Predictive Analytics

PR/Advertising Lessons for Entrepreneurs from P.T. Barnum

August 12 in Advertising, Business, Business Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Predictive Analytics, startup, Strategy, Venture capital by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on PR/Advertising Lessons for Entrepreneurs from P.T. Barnum

Here is wisdom from circus showman P.T. Barnum I have often shared with early stage #entrepreneurs to reinforce the last point- end game here is to create short and long term sales-  the rest is ‘showmanship’ and important not to confuse this point. Also note the need to emphasize benefits to build on adv/promotion and actually close the sale (i.e.,”explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions…”). Good counsel and insights here for early stage entrepreneurs.

“ If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks thru the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.”

                                                                                                                                                                                P.T.Barnum

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Healthcare Monitoring – Fast Company Market Perspectives

August 9 in Business, Entrepreneurship, Health care, intrapreneurship, Predictive Analytics, startup, Strategy, telemedicine by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on Healthcare Monitoring – Fast Company Market Perspectives

Healthcare Monitoring – Fast Company -“Why We Don’t Talk About “Wearable Software”

Revolution is coming in the wearable healthcare monitoring arena as we move from devices to software/ ecosystems and new predictive analytics are fully embraced. Excellent Fast Company Labs article by Tina Amirtha summarizing directions. I see significant opportunity here not covered in the article  – why pharmas will play a key role, role of wearables in telemonitoring/Telehealth, tracking medication compliance,adverse drug reactions. And wearable healthcare monitoring coupled with analytics is spawning many exciting entrepreneurial ventures

Check out the Fast Company article at http://tinyurl.com/klzncnl. My comments shown are shortened due to space – here is a complete copy:

Tina- great article. As former CEO of a public predictive analytics company pleased to share comments. First, analytics is indeed the “Holy Grail” but my view is the real opportunity drivers here are not individuals but pharmas who have the incentive to establish and grow ongoing patient relationships. Healthcare monitoring/analytics is ideal strategy to help pharmas achieve this objective. Last time I looked the 3 to 4 major pharma chains represent about $200 billion or 75 percent of the market and about 24,000 locations- independent pharmas account for the rest of the locations and market. Secondly, health monitoring devices can make a substantive contribution to Telehealth/ telemedicine – I have done work in this area and telemonitoring proponents have not fully embraced these technologies- in my view and they are missing a real opportunity. We are seeing new entrepreneurial ventures addressing this market- my experience is creating sustainable business models addressing hardware, software, analytics dimensions is a real challenge for some of the reasons you noted.

Finally, in a late 2012 blog post “Buy Health Monitoring Devices Off The Clothing Rack      http://tinyurl.com/nhyp9uy 
I suggested we may be buying health care monitors in Lands End, and discussed how this will impact traditional retailer strategies. Sales staff questions may move from “What size and color jacket would you like to see?” to “Can I show you our blood pressure-only monitoring jacket or our top of the line full featured model tracking glucose, oxygenation and includes a USB port?”And what about health care coverage. Expect to see some interesting issues emerge here- are you buying a jacket or a medical device; where do you draw the line? Clothing may also be an external driver to grow this market

Bottom line here- the real opportunity, which translates into hard dollar cost savings and improved healthcare quality, is using wearables and the software ecosystem to track medication compliance, adverse drug reactions, drug efficacies, and similar data. My vision is coupling wearable healthcare monitors with predictive analytics will dramatically reshape today’s healthcare system- refocusing the emphasis of today ‘ s wearable discussion and educating industry players on the possibilities here are the challenges and next steps needed to make this happen

Paul B. Silverman

 

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

 

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Comments on Article- “Predictive Analytics Showing the Shape of Things to Come”- The Australian June 25, 2013

July 22 in Business, Business Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Health care, Healthcare, Predictive Analytics, Uncategorized by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on Comments on Article- “Predictive Analytics Showing the Shape of Things to Come”- The Australian June 25, 2013

