IBM launches London Analytics Solution Centre – part 2

Last week I was talking about the launch of IBM's London-based Analytics Solution Centre and the fact that it joined six others across the globe. This week I want to tell you a little more.

Part of the documentation given to guests at the launch included some survey results of 225 business leaders worldwide. The survey found that enterprises are operating with bigger blind spots, and that they are making important decisions without access to the right information. Respondents recognize that new analytics, coupled with advanced business process management capabilities, signal a major opportunity to close gaps and create new business advantage. The documentation goes on to assure us that those who have the vision to apply new approaches are building intelligent enterprises and will be ready to outperform their peers.

Elsewhere it suggests that: “By embracing advanced analytics across the enterprise, intelligent enterprises will optimize three interdependent business dimensions:

• Intelligent profitable growth: intelligent enterprises have more opportunities for growing customers, improving relationships, identifying new markets, and developing new products and services.
• Cost take-out and efficiency: intelligent enterprises optimize the allocation and deployment of resources and capital to create more efficiency and manage costs in a way that aligns to their business strategies and objectives.
• Proactive risk management: intelligent enterprises have less vulnerability and greater certainty in outcomes as a result of their enhanced ability to predict and identify risk events, coupled with their ability to prepare and respond to them.

“Each of these dimensions is a critical part of optimization – the impact of a decision or action along any one of them will have repercussions for the others.”

Those, in a nutshell, are the compelling reasons that IBM sees for organizations to embrace the advanced analytic they are providing.

They also suggested some quick questions an enterprise could ask themselves to determine whether advanced analytics could help them. The questions were:

1. Is your view of customer data and customer profitability limited?
2. Are you unaware of how your reputation is being shaped by social networks and consumer blogs?
3. Are you incurring losses due to unmanaged risk or high rates of fraud?
4. Do you have blind spots related to customer and partner credit risk?
5. Are you operating in an environment of increased regulatory oversight and require better transparency to reduce risk?
6. Do you have duplicated or siloed data with multiple versions of the truth?
7. Are you unable to use information as a platform for growth and cost reduction?

Not surprisingly, IBM concludes that an answer of “yes” to any of these questions means it is time for an enterprise to think hard about business analytics and optimization.

So, let's just conclude by recapping what IBM says Business Analytics and Optimization can do. IBM asserts that it helps your organization run smarter by bringing together foundational business intelligence, performance management, and advanced analytics with proven models that accelerate your time-to-value, and predictive modelling. It concludes by suggesting that you get all this by utilizing IBM's “unparalleled research capability”.

I was convinced that analytics has an important future, what about you?

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