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Smart data analytics
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EP. 11: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
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STAR WARS EPS EPS EP V. V: THEEMPIRE STRIKKIKES BEE ACK $534,00585858,7, 51
TAR WARS EP. VI: RETURN OF TTTHHE JEDICECCEE $572,625,409
Quarterly review
It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the Galaxy together
Page 2
ContentsEditor’s Note: Fanni Vig COO at Trovus A Logicalis Company
Retail Analytics
Education
People movements: location analytics emerging in various industries (Spatial Intelligence)Retail conference 2015 Case study: Putting BI on the map - The Nisa story
Expert Interview: How the Lincoln College Group is using data to shape the future of educationRoundtable Findings: The impact of data and analytics in Higher EducationUniversity challenge: Getting students to enrol is a big data job
56 - 89
4
10 - 13
14 - 1516
Business Intelligence Information Management: A data driven culture delivers real value Application intelligence: What does this mean for managing customer experience and loyalty? Expert Interview: Views from the BI Centre of Excellence at National Grid on best practice on driving a sustainable futureWe sent Richard Simmons CTO to Las Vegas: Tableau Conference 2015
Look left: The machines are coming
CRM Strategy: Plan your journeyCover Feature: “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the Galaxy together”
ILTA (International Legal Technology Association): Insight 2015
17 - 1819 - 20 21 - 23
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25 - 26
27 - 2829 - 31
32 - 33
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Quarterly review
CognosHow training can improve ROI on your Cognos investment
and performance of reporting
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45 - 4647484950
51 - 5455565657 -59 60
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Chess pieces: Moving patterns Acquisition
Trovus Signs Strategic Partnership with SAS
Meet the team
Ascot
Introduction
This is our first issue since we joined the Logicalis Group. The acquisition has been an exciting journey. We have been looking forward to releasing this latest issue of Smart Data Analytics, where we are inviting our readers to join
us in our journey into the fascinating world of data.
It was difficult not to choose Star Wars for our cover page feature, any phenomenon that managed to maintain its hype over several decades deserves a big chunk of our attention. Whilst the movie hasn’t got much to do with ‘data’ we tried to see if there is anything we can learn from this iconic pop
phenomenon that we can apply to the ‘data story’. We did have to stretch our imagination for this one.
We also feel very privileged to have the opportunity to spend some time with our other thought leaders and contributors. The articles cover a huge array of topics, ranging from train journeys, signal failures, student retention models, smart sensors, artificial intelligence, just to name a few.
As always, we were keen to include some Information graphics and visualisations. We want to show you that data can be fun!
And last but not least, we are eager for you to get to know the team a bit more. It would be great for you to
see everybody who is working hard behind the scenes. Have a look at the Meet the Team section and you are guaranteed to learn something new about each and everyone of us. Some of their interesting facts may surprise you.
We hope you enjoy this issue!
Fanni Vig
Retail Analytics
For most educational institutions, student retention is a big challenge. Understanding who is accessing which facilities provides meaningful insights into who might be at danger of dropping out.
Equally, for construction, FM and real estate companies, people movement data can help service providers design better workplaces and optimise existing ones.
There are various ways to gather intelligence. Some companies use software that gathers data through the Wi-Fi connection (Spatial Intelligence) on your phone, whilst others might use sensors built into chairs, walls etc.
Typically, the data gathered through the various technologies, enables companies to:
Better understand people movements
Communicate with them in a more timely manner
Segment people according to their behaviour
Provide better services
Reduce waste (meeting room occupancy etc.)
Understanding people’s movements in buildings is becoming an essential tool, not only for retail but for construction companies and the education sector. Whilst retail stores have been using various technologies to better understand shoppers’ movements in stores, other industries are catching up with the same concept.
People movements: Location analytics emerging in various industries (Spatial Intelligence)
Retail Conference 2015
The challenge for IT
Earlier this year, Richard Simmons, CTO of Trovus A Logicalis Company, presented at the Retail Conference (attended by various leading retail organisations) in August 2015, inviting; IT Directors, Operations Directors, Finance Directors, Business Architects, Heads of E-Commerce, COO’s and Chief Executives to name a few.
Context Data can help personalise and customise services for businesses and consumers.
Many are unsure what business questions to ask and the possible answers aren’t what you’ll expect. The answers may not tie to specific job titles/departments etc. which can create problems in the business.
Data can help personalise and customise services for businesses and consumers.
Integrating the business with IT There can be tension with agility as IT may have concerns around governance.
There is a need to understand the value of data and to treat it as an asset.
One challenge is that there is a complexity to what IT can offer. ‘IT by Wire’ can deliver services much faster.
Your internal IT department may need assistance implementing this.
There are considerable benefits to using a Cloud service, i.e. social media.
By joining cross-sell and up-scale, this can dramatically increase revenue.
This article will outline the summary from our presentation, exploring; the real-time generation, integrating the Business with IT, road mapping customer intelligence, the value of customer profiles and what you will need to do to achieve better insight into your data.
Retail Analytics
Realtime Generation (a survey was conducted for 14-17 year olds)
The average real-timer owns 5 devices and spends 6hrs a day digitally engaged
72% are willing to exchange personal data for more personalised services
6 in 10 would share personal health data
Retailers need to gain trust from consumers
Consumers appear to trust the government more with their data
They need to feel that they are gaining something in return for sharing their information
Here at Trovus A Logicalis Company, we devised the ‘green dot’ principle to alert users within business to change behaviour.
The roadmap to customer intelligence
Our mission—The Green Dot Principle
Retail Analytics
Continued…
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The value of customer profiles Data can come from various sources and can be visualised through a Swimlane.
By monitoring customer profiles you can change and adapt behaviour by reacting to your results.
This allows you to work in a more agile way.
Below is a Swimlane we have created of customer profiles. It is a dashboard that provides a visual indicator of engagement, touchpoints and activities using analytics. Please note the image has been anonymised.
If you would like to discuss maximising the impact of data or would like a 1 to 1 meeting where we could share the findings from the Retail Conference, please let me know:
Lindsay Shaw
Retail Analytics
The cloud-based solution replaces Nisa’s existing on-premise offering, enabling its business users to gain deeper insight from multiple data sources, to better inform key business decisions to help shape the company’s proposition and support continued growth in the competitive convenience retail sector.
David Morris, Head of IT at Nisa Retail, explained, “Our incumbent Business Intelligence solution, an aging version of IBM Cognos hosted on-premise, gave us a glimpse of what was possible with BI and analytics, but we knew we could do more to leverage the technology. We wanted to adopt a new approach that would pool all data sources from right across the business, to put the right information, in the right users’ hands, and quickly.”
Logicalis is deploying the latest version of IBM Cognos, hosted on its cloud platform and wrapped with professional services inclusive of training for Nisa’s team. Through the Proof of Concept and early implementation, the process by which data is processed and then presented to the business teams for use, has already been transformed, according to Morris: “Whereas previously it was taking the team days to build data cubes, it’s now just a matter of hours, with far greater consistency,” he said. “As we look to mesh together data from warehousing and logistics, to what customers are buying and where and when, the information garnered will be invaluable. It will help us to shape and refine our proposition, such as negotiating better costs with our suppliers, to directly benefit our retailers’ bottom line – enabling them to be even more competitive on the high-street.”
Nisa’s business users have also felt the early benefits. With the cloud-based solution providing greater performance, business users from across the trading, finance and customer insight teams have been able to drill down into the analytics instantly, with no delay or latency on the system, providing a far great user experience.
