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Posts Tagged ‘Business Analytics’

Business Intelligence and Analytics Hot Topics at IBM Information on Demand Conference

Business intelligence, analytics and the demand for process optimization are the big draws here at the IBM Information On Demand Conference in Las Vegas.

As one executive said on stage, its not enough to react quickly to what is happening but to predict it.

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According to IBM’s CIO Global Study, 83 percent of respondents said business intelligence and analytics are a top priority. IBM sees business analytics as the next mega trend, growing twice as fast as the rest of the IT industry.

For example, Cognos, acquired by IBM in 2007, is now a hub for IBM’s business intelligence offerings.

Cognos announced its Content Analytics product at the conference. With the addition, Cognos is putting an emphasis on combining a client’s internal data with external information to provide a more complete picture of the market and how to optimize marketing and processes within the organization.

This may be used to correlate transaction information with unstructured information that the client collects from the web.

Applications may include using analytics for sales purposes to get a better understanding and deeper insights into trends that come as trickles from actual purchases. The information can be analyzed with other data from sales reps about the products they are selling. This information can then be used by sales executives to predict trends and ready the rest of the organization for changes in the marketplace.

But though this conference is about information on demand, there is little talk about the real-time web. We asked IBM executives if they can integrate activity stream information, such as a Twitter search pertaining to a company name or product. They said it was possible though it is unclear exactly how this would be accomplished.

Most of the examples we saw with Cognos Content Analytics focused on massive amounts of form data that can be viewed in a dashboard. That’s impressive but we would like to see how IBM is leveraging the social web and how they plan to compete against the number of lightweight social technologies that are filling the market.

[Disclosure: IBM paid for a plane ticket and hotel room for Alex Williams to attend the IBM Information On Demand Conference.]

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Non-profits test out new analytics software for social investing

The young field of social venture capital is finally getting some detailed metrics.

A style of investing that takes cues from the traditional venture capital industry while aiming to solve global problems like hunger, poverty and health care, social venture capital sits on a delicate line between seeking financial return and having tangible social impact.

Environment Planning Group Limited, a Gujarat, India-based Acumen Fund investment, aims to provide safe water

Figuring out what those trade-offs should be and how to measure them is the tough part. So New York-based Acumen Fund, a venture philanthropy fund, and a group of Google engineers put together the Pulse software system to give Google-style analytics for returns on both fronts.

The Salesforce application comes out this fall and is being tested by more than 50 non-profits and charities. It tracks what a more conventional investor might look for — revenue, return-on-equity and assets and liabilities. But it also follows less traditional metrics that a non-profit user can design, like school drop-out rates for an education program or mosquito bed-net sales. Acumen will offer it for free to non-profits and work out other financial arrangements with some of the larger foundations.

Sensitive to the conflicts that might arise over how to measure social impact, Acumen Fund developed the technical part of the software separately from the qualitative part, said Brad Presner, who managed Google’s business analytics team before coming to the fund. (That means that even though Acumen Fund uses it mostly for projects in the developing world, a religious philanthropy could use it to track impact in its community.)

Acumen also wanted to create benchmarks across the entire industry, so that social venture funds like Root Capital or E+Co would have a way to keep track of what works and compare returns. The fund built a wiki and asked other partners like the Rockefeller Foundation to contribute ideas.

Designing metrics encompasses a lot of sticky questions: social venture capitalists have to weigh whether it might be better to fund a project that has a shallow impact on a larger group of people or a very deep effect on a handful of lives. When there are trade-offs between boosting financial returns and benefiting a disadvantaged customer base, they have to figure out what to prioritize.

Venture philanthropy, or philanthrocapitalism, is a young field that was borne out of the successes the venture capital industry saw in the 1990s. Newly wealthy entrepreneurs and investors wanted to donate but needed accountability and a better understanding of how their dollars were having impact. So they started applying some of the metrics and business practices from traditional investing to their charitable work. Returns in this area are not meant to be competitive with private equity- or venture capital-sized returns. Instead, social venture capital is a more disciplined form of charity that requires a self-sustaining business model and some of the listening mechanisms built into a market-based approach.

Acumen Fund, which manages more than $40 million, looks for businesses that can scale up to impact more than 1 million people and operate on their own within five to seven years. It raised money from the Skoll Foundation, which was created by eBay’s first president, Jeff Skoll, to develop Pulse. Eventually, Presner said, the fund would like to grow Pulse into an industry standard and spin it off into an independent project.

