial data from the 2010 Census and Halloween spending data from the 2012 National Retail Federation, CAN’s data scientists developed a predictive analytics dashboard that allows parents to get a high level view of the expected spend on candy in their neighborhood as well as surrounding neighborhoods. Alongside spending, an index of household density is also included to show which neighborhoods may hand out the most candy on Halloween night.
“Last year we realized we could use the data we were gathering on household demographics and combine it with estimated spending data on Halloween candy for each neighborhood,” Tadd, COO and head of data scientist says. “I worked with another data scientist, Matt Dickinson, who built the concept of the dashboard last year for the Greater Omaha Tableau Users Group, to publish this fun dashboard and give parents the upper hand when planning their Halloween night.”
The tool is interactive and lets the user choose which part of town they are in or which neighborhoods they want to compare. “This is very similar to some of the visualizations we develop for companies to understand their customers and help guide strategies for developing better marketing campaigns,” continues Tadd. “I am happy we get to use our expertise to showcase some fun analytics as well.”
So if you want to take a proactive approach to getting your little ghouls’ bags filled with candy, use this predictive analytics dashboard to make your Halloween night boo-untiful!
Exploring the New Frontiers with Data Science
At CAN we explore new frontiers with data science. Most of us think of our world as having already been explored. After all, the days of Magellan and Columbus are literally history, and today we can pull up Google Maps to view satellite and street-level images of every square mile of our planet within seconds. The generations before us sailed new seas, crossed continents and mapped lands that were completely foreign to them. Future generations will be exploring the cosmos and travelling to distant planets. And so it seems as if there aren’t any bold new frontiers for the explorers of our time, but that’s not true.
We live in the digital age, discovering new frontiers using computers, data and the Internet. This world is growing in complexity and we are venturing out to map it and settle it. According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, we now create as much new data in 2 days, as we did from the dawn of civilization up to 2003. We produce 5 exabytes of data every 2 days. (1 exabyte = 1000 petabytes = 1,000,000 terabytes)
This new landscape of data science can be as foreign and complex to many of us as the Great Plains were to the early settlers. Where do we begin? Where are we going and how do we get there? What resources do we have to gain from this bold, new world? (more…)
We are Experts in Business Medicine
Suppose you have a bad feeling. Perhaps there is an aching somewhere in your body telling you that something just isn’t right. Or maybe you’ve grown accustomed to being energetic and suddenly that feeling has been replaced with a sense of fatigue. Your body is trying to tell you something, and even though you don’t know what it is you do know that something’s wrong.
And so you decide go to the Doctor. Your trusted medical professional starts by asking you a few simple questions. Together, you both start to get a clearer picture of what is bothering you based on the symptoms your body is demonstrating.
Quite often, you’ll hear a basic diagnosis and be given some healthy advice. However, there are times when the situation is more complicated. You might proceed to a physical examination. More often, blood samples are taken so that tests can be done. Unless they have all of the necessary information a doctor simply cannot make an accurate diagnosis or provide you with an accurate treatment plan.
In the business culture, our companies and work environments can also get that feeling when something isn’t right. Unhealthy attitudes or poor performance can be indicators of unbalance within your company. After all, large organizations often function as one entity and when the “body” of your company isn’t performing at a healthy level, it is only logical to seek out the cause.
At Contemporary Analysis you will find experts in Business Medicine. We like to ask questions about how your company is performing. How does your market feel? Is your sales team selling up to their potential? Are your clients changing their behavior? Are you experiencing a lack of clarity about your businesses direction? What type of treatments have you tried already? What do you think is driving people to buy your product? Why would any of your employees want to leave the company?
Together, we can create a long list of variables which might be aspects (symptoms) of the problem, or perhaps they are causes for some of the larger problems. Then, through process of elimination we’ll provide you with the most likely diagnosis. We can eliminate the side effects of having poor sales performance by addressing the issues that are affecting your employees. We can generate healthier client relations by helping you to find a more attractive target audience. You will be able to increase your employee retention by acting on our “Doctor’s Orders” in order to keep your most valuable assets feeling strong and happy within their work environment.
We will evaluate your business’s problems quickly and efficiently, then tell you what you can do to address them. Our approach is serious, but we don’t get hung up on formality and convention. When you bring your business to CAN you can rely on us exceeding your expectations, no matter how high you set them.
Is the US Economy Doomed to Stagnation?