“The solution has re-invigorated the use of Business Intelligence in the organisation,” explained Morris. “Our previous solution was viewed as something that simply existed to help Nisa’s business users get from A to B in their roles. Now, as they dive deeper than ever before into our data, the solution is regarded as a key tool for delivering tangible business benefits and informing key decisions, focusing the IT department on areas that really help drive the business forward.”
Implementation of the BI solution is currently underway, and expected to be fully operational across the retail business in Q4 this year.
Managing Director of Logicalis UK, commented, “Business Intelligence is all about the opportunity to engage and act upon the right information, at the right time. Critical data is being captured by organisations like Nisa everyday that, when put to work, can inform better customer engagement, marketing and growth strategies.”
With the cloud-based solution providing greater performance, business users from across the trading, finance and customer insight teams have been able to drill down into the analytics instantly, with no delay or latency on the system, providing a far great user experience.
Retail Analytics
BI solution transforms data processes, providing new insight to shape the consortium’s proposition. International IT solutions provider, Logicalis has begun a new Business Intelligence (BI) project for retail consortium, Nisa Retail.
Putting BI on the map: The Nisa story
Case Study
For more information please contact:
“IT departments in retail are coming under increasing pressure to align more closely with business strategy, and now is the time to re-shape the IT function to focus on high value, strategic initiatives. With this initiative, Nisa’s IT team is seizing the opportunity to do just that, enabling its users to exploit IT to make a genuine mark on business
About the Lincoln College Group The Lincoln College Group comprises of a range of educational and training organisations based in the UK and overseas. The group currently includes: Lincoln College (with campuses in Lincoln, Newark & Gainsborough and operations in China), two secondary school academies: The Newark Academy and The Gainsborough Academy, Deans Sport and Leisure, a commercial sports centre and Lincoln College International, which runs three Colleges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The group now has approximately 1200 employees and a total of 18,000 students.
The driving force behind this most particular COO role Fanni: Isn’t is unusual to have a COO in an educational establishment?
Lorraine: It is definitely not the norm to have a COO in a college and it’s a new concept introducing a focussed commercial element to this sector. But the Lincoln College Group is an international organisation which is broadening its outlook and as a result its growth is on an upward trajectory. Furthermore, the sector has been widely briefed that it had to reduce its dependency on government funding going forward.
Behind every number is a story and vice—versa
Fanni: So reducing reliance on government funding and growth are the factors that triggered your role?
Lorraine: Yes it has been quite a shift, as our dependency on government funding sits at about 80% of current overall revenue. This quantum is by no means an outlier in the sector, however it does present challenges in the face of decreased funding figures, it definitely helps that we have the diversity of the overseas and commercial arms. I would think more colleges might consider a COO (or similar) role, maybe a Commercial Director to support and enable them through the inevitable change we will all face in the future.
Fanni: How did the organisation operate prior to your appointment?
Lorraine: We are fortunate to have an ambitious Board who have taken us into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and China, moves that demonstrate their innovative approach. Their continued support allows us to pursue exciting opportunities that grow our business and ultimately benefit our students and workforce.
I felt that we needed a data set in order to tell us about our business
Education
Lorraine Tomlinson-Hall is the COO for the Lincoln College Group.
Lorraine has been in post as Lincoln College Groups COO
since September 2014. Previously she has worked predominantly in health care, both in the UK and the US. Lorraine commissioned Trovus to assist in the data analysis of Lincoln College but also to build the foundation of reporting performance to assist in the culture change of the organisation.
When Lorraine Tomlinson-Hall was appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the Lincoln College Group, Fanni Vig, COO of Trovus A Logicalis Company was keen to get her personal insight into what it is like to hold such a position within the education sector. In the following interview we discover the reasons behind Lorraine’s appointment, the impact of taking a commercial approach to a government-funded organisation and the implications for the education sector as a whole.
How the Lincoln College Group is using data to shape the future of education
Interview with an industry expert
Fanni: What are your main responsibilities? Lorraine: It’s quite broad really, but mainly it sits across the corporate support functions for the group including Finance, Business Development, Marketing, MIS, IT, HR and the commercial companies. An example of those, is a state of the art sports and leisure facility which includes an amazing spa and hair salon.
Data not only tells you where you are, but also gives you the ability to innovate and take your organisation forward with confidence.
Fanni: Does this cover a wide variety of areas?
Lorraine: Yes it does. It knits together quite nicely and provides a harmonised commercial and business support to our core education and training delivery. If I could describe it in one phrase: I feel it is my responsibility to protect the group and by doing what needs to be done we are able to continue providing an outstanding experience to our students.
Using data and information in the decision-making process Fanni: Do you remember how you first started using more data and information as part of the decision-making process?
Lorraine: My background is in accountancy and I am often heard using the phrase, “behind every number is a story and vice-versa.” I have a real passion and love for data and wherever possible I endeavour to use what data I have in order to analyse and make informed business decisions. It really surprises me how little data is used in other organisations. When I start a company, I have a certain level of expectation that it will be able to tell me about its core business, however, all too often it is difficult to understand what exactly is going on because of a lack of data and analysis. Certainly in the past I have been brought into organisations facing a challenging financial position and a key contributor to that is often due to poor data analysis and the resulting ‘blindsided’ decision making. With the Lincoln College Group, I felt that we needed a data set in order to tell us about our business, but this simply didn’t exist before my arrival.
Fanni: You mention your love for data. In your opinion, do you think you need to be a ‘data-minded person’ in order to recognise the importance of data?
Lorraine: I think data can scare people. I appreciate the necessity of data, regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative information. Data not only tells you where you are, but also gives you the ability to innovate and take your organisation forward with confidence. I teach my team the concept of ‘consequential impact’ - whereby decisions need to be made together with the awareness of the consequences. If you know your business and you know the data within business, then the consequential impact will only
improve in quality. We all make mistakes, but you mitigate the quantum of error if you have an awareness of what your decisions will achieve. That only comes from knowing your business, which is a result of knowing what data you have.
I appreciate the necessity of data, regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative information.
Fanni: What challenges have you faced when using insight to make decisions?
Lorraine: I think it is safe to say that profit margins are not the main driver for organisations that rely on government funding, such as the health and education sectors. While we are here primarily to deliver a great education, I am a great believer that a commercial mentality should also be in place. For example, when budget restraints were introduced in the health sector, all too often the automatic response was to cut jobs. I would always fight this knee-jerk reaction, as the consequential impact was often less people to do more work. The indicators were that more people were using the service, so job cuts did not make sense. Unless you truly know that the amount of staff needed to provide the service is ‘x’, then it is impossible to justify cutting jobs as being the correct decision.
On a positive note, at the Lincoln College Group, we have the opportunity to bid for new and exciting pieces of work from the private sector. I have found that if you do not know your true costs at a granular level then you could submit a bid that looks great but you actually undercut yourself because you have not taken everything into consideration. You cannot see the value of the outcomes without data.
Fanni: Did you ever have data quality issues?
Lorraine: As my role is new, I have a particular method of breaking down the organisation operationally in order to run it effectively. When you have historical operations that look at the business in a different way, then you will always have quality issues. Due to the data not being recorded in the same way, I couldn’t get the answers to my specific questions, as there was no harmonisation in data capture.
Education
Interview with an industry expert
Continued…
Fanni: Has this hindered the way you use data?
Lorraine: Yes. We had a chart of accounts which was twenty years old with cumbersome structures. The chart of accounts within our finance department had a combination of 2.2 million scenarios, when the average is around 30,000. We had to bring in a skillset that rebuilt our whole structure. This has resulted in us now having a fit for purpose structure with a strong foundation which can now grow as the group grows without changing the whole framework. Unfortunately, when migrating the information over, we realised we had very poor data to start with and so we do not have any previous trends. As a result, we are building our own trend analysis from here on in, which presents difficulties but the quality is paramount.
