Analytics Magazine by INFORMS - Dec Edition

Corporate culture key to success with analytics

New research by MIT Sloan Management Review and the IBM Institute for Business Value reports that organizational challenges, more so than technology hurdles, are holding companies back from fully integrating analytics across their enterprises. Read more

Predictive policing aims to stop crime before it happens

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is using predictive analytics to analyze data such as the times and locations of past crimes to forecast where and when certain crimes are likely to happen in the future so police can stop them before they occur. Read more

2012 Innovation in Analytics Award

The Analytics Section of INFORMS is seeking nominations for its newly created “Innovation in Analytics Award” to be presented at the 2012 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research in Huntington Beach, Calif., April 15-17, 2012. Read more

Accel Partners launches $100 million ‘Big Data Fund’

Accel Partners, a global venture capital firm, recently launched its Big Data Fund, a new $100 million investment initiative created to identify innovative entrepreneurs seeking to build category-defining companies at every layer of the Big Data stack. Read more

Gartner’s top-10 strategic technologies for 2012

Gartner, Inc. recently highlighted the top-10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2012. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment or the risk of being late to adopt. Read more

IBM’s Watson-like technology helps improve patient care, reduce costs

IBM recently introduced new software for the healthcare industry to help healthcare providers and payers improve patient care and reduce costs. The new software offering uses content analytics similar to what is found in IBM's Watson technology. Read more

University of Missouri receives grant to develop statistical models...

The U.S. Census Bureau is in transition. The constitutionally mandated 10-year count (decennial census) remains, but an annual, on-going survey called The American Community Survey (ACS) has been established. Read more

The value of business analytics

The intersection of statistically based insight and the realization that information can be an asset has had and will continue to have serious reverberations in the business world. Being smarter has always meant being successful; as far back as the 19th century, analytics was already generating competitive advantage. Read more

Strategic data management yields competitive advantage

A new survey has found that organizations with formal data management strategies derive more value from data assets and outperform competitors. The survey, “Big Data: Harnessing a game-changing asset,” was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by SAS.Read more

Corporate Mobile Software-as-a-Service Forecast

According to the latest Strategy Analytics Wireless Enterprise Strategies forecast, “Corporate Mobile SaaS Forecast, 2010-2016,” the Global Corporate Mobile SaaS Market will reach $1.2 billion in 2011 and grow to $3.7 billion by 2016, with a five-year compound growth rate (CAGR) of 25.8 percent. The ability to integrate powerful business applications on smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices will facilitate and accelerate SaaS adoption in the corporate business environment. Read more

Predictive analytics project delivers millions of course records fo...

WCET, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, has announced the successful federation of datasets from the six institutions participating in the PAR (Predictive Analytics Reporting) Framework proof of concept project. The goal of the PAR Framework is to identify variables that influence student retention and progression and to determine the impact of various demographic data on factors influencing loss and momentum. Read more

CoreLogic, FICO to develop new credit risk scoring solutions

CoreLogic, a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, and FICO will develop new credit risk scoring solutions for the U.S. mortgage industry. Read more

Industry News

UPS uses @RISK for sustainability

With more than 400,000 employees and 1.1 million shipments per day, UPS is one of the world’s largest shipping companies. UPS regularly monitors its environmental impact by measuring its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Because there is significant uncertainty around GHG monitoring, UPS turned to @RISK to most accurately estimate these amounts. Read more

Sirius XM Radio turns up marketing volume with SAS Analytics

After 10 years providing new-car owners boundless choices of entertainment and information, Sirius XM Radio is discovering used-car customer needs. Applying predictive analytics from SAS, the company is modeling customer behavior patterns, helping its decision-makers better tailor offers to this new market. Read more

FICO analytic solution helps banks ensure compliance

FICO recently announced the general availability of FICO Model Central Solution – a comprehensive offering to help banks and other organizations, including insurance, retail and health care companies, maximize the power of their predictive models and meet stricter regulations for model management. Read more

IBM Business Analytics Helps Improve Customer Retention

XO Communications, a leading nationwide provider of advanced broadband communications services and solutions, has reduced its customer churn rates by nearly 50 percent, largely through the use of IBM predictive analytics software Read more

SAS High-Performance Analytics: Big data answers in minutes, not hours

Analytic software from SAS will free enterprises from limitations of traditional computing and draw instant benefits from big data. Read more

IDC names 2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M ...

In an effort to acknowledge business analytics vendors with revenues of less than $100 million who are adapting and innovating around key trends in the business analytics market, International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new report highlighting a set of "Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch" for 2011.Read more

Remsoft names vice president of forestry

Remsoft, a provider of asset lifecycle optimization solutions for land-based and infrastructure assets, announced the promotion of Doug Jones to vice president of Forestry. In this newly created position, Jones, formerly director of Client Services at Remsoft, will work with Remsoft’s global forestry client base and ensure that the company continues to expand, enhance and perfect its asset lifecycle optimization solutions to meet forestry companies’ needs. Read more

Frontline Systems enters data mining market with XLMiner Add-in for...

Frontline Systems, developers of the Excel Solver and a full line of advanced optimization and simulation software products for Excel, has entered the market for data mining and “predictive analytics” by acquiring all rights to XLMiner, the leading Excel-based add-in for data mining, from its prior owners and distributors, Cytel Software Inc. and Statistics.com LLC. Read more

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