I have listened to a lot of conversations about how we are worse off than our parents, how the United State’s Economy is doomed, and how United State’s position as a World Power is doomed. This month I had more conversations than usual about the Great Stagnation.
It is easy to get discouraged about the Great Stagnation. Is the sky falling? It might be, how would I know? Also, after a hard day it is attractive to think that the entire system is broke and we are all doomed to stagnation
However, In the back of my mind I knew things couldn’t be stagnating. Infact, things are changing faster than ever. Confusion, ambiguity, fear and uncertainty are not the result of stagnation. They are emotions caused by rapid growth and new paradigms.
We have failed to realize that we now live in a world that looks like a 1970’s Science Fiction Dystopia. Some people take advantage of the changes, others choose to ignore the change. The result is that we feel anxious, but are not sure why.
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The Future is Now
There is something very strange about Contemporary Analysis. It’s not something that can be easily identified or quantified. People have often remarked on the fact that we are different even though they weren’t able to put their finger on what exactly made us different.
Perhaps you’ve noticed. On any given day, a person might wander into our offices and overhear a conversation about artificial intelligence, or a spirited debate over metabolic intelligence versus programmable intelligence. Often, the ideas that capture our attention haven’t yet entered into the imaginations of the public at large. Sometimes we tend to discuss the trends of the future as if they’ve already happened, and it’s these types of clues that have aroused suspicion. And so, we have decided to come clean and confess.
We are from the future.
We’ll forgive you if this claim is met with skepticism, after all, the first rule of time travel is that you just don’t talk about the future. But we’re not interested in following that rule, we want to talk about the future. There are a few things we think you should know.
We want you to know that in the future, things aren’t so bad. In most ways the future looks surprisingly similar to the present. The major difference is that “the new” is neither good nor bad. People will be creating all sorts of new things in the years to come, just like we always have. You do not need to be scared of “the new.” There will always be new ways of thinking, fueled by new ideas. There will be new problems but also new solutions.
At CAN we were raised in this bold, new world. It’s what we’ve always known. We grew up with computers, the internet and a plethora of digital interface devices at our fingertips. We navigate these new landscapes with relative ease and radical speed.
Predictive Analytics is the future. The future is now. How will you use it?
Increase Your Share of Wallet
By definition “Share of Wallet” is the percentage of a customer’s expenses for a product that goes to the firm selling the product. For Banks, Share of Wallet constitutes the number of financial services products a customer has with them relative to all of the financial services products they currently have. For a gas station, it may be the number of times a customer fills up with them in a month relative to the total times they filled their gas tank up total that month. Learn how we helped a Credit Union increase their share of wallet.
Share of Wallet is widely used today as a loyalty metric in many industries. Although its based on rough estimation it gives companies the ability to seemingly compare themselves to their competitors and their industry as a whole. However, because the information is gathered through market research and surveys, its at best a rough estimation and better information can be gleaned after a certain point once companies start gathering more information about their customers from internal and external sources. Simply tracking Share of Wallet though also doesn’t allow companies to improve upon its product offerings and marketing strategies. It should also be fairly apparent whether you are able to compete on Price, Quality, and/or Convenience.
So why not find ways to make your current customers more loyal rather than continually push surveys to simply track their level of loyalty?
Today, most companies are sitting on a goldmine of data that is being underutilized. Customers provide new information each day to companies about their status in the marketplace. With enough customers, this information creates patterns that can not only help you identify least loyal customers that are most likely to go to your competitors, but also help identify those most loyal and help you focus your sales and marketing efforts and dollars on the right groups.
This data can then be further applied to help you grow loyalty by determining who to push your sales and marketing information to based on:
– Which customers are the best fit for your products or subscriptions
– Which customers are likely to need certain products next
– Which customers are likely to need complimentary products based on recent purchases
– Which customers are the best fit for loyalty or reward programs
Today most of your data is centralized in a way to help you accomplish this. Your CRM, accounting systems, and ERP by default are structured to connect the wealth of customer data that is continually being created each day.
So by using patterns in your data to guide the right customers to the right products and services, you continue to grow loyalty and thereby increase Share of Wallet. As an added bonus, you are also optimizing the limited sales and marketing resources you’ve been given.
Learn how you can use Predictive Analytics to increase your share of wallet by downloading our ebook, Predictive Analytics: The Future of Business Intelligence.
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