Fanni: Did this stop you from achieving your utopic scenario of using data to make informed decisions?
Lorraine: Not at all. The consequential impact of doing nothing is detrimental to any business, so I had to take a step back and look at the migration of data. I can now see that the data we are recording allows for trend analysis so I will get my ‘nirvana’.
Fanni: You carry the responsibility of Finance, BD, Marketing, IT, HR, MIS and the commercial part to name a few. Who faces these challenges and what team does the responsibility mainly sit with?
Lorraine: It is all of the above because everyone plays a part. As the group COO, I have a responsibility to all within it and that is reflected in the outcomes. We need for example, a product that Marketing can market, BD needs to help develop the product to sell it and so on. Everyone is involved in the process in one way or another. Since I joined the organisation, a great deal of work has been done to develop how different parts of the college work together and gain a clearer understanding of everybody’s role. Not understanding this can be huge and dire for the business.
Fanni: How has Trovus been of assistance?
Lorraine: In many ways. Not least was how Trovus engage and use our inhouse expertise, meaning the final outcomes are known to such a degree of granularity because of the inclusion of the different teams within the organisation. By working with Trovus, we now have a much better understanding of our KPIs and what they tell us about our current position. This has enabled us, within a short space of time, to draw information from this data and we are starting to make more informed decisions and produce predictive analysis.
As the group COO I have a responsibility to all within it and that is reflected in the outcomes
Transparency leads to clear vision Fanni: Would you say the COO of any organisation needs to have clear visibility of every department?
Lorraine: Absolutely, as do the people within it. A recent piece of analytical work was undertaken by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) nationally and concluded the average class size should be 20 students in order to be viable on the current funding levels. If we don’t utilise that information internally and set targets then we are vulnerable to underperforming throughout the whole year. To put this into context, it is widely assumed that this number is about 12, a substantial difference to reality and clearly a risk to an organisations financial health.
Fanni: Do you have any advice for anyone in an Operation Director’s role that uses data insight?
Lorraine: There needs to be inclusion and communication, whereby the workforce is informed and truly understand their position. There is often a sensitivity around performance data, so including key people in understanding this message correctly ensures that you acquire ‘ambassadors’ who understand the big picture and they in turn become your ‘comms champions’ delivering the correct message to the organisation. It is sometimes hard to identify who these key people will be as positive influencers come from all areas and it is not purely based on people’s job titles or role.
Fanni: There must be situations where job cuts are a knee jerk reaction from looking at the data?
Lorraine: I’m sure there are. I take the approach of tracking back to look at past activity levels and establish when we would have truly required the workforce numbers we have at the current time.
Often it is difficult to understand what exactly is going on because of a lack of data and analysis
This then identifies the gap between knowing what our activity was and what our activity currently is. In very basic terms you have then established your necessary growth in order to get back to affordable staffing levels.
The organisation then has the choice as to whether you grow, cut or diversify into other revenue markets. By using data and analysis, Lincoln College Groups’ vision is to facilitate informed decision making in order to grow and sustain the groups’ financial strength and viability for current and future operations.
Education
Interview with an industry expert
Continued…
How data is set to shape the future of education Fanni: How do you foresee the future role of data?
Lorraine: For me, the ideal scenario is to have a workforce that use data on a daily basis. For every question that they ask, I would want them to use data to inform their decision and also for everybody to take into account the consequential impact. We recently had a mid-year review with all of the delivery experts in one room which has never happened before. Not only has data analysis informed our organisation at every level but I believe it has been pivotal to our integrated working which positively contributes to real culture and behavioural change.
Having the security that your business is healthy, allows everyone to do what they are paid to do and in our case that is to provide a quality education and training facility. Our primary focus here is to provide students with the best possible education and training experience, preparing them for the career of their choice.
For me the ideal scenario is to have a workforce that use data on a daily basis
It is an absolute honour to work in the profession and it is wonderful to be a part, albeit small, of the student journey towards employment. Education is and always should be a hugely positive part of everyone’s life.
Education
Alejandra Dos Santos
For more information please contact:
Interview with an industry expert
Context Below is a summary, and our interpretation of what was shared at this roundtable event, exploring; cultural change and the need for departments within Universities to collaborate and have a single overview of the data whilst analysing the operational side of the business.
Findings The last 10-15 years, the education industry has changed and is run more like a business. Efforts are made to use data to solve issues like retention but the current methods used are quite clumsy. There is a need to educate professionals within the HE industry. Data rich insight poor: The industry is flooded with data that is not used efficiently.
The UK has some of the best rates worldwide for student retention.
Challenges It is hard to merge and bring data architecture together.
Difficult to trust and see the value of the data when receiving different answers to the same question.
Pressure on external reporting, a general consensus of ‘sort it out by the time it’s been submitted.’
Decisions will still be made regardless of the state of the data. The pressure to have clean data doesn’t exist yet.
Is it right to contact students flagged through the system?- this could potentially make matters worse. Students may not be comfortable with this level of monitoring.
Ethical dilemma– this could end in a situation where certain students won’t be accepted into Universities as they fall under the demographic of being within a ‘failing student’ category.
Roundtable Findings: The impact of data and analytics in Higher Education
Education
Using data within Universities to improve; student retention, track student performance and engagement, and analyse business models.
Trovus A Logicalis company, in collaboration with SAS, chaired an event in July 2015, inviting IT Directors, Pro Vice Chancellors, Heads of Resource Planning, Assistant Finance Directors, Statisticians, Deans and Heads of Strategies from Universities including University of Birmingham, University of Leeds and University of York to name a few.
Figure 1: The diagram below illustrates the main driving forces behind using data more as part of your decision making process.
Roundtable findings
We conducted a survey with the attendees prior to the roundtable, asking a series of questions. The results are presented
Opportunities Data skills vary depending on where they sit within the business. There is a need to allocate somebody that understands all areas of the business and pull everyone together from all departments.
‘Kite marking’ - exposing inaccurate data. This allows cross–referencing independent sources when analysing data.
Two elements to explore; 1. Strategic failure 2. Technology failure
Implement a model indicator telling different outcomes within Universities i.e. measure what students are at risk when they have not attended x amount of classes.
A mandate to be put together to ensure that each area of the business is represented when deploying a University wide system (IT, Finance, Admissions, Student Services etc.)
A clear strategy defined to act based on the models’ results—a team with soft personal skills to deliver retention and engagement strategies.
Conclusion In order to fully analyse student engagement/ retention, other key questions and areas should be examined. A universal understanding of what ‘retention’ means. It’s a complex issue, what’s right for some may not be for others.
Clear leadership should be taken where an individual takes ownership of the data and strives to achieve a clear overview of what is happening.
A seamless end to end integration across the; data management, analytical modelling, BI and dashboard reporting (entire stack) will reduce the cost and be more efficient.
An end to end solution that will give access to any data source in the University. This will allow easy connectivity of the data and run sufficient cleansing to ensure a single trusted source.
A set of predictive analytical modelling and data mining tools to be implemented for predicting future outcomes. These BI and data visualisation tools enable easy drag and drop manipulation.
Education
Figure 2: Which team is the main ‘owner’ of data projects?
Figure 3: What is the biggest obstacle (if any) to be more effective with using data?
If you would like to receive a PDF copy or would like a 1 to 1 meeting where we could share the findings of the roundtable, please let us know. Contact us on:
Lindsay Shaw
Roundtable findings
Education
Higher education is a buyer’s market today, with the student being the buyer, according to Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Institute. And don’t universities know it. Not only are they dealing with tuition fee caps, but they face mounting competition from other educational institutions.