The Australian newspaper had an interesting article on June 25, 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/mtah9ju) describing a number of successful predictive analytics applications, but also making the point that market penetration has been slow noting “… despite the numerous uses of predictive analytics, uptake is limited. According to Gartner, only 13 per cent of organisations report extensive use, while fewer than 3 per cent use prescriptive capabilities such as decision/mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation market”. I posted brief summary comments today in response to the article and am pleased to share a complete copy of my comments:

Excellent article and clearly summarizes the challenges we face in educating management on how PA solutions can help companies improve performance and mitigate risk. I am pleased to share the following 3 observations. My comments are based on my position as former CEO of InferX Corporation, a publicly traded predictive analytics company, and serving as adjunct professor teaching MBA strategy courses in the RH Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

No. 1   Analytics complements ‘traditional management’

Define your mission; assess external environment and competition using PEST, Porter’s 5 Forces model, other tools; assess internal resources and capabilities; develop detailed value chain analysis; analyze product life cycles; develop cost leader/differentiation global strategies based on product, market, competition and other factors. Analytics can make a major contribution throughout the ‘traditional’ management process. Yet market analysis shows about 85% of the total PA market today addresses the CRM sector. We need to view PA within the context of traditional management rather than a separate ‘big data/analytics’ sector. Integrating PA into traditional management processes is a challenge and the real opportunity with high upside

No. 2   Analytics costs more

True. When the e-commerce revolution emerged years ago, we had major push back from companies who preferred to continue to process orders manually, work with suppliers using ad hoc systems, and avoid ‘costly’ new systems implementation and industry standards. Systems costs did increase, but we created process and performance efficiencies that improved profitability and reduced risk. Today’s analytics solutions demand understanding ROI (and how to measure) and clearly communicating this message.

No. 3    “Analytics Drives Strategy and Strategy Drives Analytics”

Properly executed and integrated into a company’s management processes, I see great opportunity to use analytics to drive strategy, particularly in shaping new product and market innovations to increase ROI. Look at Capital One, an analytics driven competitor reportedly doing 300+ analytic scenarios daily to optimize financial offerings. Or Progressive, capturing motorcycle rider clients using analytics to define a segment with both claims and expense ratios providing strong returns. Amazon, Netflix and many others are using analytics to drive ‘micro-marketing segmentation’ which is where we are heading. And these new strategies create new analytics, enabling analytics- savvy companies such as Amazon to continue to excel.

Clearly all ‘analytics solutions’ providers, a term I prefer to emphasize PA’s broader role, have a challenge ahead- to educate clients, particularly at the ‘C’ level, on the opportunities embracing these solutions and the challenges they will face if they do not. Exciting times lie ahead in the global analytics solutions business for both solutions providers and all companies in all sectors.

Paul B. Silverman

 

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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How Analytics is “Raising the Bar” for Corporate Strategy: Understanding the External Environment

July 22 in Business, Business Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Predictive Analytics by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on How Analytics is “Raising the Bar” for Corporate Strategy: Understanding the External Environment

I was invited to do a guest blog post and serve as an Advisor for Funding Profiles, a Santa Clara-based company offering a powerful suite of financial analytic tools that “integrates with existing business applications to continuously translate traditional financial metrics into the language of business strategy”. For companies with thousands of products, infrastructure, and processes spanning the globe, the ability to ‘drill down’, examine ‘what-ifs’, and assess how and if global LOBs meet KPIs and support the strategic plan, is a powerful planning tool.
But markets and technology are moving quickly, consumer power is increasing, and external global factors will impact all global businesses which creates risk and uncertainty. In fact, one study shows macro-environment, competitive and corporate positioning factors account for about 80 percent of ROA variation among LOBs. So optimizing the company’s internal resources, processes, and KPI’s really addresses only 20 percent of the planning challenge based on these findings.

