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James Taylor

I will use this blog to discuss business challenges and how technologies like analytics, optimization and business rules can meet those challenges.

About the author >

James is the CEO of Decision Management Solutions and works with clients to automate and improve the decisions underpinning their business. James is the leading expert in decision management and a passionate advocate of decisioning technologies – business rules, predictive analytics and data mining. James helps companies develop smarter and more agile processes and systems and has more than 20 years of experience developing software and solutions for clients. He has led decision management efforts for leading companies in insurance, banking, health management and telecommunications. James is a regular keynote speaker and trainer and he wrote Smart (Enough) Systems (Prentice Hall, 2007) with Neil Raden. James is a faculty member of the International Institute for Analytics.

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In a great post on 8 things to keep in mind on predictive analytics, some folks from Diamond Management & Technology laid out some things to keep in mind that I really liked. Here they are with my comments - you can get more detail on each from the series of posts with which they followed this initial one.
  1. Understanding the cost of a wrong decision helps target investments
    Absolutely, though I still think that finding a decision you can tie to an executive's compensation plan works better.
  2. Strategic and operational decisions need different predictive modeling tools and analysis approaches
    .. and deployment approaches. I divide decisions into strategic or direction-setting ones, tactical or day-to-day management ones and operational or transactional ones. Particularly with the latter, which are crucial, you need to think about how the models will be deployed if they are to add value.
  3. Integration of multiple data sources, especially third-party data, provides better predictions
    Yup, but don't just integrate your data - begin with the decision in mind and integrate to support it.
  4. Since statistical techniques and tools are mature, by themselves they are not likely to provide significant competitive advantage
    True. It is their ability to turn YOUR data into YOUR insight that does.
  5. Good data visualization leads to smarter decisions
    .. at the strategic and tactical level and to better models at the operational level - decision making at the operational level is too high-speed, too automated for much in the way of visualization to be useful a the moment of decision.
  6. Delivering the prediction at the point of decision is critical
    Yes!
  7. Prototype, Pilot, Scale
    Of course - don't forget to scale the deployment piece too
  8. Create a predictive modeling process & architecture
    Yes. And map it to your IT development process if you want to impact operational decisions embedded in your enterprise IT infrastructure.
A great list!

Posted March 4, 2010 6:16 PM
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