There are many UK students choosing to travel overseas to study and many choosing not to study in formal education at all. With new rules allowing unlimited expansions for university campuses, students are receiving unconditional offers, cash bursaries and scholarships to attract them. This is all while the value of tuition fees is said to be declining in real terms—so much so that some argue they need to be protected to ensure the future of UK education.
Universities have to get ahead, and beyond the attractive unconditional offers and scholarships, that means taking a closer and more intelligent look at the student lifecycle. The lifecycle, from recruitment to retention to alumni, should be designed and optimised to make sure they attract the right students to the right courses and keep them.
That doesn’t just mean using marketing to get the students to apply, but analysing where the lifecycle might go wrong, finding key pain points, and ensuring operational efficiency. It’s less about knowing which students have dropped out or didn’t apply, and more about knowing why. Many universities have already started this journey and departments are already holding data that offers potential for this sort of analysis. The next step is to fully maximise the benefits that data offers. Are decision makers able to access that information quickly? Could one department learn from the data and insights held by another?
For this to happen, three key things are required:
1. The elimination of silos within the organisation.
2. The application of analysis.
3. The ability to offer ‘self-service’ reporting and data visualisation.
Some great examples of where this has worked include:
Analysis of not only how likely financial support is to attract new students, but how much is needed to secure attendance.
Looking at the employment market and optimising programmes to meet those demands, ensuring the longer term success of students’ post-graduation career choices.
Finding out quickly what causes low-performing courses or modules, and how they can be improved.
Ensuring there are enough resources to meet student demand—this is particularly relevant given the benefits on offer, such as scholarships and bursaries, to new students this year.
Tracing how effective complementary online resources are to traditional classroom based learning.
Theses examples are all valuable pieces of insight that can effectively feed into the plans of the educational institution and drive their students’ success. As students continue to rethink how they approach education, so should the organisations that offer it.
Source: http://eduos.net/welcome/?page_id=1653
Pete Snelling
University challenge: Getting students to enrol is a big data job
Pete Snelling, Public Sector specialist at SAS, talks about data insights within the education sector.
For more information, please contact Lindsay Shaw on: [email protected]
Business Intelligence
Opportunities Operational Efficiency: Generate Insight to highlight improvements in existing processes or identify where new processes are required.
Customer Insight: Generate Insight to help attract, acquire, engage and retain customers.
Risk Management: Generate Insight to support regulatory compliance, Operational Risk or Credit Risk management.
Monetize the data: By developing real Insight it enables a business to monetize and drive value from the internal data they hold and also external data they can access. Challenge Building a data driven culture is as much about the people and processes as it is about the technology.
The skills required to deliver pervasive Insight can sit within many teams or not exist at all.
The value of data and the information it provides may not be understood, instinct and gut feel are seen as preferable.
The opportunities are large, so finding a path to engage quickly and begin to build momentum and support can be challenging.
Building a data driven culture is as much about the people and processes as it is about the technology.
A data driven culture has a number of components Governance: Create the framework and approach for the business. Identify the people, processes, architecture and policies required.
Data Discovery: Understand the business challenges, identify the value from the data quickly and demonstrate that value to the business.
Business Intelligence: Once value is established deliver relevant content to the right consumer at the right time in any location. Measure the impact of the content and the value it brings to the business.
Information Management: Maximise the ability to drive value through insight by ensuring data is managed and governed correctly. Users have access to trusted data quickly and easily.
Measurement: Identify and measure the key indicators to show the value the data driven culture generates within the business.
As a data driven culture matures there are a number of areas where capabilities will grow. These will impact the Insight that can be identified in the Data Discovery stream, and be operationalized in the Business Intelligence and Information Management streams. It is important to understand your current level of maturity, to identify the areas that will provide the greatest business value.
The value of data and the information it provides may not be understood, instinct and gut feel are seen as preferable.
Building a data driven culture Tactical: Initial investment in BI, discovery often focused on department level reporting, limited audience for BI with data often in silos.
Focused: First business benefits realised, discovery moving beyond one department, BI platform delivering to a wider audience, simple IM platform in place with limited integration.
Strategic: We can achieve more consistent benefits from BI, where business strategies are supported by generating roadmaps of use cases. We will enable BI to be expanded to both internal and an external audience. With the IM Platform , intergrading data and providing trusted sources will result in a more varied approach to data.
Pervasive: BI pervasive across the business, a data driven culture has been created.
Alan Bourne, Content Management Consultant at Trovus A Logicalis Company discusses information management and how a data driven culture can deliver more value to an organisation.
Information Management: A data driven culture delivers real value
Continued…
Business Intelligence
B integrated into the business process, information is trustworthy and used at all levels of the organisation. Users can consume and create insight.
We differentiate between cold, warm and hot data, below are some examples:
Cold-Warm-Hot Cold (Data Exploration/Mining)
Data Lake
Store Everything and Anything
Warm (Regularly Analysed Data)
Data Warehouses
Data Marts prepared for Analytics
Hot (BI Applications)
In-Memory Data
Pre-computed Aggregates to Answer Specific Questions
Alan Bourne
For more information on integrating business processes please let us know.
I
Business Intelligence
Today all enterprises must transform into digital businesses. This means using software enabled tech to drive customer engagement and enhance employee productivity.
Digital business success is therefore software-defined and managing the performance of applications is a business imperative. But the rising complexity of associated architecture, code and the need for flawless customer experience means that proactive management is increasingly challenging.
Also competitive advantages comes from the ability to harness the data, engagement and performance information, generated by these complex applications, in order to ensure that software enabled technology continually delights the consumer.
Fanni Vig, COO of Trovus A Logicalis company shares some good news for anyone who is keen on improving single customer experience initiatives.
Application intelligence: What does this mean for managing customer experience and loyalty?
Figure 1: Example Dashboard
Continued…
Unfortunately businesses face many challenges as they try to effectively manage application performance, including tool fragmentation, collaboration silos, and inadequate data analysis techniques. Consequently at Logicalis, we are looking into modern application intelligence solutions like AppDynamics, to provide increased visibility, user experience and successful business outcomes of software applications. Application intelligence helps companies maximise performance through three main principles:
1. See everything with Unified Monitoring: enabling an integrated view of real-time application performance, user experience, and infrastructure capacity.
2. Act fast with DevOps Collaboration: uniting teams through a shared, unified view of data for faster, more effective decision-making, rapid issue resolution and automated workflows.
3. Know the business impact with Application Analytics: empowering deep, real-time analytics to help businesses make better decisions and create bigger impact, all with certainty and confidence.
Business Intelligence
Fanni Vig For more information on consolidating data set please contact us
Figure 2: Example Dashboard
Digital business success is there-fore software-defined and manag-ing the performance of applica-tions is a business imperative.
Figure 2 & 3 : Example visualisations
Introduction National Grid is an international electricity and gas company based in the UK & north-eastern US, which plays a vital role in connecting millions of people safely, reliably and efficiently to the energy they use every day of their lives.
It operates at the very heart of one of the greatest challenges facing our society; working with all stakeholders in order to promote the development and implementation of sustainable, innovative and affordable energy solutions. National Grid is proud of the fact that its work, and its people, underpin the prosperity and wellbeing of customers, communities and investors alike.
Bringing BI to National Grid Fanni: Tell us about your role at National Grid.
Daniel: I am currently the Business Intelligence Centre of Excellence Manager, working within the UK’s Finance and Shared Services division which services all UK businesses and operates predominantly in what is referred to as systems of record or ‘back office activity.’
