May/June 2012

Numerous large, once-successful companies have failed in recent years. Some have gone bankrupt; others have been substantially reduced in size and fallen from an industry leadership position. Examples include Wang Labs, Digital Equipment, Borders and Blockbuster. What caused their failures? Were they not sufficiently analytical? Perhaps they had adequate information and analysis but made irrational decisions.

• Gary Cokins

According to a recent industry report [1], companies that invest in analytics have 33 percent higher revenue growth, 12 times more profit growth and 32 percent higher return on invested capital than their peers. To further this point, a recent examination of Nucleus Research ROI case studies found organizations earn an average of $10.66 for every dollar spent on deployment of analytics applications such as business intelligence (BI), performance management (PM) and predictive analytics [2].

• Krishna Rupanagunta
• Meena Padmanabhan
• Vinay Mony

As the number of worldwide Internet users grows constantly, advertisers seeking to promote their products and services are turning more and more frequently toward search engine marketing. Major search engines offer various publicity channels in which advertisers can display several types of ads. These ads can be found in the form of texts, banners or even videos. Depending on the type of ad, advertisers will either be charged as a function of the number of times their ad is shown or the number of times it is clicked.

• Patrick Quinn
• Michel Gamache
• Sandrine Paroz

Routing software companies are competing fiercely to produce the most creative solutions. Just having the best routing algorithm doesn’t cut it. And offering GPS tracking isn’t enough either. “Customers want a more connected fleet,” says Cyndi Brandt of Roadnet. “We are seeing more dynamic, real-time routing, open systems, and partnerships to provide an even deeper level of analytics that serve the entire organization.”

• Janice Partyka
• Randolph W. Hall

Just as you follow someone’s gaze to know what they are looking at, you can follow someone’s words to better understand them. Words allow us to express how we organize, interpret and perceive. With electronic expressions of words (i.e., unstructured text data) such as that from social media, we describe how we feel, what we are trying to avoid, what we are paying attention to and what we are thinking about.

• Fiona McNeill