My blog post describes some of today’s traditional strategy and market analysis tools and how powerful emerging analytics are reshaping today’s corporate planning strategy planning process. The starting point- developing the ‘big data’ analytic framework with powerful visualization and analysis tools and that is what Funding Profiles has achieved. Integrating the analytic framework with new analytics capable of analyzing both external structured data and unstructured text is where we are heading. And I do expect major global competitors to embrace these new capabilities, recognizing that these new tools can provide a competitive edge, creating what Tom Davenport (Author- Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning) defines as “analytic competitors”. You can read my entire post at http://www.fundingprofiles.com/blog/index.html

Paul B. Silverman
July 21, 2014

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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Posted Comments on WSJ Article-“Can Data From Your Fitbit Transform Medicine?”

June 24 in Business, Health care, Healthcare, Predictive Analytics, telemedicine by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on Posted Comments on WSJ Article-“Can Data From Your Fitbit Transform Medicine?”

Posted comments on June 23rd WSJ Technology article addressing telemedicine – I follow this area and emphasized need to do more to develop telemedicine in the United States

We lag most developed countries in the telemedicine arena which reduces the quality of our healthcare system and increases costs

You can see the WSJ article and my comments at

http://online.wsj.com/articles/health-data-at-hand-with-trackers-1403561237?mod=djem10point

Here is a copy of comments I posted:

A winning formula- integrate telemedicine into patient’s EHRs. Mayo Clinic problems shows challenges. We are going in the wrong direction here. Three strategies to fully leverage telemedicine:1.Establish standards integrating remote monitoring devices with EHRs. The ACA ensures ‘meaningful use’ of EHRs. Well defined standards jumpstarts the remote health monitoring market moving from niche focus  2. Use analytics to emphasize benefits. Powerful analytics assess health issues and develop optimized treatment plans. For what is emerging, check out comments I posted on a healthsystemCIO.com site Posting HealthSystemsCIO.com. 3. Pro-actively address security concerns. “Tops down” national initiative emphasizing benefits- prenatal care, chronic conditions, improved outcomes particularly in rural areas with 25% of population but only 10% of physicians. Need to counter serious security concerns. e.g., April 26th guidelines from the Federation of State Medical Boards which can hamper growth.

Paul B. Silverman

 

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

 

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Comments- Are Analytics Shifting from Executives to Employees?

February 10 in Business, Business Intelligence, Health care, Predictive Analytics by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on Comments- Are Analytics Shifting from Executives to Employees?

Interesting article in Information Management Feb 6th issue  discussing how analytics decisions are being driven by mid-level staff rather than C-level executives. But analytics demands resources- what analytics should be pursued; how should analytics be deployed to increase revenue, decrease costs, and improve strategic position; what are the company’s key competitive peer group metrics? These are C-level not middle management decisions. Analytics, effectively deployed, can provide high ROI, but successful adoption typically demands C-level participation.

My comments noted no question there is a C-level gap in in understanding how analytics drives increased revenue, decreased costs, and improved strategic position. The concept of “analytics competitor,” mentioned in Tom Davenport’s writings (Competing on Analytics, others) emphasize that “C-level” analytics, creatively applied, helps companies create winning strategies- examples which I have used in MBA courses are Netflix, Progressive, and even Cirque du Soleil which created a new ‘circus/theater’ market sector- if you wonder why you don’t see three circus rings or elephants, analytics played a key role in these and many other decisions. Worthwhile reading. Key point- C-level management teams that understand the power of analytics driving new business strategy will achieve above average returns and a competitive edge. “Tops-down” thinking and unfortunately missed by many.

Secondly, no doubt there is a ‘massive treasure trove of data’ available- big data is a resource, not a solution. Analytics are the tool to leverage ‘big data” to improve key metrics, e.g., revenue, costs, strategic position, and so on. And no doubt analytics supports and improves workforce operational decisions… Read more including perspectives on analytics in the healthcare sector at http://tinyurl.com/mw674t8

 

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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Good Analytics Article- “…Reaping Returns from Analytics”

November 22 in Business, Business Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Health care, intrapreneurship, Predictive Analytics by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on Good Analytics Article- “…Reaping Returns from Analytics”

Good insightful article in the October 18, 2013 issue of Information Management on analytics by Narendra Mulani who is Managing Director of Accenture Analytics. I posted comments sharing some additional perspectives and related opportunities I foresee. One clear message here- the analytics market is positioned for major growth and as I noted in my comment related to healthcare analytics, today we are only seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in this sector.