Part of the service we offer is supporting the streamlining automation and provision of reporting. The aim of which is to make information easier to access through self-service for end-users and to be
more engaging to prompt action whilst also supporting our embedded analytics team to drive further insights from the data.
Fanni: How did you arrive in the role?
Daniel: I have been in my current role with National Grid for about a year, prior to which I worked in the construction sector. I had a BI role at Balfour Beatty where I worked in the services responsible for setting up a BI team which covered both strategic and operational reporting. I also gained experience in manufacturing with Tata Steel where I worked in business improvement, change roles, projects associated with data and KPI reporting, in order to support their ongoing improvement initiatives.
The key is to ensure we use the new technology as an enabler to drive insight and value
The changing face of BI Fanni: How has the landscape of BI changed over the past 4-5 years?
Daniel: One of the biggest opportunities and challenges, has been how to embrace Software as a Service (or Saas) and what that means in terms of BI. We endeavour to understand how we can best integrate the additional data that is now available to us, while doing it in a secure way to ensure that we have in
place the governance and controls where appropriate. The other major change has been the explosion and availability of self-service data-discovery reporting for general users, analysts and power users. We have to make sure that we understand these tools and technologies in order to help build a vision that can aid people in the long term, while also making the most of our existing investments.
Daniel Senter Business Intelligence Centre of Excellence Manager
Daniel is the Business Intelligence Centre of Excellence Manager, working within the UK’s Finance and Shared Services division.
Business Intelligence
Daniel Senter is the Business Intelligence Centre of Excellence Manager working within the UK’s Finance and Shared Services division. In this interview, Fanni Vig Chief Operating Officer at Trovus A Logicalis Company asks Daniel about his job and the role data plays within the energy sector.
Views from the BI Centre of Excellence at National Grid on best practice on driving a sustainable future
Interview with an industry expert
Continued…
The key is to ensure we use the new technology as an enabler to drive insight and value.
A lot of businesses are facing these challenges and have spent a great deal of time and money building systems. They maximise their future potential, while also embracing the new technologies and functionalities that are now on offer to them in the market place.
Fanni: Have you experienced a trigger that has made you think differently about BI?
Daniel: I would say that for me, BI is an important part of the business and therefore not really a trigger as such but part of the way we do things. With a background in engineering and having worked previously as a lean practitioner, data has always been a key part to the process of making improvements. One of the lean principles is to manage by fact and for me that means ensuring that decisions are made based upon good data. BI is all about transforming data into meaningful information, so for me, the trigger is all about ensuring data is understood and defined.
The benefits and challenges Fanni: What business benefits are you generating out of data?
Daniel: A big part of the work my team delivers is by driving efficiency when transforming data into meaningful business information. This ultimately involves bringing two things together ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’. Efficiency is about removing non-value, adding activity, streamlining processes and releasing capacity to allow more time to be spent adding further value and/ or driving insights.
Effectiveness is about how we go about using the information delivered. The part we play in this, is to build analytical capability in order to think differently about how we view and interpret the data to drive further insights. The balance of this can vary depending on the type of data you’re looking at and the areas of business you’re working in.
While one element centres on automating and bringing about governance where appropriate to shave time, the other element is the value driver in terms of what are the tangible benefits you achieve in order to make better quality decisions.
Fanni: What are the main challenges you will face over the next 18 months?
Daniel: A lot of the challenges I face are similar to those within any business. A key consideration is to not get lost by technology and to focus on really understanding where the opportunities lie; i.e. what exactly it is that you want to achieve.
For me, it’s always about being an advocate for change; being the driving force behind it and trying to ensure you have won the hearts and minds of the people involved. A lot of the activities are project related, so we have to make sure we have communicated with people and they fully understand what it is that we’re trying to create and what’s in it for them.
Another challenge is to communicate how we’re going to change things and ultimately how we’re going to make it better for them. I sometimes feel that vendors get caught up with selling a product and a technology while not understanding the practicalities of the change and the people processes that underpin all of these technologies.
I always say it’s first and foremost about the people, then the processes, and lastly the technologies.
It’s always about being an advocate for change; being the driving force behind it and trying to ensure you have won the hearts and minds of the people involved.
Fanni: Why do you think there is a gap between understanding technology and the practicality that comes with it?
Daniel: I think it’s the balance that I witness in the project world, whereby they have a defined beginning and end. They’ve also got a set of measures associated with a project and if you haven't got the right measures it will affect the long term delivery of that project.
Between 6 to 12 months is the optimal time to see what has been successful or unsuccessful, which is hard because a lot of the projects have come and gone within that time frame.
Fanni: Do you have any examples of how you measure a successful project?
Daniel: In my previous role, one of the methods that was used to measure success was adoption rates. The adoption rate is the solution that was built to explain the benefits of using new technologies and processes.
These metrics had to be in place long after the project had finished and delivered the solution. As my team and I were still working on it, we were able to continually monitor and measure its success. Bringing people in at the start of the process and understanding the right measures, enables us to measure in the long-term and makes far more sense.
It’s all about the people Fanni: Who would you categorise as a ‘buy-in’ i.e. the business decision makers?
Daniel: It varies, depending on what the project is and where the project lies within the business. There are two elements; firstly those people who are directly affected by new solutions, such as BI because they actually use the reports and the tools that you’re building.
As a result, they need to know key issues such as; how it affects them, how you’re impacting their day-to-day work, areas of support and what communications are available.
Business Intelligence
Interview with an industry expert
Continued…
The other element concerns senior stakeholders and supporters. They’re not directly affected by the tools, but by the outcomes which affect their teams or areas, so they need to support in order to drive the business through the change.
Fanni: How important is education in the process?
Daniel: In terms of education, it needs to be uncomplicated. I always say communication is extremely important and I personally believe this is one of the most powerful ways to gain support and buy-in. It’s easy to forget how many people need to be aware of what’s going on and see the activity, but in parallel remember that communication is two-way. Providing channels for receiving feedback, questions and queries are a fundamental part to refine the messaging.
In the past, I’ve been on a journey where the organisation has changed. It’s done well because they have taken the time to understand the change from your point of view. The saying “walk a mile in my shoes and you’ll understand” comes to mind. Once you truly understand, you’ll find the appropriate education and language that suits everyone; this way you’re more likely to succeed.
BI is all about transforming data into meaningful information so for me the trigger is all about ensuring data is understood and defined.
Fanni: Does that mean you’ve hired an expert on change management in your team?
Daniel: Yes I’ve hired an Engagement Manager. Part of their role is project and change management. Our analysts manage the larger changes through our process, but we operate in a very collaborative approach.
Embrace change and always strive to be better. You can always discover a better way to do something.
Driving efficiency and innovation Fanni: Would you say cost is an issue when making decisions?
Daniel: Yes absolutely, cost is part of the decision making process, along with a whole host of other considerations. We need to make people aware of where you can take things, what the opportunities are, and the costs involved, so that we can make the best decisions for the business.
Fanni: How actively are you looking into new technology?
Daniel: Personally, I’m keen to see new technologies. In our business, we work closely with colleagues in Information Services, our business stakeholders and customers to ensure we have the right balance of technology, process and people development to drive improvements in our BI and ultimately business.
Fanni: Do you have an internal forum or think-tank where IT teams can make decisions alongside other members of the business?
Daniel: In smaller businesses, I’ve experienced the same set of people making the big business decisions. But this is not always necessarily the case for larger organisations as it may depend on the department.
Within Finance and Shared Services, we have established and taken part in a number of forums from strategic to operational levels engaging with a number of stakeholders from across various parts of the business.
Fanni: What will revolutionise data and affect how you utilise BI?
