White Papers
Analytics 101
Analytic expertise is in short supply in most organizations. Quantitative specialists carry a heavy workload and need to focus on the most critical business issues. As a result, other decisions that may be important or influential to the organization—but not deemed critical—are made based on suboptimal information. But what if the power and sophistication of analytics could be made simpler, faster, and more intuitive and repeatable than ever? What would that do for the quality and timeliness of your organization's decision making? That was the topic of a SAS webinar in the Applying Business Analytics series. This paper provides a summary of that webinar and describes new capabilities for visual data exploration, visual programming of structured and unstructured data, and wizard-driven shortcuts for rapid model development.
Social Media Metrics
There's a wealth of customer and business insight to be found in social media, but organizations are struggling to understand, measure and capitalize on this untamed, open forum. Savvy marketers are reading and responding to social media content, but few organizations consolidate and analyze it in a systematic and strategic way. Effective social media measurement is the leading topic in marketing right now, and rightly so. That was the topic of a workshop conducted by SAS and a leading measurement and accountability research consultancy at the May 2010 eMetrics conference in San Jose, CA. This paper provides a summary of that workshop.
Predictive Analytics for the Eyes and Mind
What-if scenarios that predict what might happen given different business conditions and decisions are most enlightening when we understand the relationships between the variables that influence potential results. Data visualization expert Stephen Few describes the characteristics of good visual analytics and describes how to use the JMP Prediction Profiler to build predictive business models and interact with data and graphs to observe how changes in one variable influence changes in the others.
Architecture for Business Analytics: A Conceptual Viewpoint
This paper describes five business analytics styles used today and the building blocks required in implementing these styles. Building a business analytics architecture to create a competitive advantage requires multiple styles as the needs of the organization change. Organisations are seeing new opportunities to incorporate business analytics into operational systems and processes.
Business Analytics: Six Questions to Ask About Information and Competition
This paper, based on research by nGenera Corporation, provides answers to six key questions that executives should be asking about how to use business analytics to improve performance and compete successfully -- from "Where should we leverage business analytics?" and "What's the payoff?" to "What kinds of people do we need?" and more.
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