TMI (too much information) may be a popular dismissive remark for online texting chatterboxes, but there’s no such thing as TMI for marketing mavens when it comes to current and potential customers. Marketers, it seems, can never get enough information, and in today’s b Save ig data world where every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take (apologies to Sting) is seemingly captured electronically, marketers find themselves swimming in info. The problem, of course, is converting all of the information into something useful, such as deep customer knowledge, so marketers can predict what a particular customer will want to buy next, and offer them a deal on that very product right now, whether the customer is online or in the store.
In today’s world where data is collected at every interaction, be it over the phone, mobile, PC, sensors, with or without us knowing, it becomes important to have a strategy around data. Traditionally, data has been seen as something to “run the business,” but, in today’s context, it can actually “be the business” if monetized well. An example of Internet of Things (IoT) data in a customer context is the wristband one wears at amusement parks that provides real-time data about customer interaction at all times, and this data can be processed in near real time to push out relevant offers and alerts to enhance the customer experience. The question is: How do organizations prepare themselves to take advantage of data?
As a business school faculty member, I have been hearing for years that the ability to write well still matters mightily [1], even in our increasingly data-driven business world. Most recently, the 2014 Graduate Management Admissions Council’s annual survey of more than 550 companies from 44 different countries around the world found that employers valued communication skills more highly than anything else [2]. And while many courses include opportunities to make oral presentations and receive feedback, MBA students typically receive little training on how to write effectively [3].
Recently, the healthcare industry experienced developments that are both interesting and thought-provoking. Some leading health insurance companies have announced merger and acquisition deals, IBM added new capabilities to its Watson Expert System, and Google separated its newly formed life sciences unit from its core business. The healthcare provider market continues to consolidate as big health systems get bigger with the acquisitions of hospitals or provider practices. Clearly, the industry is undergoing rapid shifts in the post Affordable Care Act (ACA) world.
Someone recently commented (and asked), “It’s a great time to be a quant grad, but what didn’t they teach you in school that you really need to know?” The first three things that occurred to us are:
Organizations are very complex and have many self-governing systems that work in close coordination and interdependence with each other. These linkages lead to differing magnitude of decisions, often unexpected, that ripple across seemingly unrelated elements. Organizations often create cross-functional teams to align units with the hopes of creating synergies. However, creating and running a successful cross-functional team has many challenges including but not restricted to: conflict management, prioritization, lack of accountability, missing decision-makers, group think, anchoring bias, intuition- and gut-based decisions and information asymmetry.
The Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) program, the premier global professional certification program for analytics professionals, recently unveiled it’s new brand identity package, including a new website and URL, explainer video and other material.
Founded in 1956, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is a not-for-profit corporation that currently operates three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs): the Systems and Analyses Center, the Science and Technology Policy Institute and the Center for Communications and Computing.
The 2015 INFORMS Annual Meeting will be held Nov. 1-4 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Philadelphia Marriott Downtown hotel. The conference will include an “Analytics Practice Meeting Within a Meeting,” featuring industry-oriented sessions, many of them organized by the Analytics Section of INFORMS. Other highlights include presentations by finalists for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in O.R. Practice and the INFORMS Prize for Effective Integration in Organizations, as well as a panel discussion on the industry job search.
This time, we take a military historical [1] look at the Battle of Hoth from “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.” There are several reasons to choose this among the Star Wars battles to analyze. First, Empire is considered by many to be the best Star Wars movie, and the battle of Hoth is the only major “force on force [2]” engagement in it. Most importantly, it is good for analysis – the pace is slow enough to track, but there is enough action to be interesting.
A new moon on a nearby planet has recently been discovered, and a rover has been sent to the surface to explore. Many interesting features on the new moon have been identified, but the rover has a limited travel distance ability so not all sites can be visited.
In the last few articles I tried to put the spotlight on new developments in healthcare around the world. As we are getting closer to the end of 2019, I am energized to see positive movements in the healthcare analytics and health information technology space continuing worldwide. Let’s look at what is happening at home first.