Daniel: The biggest challenge is maintaining governance around how we utilise that information. The exciting part is the speed at which we empower people within the business to use it. Traditionally, projects would take sometimes months and even years to deliver. Now products can be built in a more agile way, with the use of self-service data discovery tools and be more flexible in-memory and/ or with cloud-based technology.
And finally… Fanni: What advice would you give to somebody in a similar position to yours?
Daniel: I would say to embrace change and always strive to be better. You can always discover a better way to do something.
Fanni: If you could have one request, what would it be?
Daniel: To get everybody in the same place, sharing the vision and looking for ways on improving it—and with enthusiasm!
Business Intelligence
Alejandra Dos Santos
For more information on consolidating data set please contact us
Interview with an industry expert
Business Intelligence
Watching Dr Hannah Fry talking through the work they are doing using mathematical models to visualise transport flows in London (http://simulacra.blogs.casa.ucl.ac.uk/2011/03/visualising-public-transport-networks/ ) was fascinating and aside from the inherent beauty in the visualisation, what was most interesting was the value that was obtained by Transport from London in applying these to identify bottlenecks and areas of maximum risk.
When data can be brought together in creative ways to deliver new insight which can change behaviour then real business value can be found and this showed it perfectly.
This was a continuing theme of the conference with many of the breakout sessions highlighting organisations who were building a data driven culture and having to balance the need of the business to easily discover and monetise the value in the data while allowing IT to maintain governance of those data assets.
It was interesting to see that in most cases the main challenges were not with the technology being used but rather with the culture, people and processes that were in place.
For many knowing how to begin this transformation was still problematic and for those that had begun being able to demonstrate tangible benefits from the investment was critical.
In the Tableau keynote a number of new features were announced that addressed some of the following themes:
Data Preparation – Improving the data preparation to make it easier to source and blend data.
Visualisation – Enrichment of maps and geo-spatial with enhanced visuals.
Analytics – Ability to deliver simple analytics.
Self Service – Enhancement to the server web interface to improve user experience and management.
Dashboards – Ability to design dashboards using web authoring tool.
Mobile – Further enhancements to mobile experience.
Vizable – Launch of new application for free visualisation of data stored on iPad.
When data can be brought together in creative ways to deliver new insight which can change behaviour then real business value can be found
These new features will certainly allow the business to have a greater level of agility with data discovery and the server level features, specifically enhanced permissions, will allow for a greater level of governance from IT. It was clear though that an organisation will still need to implement an information strategy that will support the adoption of this data driven culture. Leveraging traditional data warehouse technology along with integration with Hadoop to support larger and more varied data sources formed part of many of the case studies on show.
When data can be brought together in creative ways to deliver new insight which can change behaviour then real business value can be found.
These platforms allowed the organisation to identify and store new sources of data, both machine and human generated which may have been ignored or deleted previously. In many cases though it was the agility in data discovery, enabled by Tableau that was allowing the value in new data sources to be identified and the business outcomes proven which then supported the further investment in the data driven culture. So Tableau can provide a platform to drive tangible value from your data assets, however, if those assets are not managed and governed in the right way that value is much harder to realise. As Neil De Grasse tweeted as part of his keynote session and I’ve been singing ever since: ‘Because you know I’m all about that data, ‘bout that data. No trouble. I’m all about that data, ‘bout that data. No trouble. (Sung to ‘All about the base’ by Meghan Trainor ).
The conference this year was bigger than ever with over 10,000 delegates attending which was double the number from the previous year. The first thing that struck me was the level of enthusiasm and passion the delegates had for the product and the amazing level of creativity on show from a wide range of individuals and organisations.
Richard Simmons
We sent Richard Simmons CTO to Las Vegas: Tableau Conference 2015
For more information please contact Richard on:
Legal Analytics
Look left: The machines are coming
Lawyers like nothing more than a good argument. That's one of the attractions of the job for us.
The arguments are raging over the role of technology in law and driving some of us into two camps:
What I might call the Canutes, who are looking at the rising tide and saying that it will stop before it gets to them; and
The Chicken Lickens, who are racing around telling all who hear them, that the sky is falling in.
The Canutes reason like this:
law is a cerebral process, but it is not just process. The best lawyers use intuition, innovation and imagination to solve client problems.
What’s more, clients don’t just buy lawyers on the basis of cold, hard reason. There’s an emotional, irrational element to buying decisions, whether it be simply getting on better with the person pitching to you, or simply trusting the person whom you know better than the one you don’t.
On the other hand, the sky-falling-in Chickens (like me) say that there are a number of factors at play here. First, the machines are getting undeniably brighter, with human level machine intelligence (HMLI) inevitable. The overall predictions currently show a 10% chance that this will be achieved by 2022, a 50% chance by 2040 and 90% by 2075. (That was in the context of machines presenting an existential threat to all human life, and not just lawyers. One for another time maybe. Let’s just try to save the lawyers first.)
The Chickens say that:
The proportion of creative thinking and intuition needed in law is relatively small. Not many minutes of creative thinking are really needed in matters taking many days or weeks of time to complete.
And isn’t it the case, really, that these activities are seen as ‘creative’ simply because we are having to reason on likely outcomes in the absence of quantifiable data? Once law firm data analytics progress to the level where lawyers are able to mine past transactions and case outcomes to access risk more effectively, then the space left for hunches and creativity is reduced to virtually nothing.
If courts start to take decision driven on data (including data as to the likely truthfulness of witnesses, based on observed physiological reactions when giving evidence), the days of judges giving bad decisions because they are hungry as some studies have shown will be a distant, painful memory.
Last, but by no means least, is the fact that more buying decisions are already being based on value maybe not absolute price, but overall cost (although many are already purely on price). The rise of the procurement function in corporates is undeniable, and law is increasingly seen as a commodity to be scored, rated and ranked like any other. When combined with data driven, quantified risk assessment, buying on sentiment will seem curiously quaint and quasi-astrological pretty soon.
David Halliwell
Director of Knowledge, Risk and Legal Services
Continued…
Guest Article
The crux of the issue is the obverse of David Maister’s classic Rocket Science to Commodity progression for professional services. His argument Figure 1 is that an innovative service that is initially seen as complex and unique will become ubiquitous and commoditised over time as it is replicated and ‘drifts to the left’ down the complexity scale.
Figure 2 shows the reality today, that machines are driving fast from the left to the right, moving up the value scale from commodity onwards and taking over large volumes of work previously carried out by qualified lawyers. First, they are allowing those qualified lawyers to be replaced by less or unqualified staff. Second, they will start to replace humans entirely for those tasks, processes and decisions.
Already at Pinsent Masons, we are going beyond the theory and are mixing AI with our core technologies to assist on real matters, by the following:
We are using our own AI legal rules engine to map and control matter processes, and are proving how this technology can be extended to read and categorise contractual clauses (indemnity, assignment of IP etc.) to be analysed and reported against by RAG matrices.
We are looking at the data we hold, through bespoke matter management systems, and highlighting for clients the trends we can see in the reasons why they are coming to us, so that we can work with them to prevent those issues arising in the first place.
And we are looking at how we can analyse data across our disputes practices to identify which factors applied to particular cases and what patterns there are in the outcomes achieved, so that we can provide early assessments of likely results when similar factors are present. The more we look, the more opportunity we can see, to use machines to help solve or avoid problems for clients.
And the space left for real-life human lawyers risks being increasingly squeezed and competitive as a result.
Legal Analytics
Figure 1
Figure 2
Fanni Vig
For more information on consolidating data set please contact us
Lack of upfront definition and understanding of all the touch points in customer journeys.
