July/Aug 2011

“Continuous improvement” is a commitment to evidence-based improvement, but it is at least inefficient if not risky to make decisions based on inaccurate evidence. For important decisions, it’s worth some investment in understanding the validity of the evidence you are using — understanding the accuracy and reliability of the evidence, particularly the metrics, for the decision you are making.

• Bror Saxberg
• David Niemi

Manufacturer and retailer data from across the supply chain is a powerful source of information, providing a picture of product movement in near real-time. Access to the data is just the first step, because the volume of data available each day is overwhelming and much of it is noisy. Manufacturers need a structured and touchless approach to analyze masses of data every day, cut through the noise, and transform it to meaningful information that can be used to create an actionable response based on that information.

• Robert Byrne

Forecasting is a significant consumer of management time, yet it’s also a significant waste of management time if those efforts are not making the forecast any better. When attention is focused on accuracy alone, it ignores other important considerations such as forecast bias (is it chronically too high or too low?) and forecast uncertainty (the range of likely outcomes). Focus on accuracy also ignores the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall forecasting process.

• Michael Gilliland

According to a World Economic Forum (WEF) study, America’s infrastructure has gotten worse over the past decade and has even fallen to a level that is inferior to some developing countries.

• Steve Palmer

With the global economy showing signs of promise and moving away from the clouds of recession, there is a renewed focus on pushing aggressive growth strategies in the marketplace. Competitive pressures are driving companies to target multiple customer segments through various sales channels. Numerous sales transactions happen through online channels, phone, retails and direct sales force deployment. In such a multi-channel sales scenario, it becomes critical to leverage data and information about customers and channel partners to enhance the sales strategy. HP’s Global analytics organization deploys solutions across the enterprise to help translate information into insights and enable better decisions, faster. The team has implemented cutting-edge analytics solutions to help:

• Rohit Tandon
• Arnab Chakraborty