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Analytics for toeing the fine lines in social venture investing

The young field of social venture capital is finally getting some detailed metrics.

A style of investing that takes cues from the traditional venture capital industry while aiming to solve global problems like hunger, poverty and health care, social venture capital sits on a delicate line between seeking financial return and having tangible social impact.

Environment Planning Group Limited, a Gujarat, India-based Acumen Fund investment, aims to provide safe water

Figuring out what those trade-offs should be and how to measure them is the tough part. So New York-based Acumen Fund, a venture philanthropy fund, and a group of Google engineers put together the Pulse software system to give Google-style analytics for returns on both fronts.

The Salesforce application comes out this fall and is being tested by more than 50 non-profits and charities. It tracks what a more conventional investor might look for — revenue, return-on-equity and assets and liabilities. But it also follows less traditional metrics that a non-profit user can design like school drop-out rates for an education program or mosquito bed-net sales. Acumen will offer it for free to non-profits and work out other financial arrangements with some of the larger foundations.

Sensitive to the conflicts that might arise over how to measure social impact, Acumen Fund developed the technical part of the software separately from the qualitative part, said Brad Presner, who managed Google’s business analytics team before coming to the fund. (That means that even though Acumen Fund uses it mostly for projects in the developing world, a religious philanthropy could use it to track impact in its community.)

Acumen also wanted to create benchmarks across the entire industry, so that social venture funds like Root Capital or E+Co would have a way to keep track of what works and compare returns. The fund built a wiki and asked other partners like the Rockefeller Foundation to contribute ideas.

Designing metrics encompasses a lot of sticky questions: social venture capitalists have to weigh whether it might be better to fund a project that has a shallow impact on a larger group of people or a very deep effect on a handful of lives. When there are trade-offs between boosting financial returns and benefiting a disadvantaged customer base, they have to figure out what to prioritize.

Venture philanthropy, or philanthrocapitalism, is a young field that was borne out of the successes the venture capital industry saw in the 1990s. Newly wealthy entrepreneurs and investors wanted to donate but needed accountability and a better understanding of how their dollars were having impact. So they started applying some of the metrics and business practices from traditional investing into charitable work. Returns in this area are not meant to be competitive with private equity- or venture capital-sized returns. Instead, social venture capital is a more disciplined form of charity that requires a self-sustaining business model and some of the listening mechanisms built into a market-based approach.

Acumen Fund, which manages more than $40 million, looks for businesses that can scale up to impact more than 1 million people and operate on their own within five to seven years. They raised money from the Skoll Foundation, which was created by eBay’s first president, Jeff Skoll, to develop Pulse. Eventually, Presner said the fund would like to grow it into an industry standard and spin it off into an independent project.

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IBM Snatches Up Companies Left & Right

Today, IBM announced two acquisitions: source code and application security company Ounce Labs, and SPSS, a provider of predictive analytics. Both purchases arrive on the heels of IBM picking up the privately-held Exeros in May.

Downturn or not, IBM isn’t picking these companies up on the cheap. SPSS — a publicly traded firm — was bought for $1.2 billion, which breaks down to an all-time high of $50 a share. With others by Intel and Oracle as well, the recent flush of acquisitions shows things are picking up for the software sector.

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SPSS

SPSS, whose primary business is predictive analytics, will become a part of the Information Management division of Big Blue. Their software has some overlap with the Business Analytics and Optimization (BAO) consulting service. But in a statement on the acquisition today, IBM said they see SPSS as being an extension of their Information On Demand strategy.

Ounce Labs

Ounce Labs is a private company, so financial details on this second acquisition are not being released. Ounce does testing on application source, aimed at detecting flaws that might compromise security and compliance. The company will be absorbed in to IBM’s Rational software business, which manages enterprise architecture.

Software Acquisitions Looking Up?

The price SPSS garnered is not a particularly shocking revelation, since IBM envisions selling their service to industries such as financial services, health care, and crime prevention in the public sector. But these pair of announcements are just part of a slew of recent mergers, like the Oracle and Sun deal that was recently approved by shareholders, that signal a boost in the prospects for getting acquired if you’re in software.
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