Lack of ownership of ‘data’ within the organisation.
Raising investments are difficult due to the lack of business alignment.
Effective CRM systems are not just about the technology but about a process and the culture within your organisation.
Legal Analytics
Gartner predicts CRM will be a $36B market by 2017. However, the Gartner study also shows that 70% of the customers churn because they think that the organisation does not care about them.
that there are gaps when it comes to an effective implementation of a CRM system.
CRM is not just about technology Effective CRM systems are not just about the technology but about a process and the culture within your organisation.
Based on our experience with some leading brands, we found their key challenges include:
CRM Strategy: Plan your journey
Continued…
The fact that organisations are investing more and more in CRM, but their customers still think, they are not ‘cared about’ shows
Legal Analytics
For more information please contact:
Top 3 Challenges 85% of the organisations we work with have a CRM system in place, however, most organisations would admit that they do not have a culture in place that enables the organisation to maximise the benefits of its CRM system. See the top 3 challenges in the image on the right.
CRM strategy—the journey To address these challenges, we found the following process supports a step by step approach that enables a successful CRM implementation. See the image below:
Lindsay Shaw
People will be taking holidays on 17th December so that they can watch the new Star Wars movie on its launch day.
It is hard to argue that there is any connection between Data Analytics and Star Wars, but to show respect for such a success story, in this issue we thought we would share some facts behind this global phenomenon.
Global Top 10 movies Interestingly, Star Wars does not feature, in the top 10 movies internationally based on box office revenue.
However, looking at inflation adjusted figures purely in the US market, Star Wars do take the first spot and a few others in the top 10.
Overall revenue Big box office movies (James Bond, Jurassic Park …) do not make most of their revenue with the actual movie. Looking at the Star Wars brand, the biggest chunk of their revenue is actually coming from toys and video games.
This business generated circa $33billion in revenue, (which if we put it into context is slightly more than a country like Cyprus’ GDP).
Darth Vader - Lego Interested in Lego? if somebody wanted to buy the entire Star Wars Lego range, you would need to set aside $14,000 to put your hands on all the Star Wars bricks.
How Legos Licensed the Universe, and Ended Up Ruling Us All. The image below shows the difference in revenue of different Lego Toys, Star Wars lego being the most popular.
Find out how we can learn from Star Wars when it comes to making analytics a success story.
“It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the Galaxy together”
Cover Feature
Continued…
Whilst we said there is no link what so ever between Star Wars and Data Analytics, if we look at what’s behind the success of this global pop phenomenon, we can certainly learn a lot when it comes to making data analytics a success story too.
The image below illustrates the Star Wars revenue throughout our galaxy. Interesting to see how the data has been visualised using a Star Wars vessel.
Cover Feature
Source: http://www.wired.com/2012/05/tell-jabba-ive-got-his-money-star-wars-revenue-throughout-our-galaxy/
Continued…
What’s behind the success? Whilst we said there is no link what so ever between Star Wars and Data Analytics, if we look at what’s behind the success of this global pop phenomenon, we can certainly learn a lot when it comes to making data analytics a success story too.
Creativity – The sequence is very creative: not only the story line but the invention of galaxies, the characters, the music, the whole execution. If one
Accessibility – The movie has a very wide appeal and therefore captures a very wide audience. The main characters are young and old, male and female, humans and machines. For effective ‘data strategies’ thinking about how to ‘consumerise’ the insights generated from information available is the most important 1st step.
Fun – Last but not least, it is actually funny and memorable. Data and information provides a huge ‘playground’ for the ones with creative imagination. It is their duty to ensure that the ‘stories’ coming out of data are sometimes fun too.
How Legos Licensed the Universe, and Ended Up Ruling Us All. The image below shows the difference in revenue of different Lego Toys, Star Wars Lego being the most popular.
Source: http://www.wired.com/2014/02/infoporn-legos/
Fanni Vig
For more information on this topic please contact us:
Cover Feature
wants to make ‘data’ work, creativity is a critical factor for that.
Legal Analytics
It was inspiring to see clients like Ben Gardner, Data and Information Architect from Linklaters, Bruce Braude, Head of Strategic Client Technology from BLP and Vince Neicho , Litigation Support Senior Manager from A&O, all speaking in my track ahead of me. That said, it’s always daunting to find yourself fourth in a list of speakers, all broadly focusing on the same topic – AI and advanced analytics within the legal sector. Ben, Bruce and Vince, all rich with experience of applying advanced analytics into their respective firms, gave the audience case study after case study to support their observations around what technology is doing to inspire true revolution across the sector.
That left me with only one place to go, to spend my hour looking at our experiences, warts and all, on what we have learned about how to apply the output of these amazing technologies and to support users to adopt and get value.
In summary what we shared:
1. Choose your technology carefully.
There are so many technologies on the market today.
It is important to understand what you want to achieve and then apply the right tool for the job.
ILTA (International Legal Technology Association):
Insight 2015 I was delighted to be asked to join the ranks of speakers for this year’s ILTA Insight 2015 conference in London, which was another wonderful event for those focused on the important topics within the world of legal technologies.
Edward Charvet
Continued…
Legal Analytics
It is important to understand what you want to achieve and then apply the right tool for the job. If you want to create reports, historic statements of what has been achieved, and share these with key decision makers, then you are looking at light touch, in-memory reporting tools. If you want to share real time reporting with every fee earner across the firm then you need a centralised BI platform with the capability to distribute intelligence. If you want to build a model to understand the future, you would need an analytics engine with statistical capability. No one tool can do it all.
2. Dashboards are not the end of the story.
We’ve heard too many people say “We want some dashboards”, believing that simply rolling out a two dimensional screen with pictures will somehow transform the behaviour of all key people across the firm. Dashboards are no more than a communication media, important if they lack the clarity to communicate clearly, but only a communication media.
3. Know your firms needs and therefore know the outputs you want
If the technology is just the tool and the dashboard just the communication media, be clear that the definition of the need, translation into a requirement and the articulation of what the output needs to be, is by far the most important exercise within the process of preparing the firm to extract value from its data.
4. Remember it all comes to nothing if you don’t change behaviours. Find the connector.
But for all this preparation, never lose sight of the most important, and arguable the only relevant aspects of deploying business analytics within a firm – adoption by staff to change behaviour and improve outcomes.
Behaviour change unlocks the value and the role of the BI professional is to help understand how to connect the output from the technology to the person with the responsibility to affect change. How to do that…well that is a longer story and we’d be delighted to share that with you. Please do get in touch.
For more information please contact:
Top 4 takeaways for if your firm is considering or is on a journey to embrace data analytics as a business tool:
If you want to build a model to understand the future, you would need an analytics engine with statistical capability.
Forbes Magazine claims that Facebook not only knows you better than your therapist but better than your family and friends, and is even able to predict which relationships are likely to last and which may fail. That may be a frightening thought for some, but a world in which our every move is tracked is fast becoming a reality. In the case of Facebook, this is information that we willingly give up ourselves. We’re keen to document the intricacies of our lives to our friends and acquaintances. So for information that is perhaps not so transparently collected, stored or analysed, where do we draw the line between providing a better service and causing an infringement on privacy?
At a Gartner Insurance briefing I spoke at earlier this year, I highlighted the significant advances we have made at Markerstudy with big data insight but also discussed the issues around consumer consent and the ethics of how this data is applied to our business. We have so much information on an individual, it is possible to make accurate behavioural predictions and market a product that suits that specific person. This in itself can be an advantage to customers, brokers and intermediary partners, giving our customers cheaper products which are better aligned to their lifestyle.