Check out at http://tinyurl.com/nyrd8q2

Here is a copy of the comments I posted:

Excellent article. I am pleased to share some comments based on my experience in the analytics arena.

Analytics clearly provide powerful tools to optimize business processes and value chain functions. What is often overlooked is understanding the impact of external and industry factors critical to maximize performance and mitigate risk. Some studies, for example, show that external factors have a 45 percent impact on ROA. Ignore these, and your analytics may address only 55 percent of the critical performance and risk drivers.

How will global environmental policies impact your business; what is impact of changing healthcare regulations on new drug development and clinical trials; what new market opportunities are projected based on disruptive innovation in your business; how will privacy and transborder data restrictions impact your business today and tomorrow. These are external drivers which can create new markets and ‘destroy’ existing ones.

Addressing how the external environment impacts your business demands analytics addressing STEEP analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, Peer Group modeling, and similar diagnostics. And these are not static analyses- change is the only constant in today’s global environment, and having current data is critical. The winning formula- couple traditional external analysis tools, such as STEEP, with unstructured exogenous data analytics provides dynamic, real time insights on external market and business portfolio impact. Integrate these insights with internal data analytics to develop ‘actionable’ analytics. Today’s fiercely competitive global markets demands this analytics rigor.

One interesting statistic suggests 85 percent of today’s analytics solutions address CRM applications, improving the performance and operations dealing with customers and related supply chain activities. The remaining 15 percent are emerging exciting analytics directions that offer exciting opportunities.

For example, in the legal arena, Technology-Assisted Review or “TAR”, uses computer models, machine learning, and analytics to sort millions of documents identifying relevant and privileged documents to support litigation with dramatic cost savings. TAR technologies are rapidly evolving and the acceptance of TAR is now being tested in state and Federal courts.

Analytics will also play an expanded role in traditional corporate strategy management. Fortune 500 companies have thousands of business portfolios often managed using traditional analytics, e.g., hurdle rates, IRR, others. Understanding with precision how these individual portfolios align with the Company’s overall strategic plan, what are the overall projection risks, where are the corporate exposures based on both internal and external factors, are the exciting new directions being pursued by leading edge companies.

While analytics applications in healthcare are accelerating, we are at the tip of the iceberg. Using machine learning to optimize clinical care and reduce longitudinal costs for patient care; integrating healthcare claims data, EHR and genomic data to evaluate patient outlook for both clinical and insurance applications; tracking and analyzing medications and vital signs to assess drug efficacy and adverse effects for drug trial screening; are some of the many exciting new directions we see emerging that will redefine today’s healthcare system improving both quality and cost performance.

Senior management will be challenged to understand these new analytics applications to improve their global performance and mitigate risk. Even business schools must adapt- new analytics tools are reshaping our traditional approach to strategy development and competitive analysis.

Clearly exciting times lie ahead for all players in the global analytics market

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

Paul B. Silverman

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Comments on Article- “Predictive analytics showing the shape of things to come”- The Australian June 25, 2013

August 18 in Business, Business Intelligence, Health care, Predictive Analytics by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on Comments on Article- “Predictive analytics showing the shape of things to come”- The Australian June 25, 2013

The Australian newspaper had an interesting article on June 25, 2013 (http://tinyurl.com/mtah9ju) describing a number of successful predictive analytics applications, but also making the point that market penetration has been slow noting “… despite the numerous uses of predictive analytics, uptake is limited. According to Gartner, only 13 per cent of organisations report extensive use, while fewer than 3 per cent use prescriptive capabilities such as decision/mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation market”. I posted brief summary comments today in response to the article and am pleased to share a complete copy of my comments:

Excellent article and clearly summarizes the challenges we face in educating management on how PA solutions can help companies improve performance and mitigate risk. I am pleased to share the following 3 observations. My comments are based on my position as CEO of InferX Corporation, a publicly traded predictive analytics company, and serving as adjunct professor teaching MBA strategy courses in the RH Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

No. 1   Analytics complements ‘traditional management’

Define your mission; assess external environment and competition using PEST, Porter’s 5 Forces model, other tools; assess internal resources and capabilities; develop detailed value chain analysis; analyze product life cycles; develop cost leader/differentiation global strategies based on product, market, competition and other factors. Analytics can make a major contribution throughout the ‘traditional’ management process. Yet market analysis shows about 85% of the total PA market today addresses the CRM sector. We need to view PA within the context of traditional management rather than a separate ‘big data/analytics’ sector. Integrating PA into traditional management processes is a challenge and the real opportunity with high upside

No. 2   Analytics costs more

True. When the e-commerce revolution emerged years ago, we had major push back from companies who preferred to continue to process orders manually, work with suppliers using ad hoc systems, and avoid ‘costly’ new systems implementation and industry standards. Systems costs did increase, but we created process and performance efficiencies that improved profitability and reduced risk. Today’s analytics solutions demand understanding ROI (and how to measure) and clearly communicating this message.

No. 3    “Analytics Drives Strategy and Strategy Drives Analytics”

Properly executed and integrated into a company’s management processes, I see great opportunity to use analytics to drive strategy, particularly in shaping new product and market innovations to increase ROI. Look at Capital One, an analytics driven competitor reportedly doing 300+ analytic scenarios daily to optimize financial offerings. Or Progressive, capturing motorcycle rider clients using analytics to define a segment with both claims and expense ratios providing strong returns. Amazon, Netflix and many others are using analytics to drive ‘micro-marketing segmentation’ which is where we are heading. And these new strategies create new analytics, enabling analytics- savvy companies such as Amazon to continue to excel.

Clearly all ‘analytics solutions’ providers, a term I prefer to emphasize PA’s broader role, have a challenge ahead- to educate clients, particularly at the ‘C’ level, on the opportunities embracing these solutions and the challenges they will face if they do not. Exciting times lie ahead in the global analytics solutions business for both solutions providers and all companies in all sectors.

Paul B. Silverman

President and CEO

InferX Corporation (OTC/PK: NFRX)

 

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

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HBR Taps Data Scientist as the Sexiest Job of the Century

October 2 in Business, Business Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, Predictive Analytics, Product Development, Strategy, Uncategorized by Paul Silverman | Comments Off on HBR Taps Data Scientist as the Sexiest Job of the Century

HBR Taps Data Scientist as the Sexiest Job of the Century

Here is an interesting post from the Spitfire Business Intelligence blog about a recent HBR article

“The award is the business world’s equivalent of People Magazine’s annual Sexiest Man Alive designation.But who could ever have imagined that the nod would go to the data scientist, a role pioneered by the world’s Web behemoths and now being sought after by mainstream companies seeking to gain actionable business insight from sifting through large volumes of data?”

http://spotfire.tibco.com/blog/?p=14455

 

Click on the above link to read the complete post and you may also want to access the HBR article which I think most will find interesting. These are the same messages I and many others are making about analytics and its ability to dramatically reshape and improve current business processes, create more efficient operations, and drive significant new product development and other high potential revenue opportunities.

The role of creative, powerful analytics is also reshaping our traditional perspectives on industry analysis and strategy development which are being integrated into traditional business management programs. And new career and business opportunities are emerging from all sectors in many diverse organizations, and I foresee these accelerating. We should keep in  mind analytics are still in early stage of development and deployment, and today’s management is only beginning to understand how these techniques add real value and competitive edge.You can be sure exciting and challenging times lie ahead in the analytics arena.

 

Paul B. Silverman

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