However, could there be room for error when incorrect assumptions might be made or, worse still, individuals find themselves uninsurable or with overpriced, inappropriate products? With more and more connected devices and manufacturers looking to monetise the newly acquired data sets they have, it will become harder for an individual to know what they have given consent to share and in-turn how this information will ultimately be used.
It is up to us to ensure that in exchange for their data we are providing a superior service and genuinely giving something back.
A data privacy commodity with full transparency on what data is out there, consent given, who is using it and when, is a must in this digital age. Insurance is based on a doctrine of utmost good faith. If a customer has confidence that their data is being used appropriately to offer better, more cost effective products, I believe this will become less of an issue. It is up to us to ensure that in exchange for their data we are providing a superior service and genuinely giving something back.
Finance/Insurance
The newly connected world, the Internet of Things, will undoubtedly have a huge impact on our privacy. I recently read that 90% of the entire world’s data has been generated in the last three years alone, and this trend is set to rocket.
The new connected world
Dan Fiehn Group IT Director Markerstudy Group
My role as Group IT Director at Markerstudy Group puts me at the cutting edge of driving significant technological changes, ensuring a positive future and underpinning the rapid growth of the business.
Guest Feature by Dan Fiehn
Introduction Over the past 75 years, Atkins has gone from post-war regeneration and the advent of nuclear engineering to high speed rail and the integrated sustainable cities of the future. As a result, the breadth and depth of expertise and drive to ask why, has allowed Atkins to plan, design and enable some of the world’s most complex projects.
Ben Dunlop is Director, Digital Railways at Atkins and responsible for leading the development of strategy and value propositions that will enable the business to capitalise on the transition towards a digital railway. In
this interview, Fanni Vig, Chief Operating Officer of Trovus A Logicalis company, asks Ben about the role of data in driving this radical and far-reaching transformation to the established operating model of railways.
A little background Fanni: Before we jump into the details, can you give us a bit of background about the UK Railway?
Ben: The UK railway has been a real success story. It was privatised in the early 1990s at a time when it didn’t have a good reputation with the public or within the industry, and as a result it was in slow decline.
After privatisation, the influx of more innovative, customer-focused train operators such as National Express and Virgin produced a slight change in perception. Unfortunately the focus on certain drivers of growth were slightly skewed.
The view is that they started to concentrate more on profit and so they started to sweat their infrastructure a lot more, which resulted in a number of very high-profile accidents.
Statistics show that UK Railway has become Europe’s fastest growing railway
The industry then went through a tough period during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when once again confidence was lost. Rail Track was put into early administration and the outcome was Network Rail; which although government controlled, acted like a private company.
As a result, the industry saw improvements across areas such as: performance, growth, passenger ridership (journeys), freight and subsequently many issues were addressed.
Fanni: How many journeys are we talking about?
Ben: Statistics show that UK Railway has become Europe’s fastest growing railway; measured mainly by passenger ridership (the number of journeys completed every year).
We are now at record numbers and will soon be approaching the 2 billion passenger a year journey mark, compared with 600 – 700 million in 1994 prior to privatisation.
Construction
Ben Dunlop Director Digital Railways at Atkins
Ben Dunlop is responsible for leading the development of strategy and value propositions that will enable the business to capitalise on transition towards a digital railway.
Put yourself in the shoes of Network Rail. How would you cope with a year on year increase of 4% if you cannot physically put more trains on the rail?
Atkins is one of the world’s leading design, engineering and project management consultancies, employing some 18,000 people across the UK, North America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Interview with an industry expert
Continued…
in 2012 the Railway Technology Strategist document was written which stated that four critical areas needed to be addressed: cost, capacity, customer and carbon. The 4 Cs.
Fanni: How has the industry responded to this increase in demand?
Ben: The industry recognised that it needed to change its strategy. As a direct result, in 2012 the Railway Technology Strategist document was written which stated that four critical areas needed to be addressed: cost, capacity, customer and carbon. The 4 Cs.
One of the main objectives is to reduce the carbon footprint in order to meet national and environmental targets. With customers in mind, we are seeking to create more enjoyable travel experiences. Furthermore the rail industry is expensive so there is a need to reduce costs, in particular with regards to the government’s subsidised contributions. With £38 billion from the government allocated as a funding package for the Network Rail, the industry now has to prove its efficiency. There is also the challenge of capacity, as more and more people travel and the amount of freight being transported continues to increase.
Dealing with demand Fanni: How are you coping with ever-increasing demand?
Ben: This is definitely a problem. The number of people using trains is continually increasing due to more leisure activities, flexible-working hours, sporting events etc. which unfortunately has resulted in people having to stand.
If you think about it, over the past 180 years, there hasn’t really been a dramatic change with regard to how the Railway System is operated. There has always been somebody who is looking out in front of the train, controlling the speed via visual indications (signals). This puts huge limitations on a system that relies so heavily on reaction speeds.
There is now a new method of train control, the European Train Control System (ETCS) where the person driving the train is simply there to supervise. With ETCS, the train itself knows when to slow down or accelerate and does so based on the level of data it receives. This will substantially increase efficiency from 20% to 40%.
Fanni: What measures are you taking to implement new control systems?
Ben: In the UK, we are currently running trial lines using newer technology which enables trains to run with just a driver operating as a supervisor, as opposed to literally driving the train. These trial lines run between Kings Cross to Edinburgh and Paddington to Swansea.
Eurostar have 4 different signalling systems which means the trains need to be fitted with 4 different systems. Unfortunately this has led to an increase in the risk of failure.
Fanni: What about future demand?
Ben: The problem we face today, is nothing compared to what we will face in 20 years’ time due to a projected 3% per annum growth rate.
The 4 Cs need to be achieved with minimal disruption. The traditional approach to solving this problem is by improving the tracks to allow more trains, or the more radical approach of building a whole new track such as HS2. This has proven to be expensive and disruptive. There’s only so much more you can do with traditional methods, data is enabling thought leaders in the industry to tackle the problem of ever-growing demand.
There is now a new method of traincontrol…(ETCS)…This will substantially increase efficiency from 20% to 40%
The birth of the digital railway Fanni: So how does data help you get more out of your existing network?
Ben: As an example, with trains operating remotely, the information fed back to the train will dictate when to change the speed and direction.
Since the trains will know their exact location and their position in relation to other trains and their destination; trains will be able to run closer together and reduce the stopping distance. This ultimately improves efficiency by allowing more trains on the tracks.
For the High Speed Rail, a 1.5 mile distance between trains is needed for safety reasons, here computers are far more predictable than humans and have a much smaller margin of error. (As a point of interest, whenever there is an announcement made about ‘signalling problems’ this is largely down to the signal indicators used by train drivers being stuck on red).
Construction
Interview with an industry expert
Continued…
Fanni: So how does data help you get more out of your existing network?
Ben: At the moment, we run trains when we want to, and customers have to fit this around their scheduled time. It would be better if we had trains when people wanted to use them, rather than when we dictate. Trains that allow both work and play will put the industry in a unique position and disruptive technologies, such as driverless cars, will encourage the rail industry to put the main focus on the customer.
Furthermore, at the moment timetables are written 2 years in advance, and in the world of data, 2 years is an eternity. This makes it extremely difficult when responding to customers’ needs. I want to reach a stage where there are paperless tickets across the board. Also I would like to provide customers with informed choices, i.e. letting customers know of a train that has more capacity and if they decide to use a certain train they will receive a 20% discount.
Also, there’s no reason why we can’t gauge the weight of every carriage to estimate their capacity and then send push notifications to inform customers of where the train is busiest along the platform. By notifying customers of any delays, or by customers inputting their preferred means of transport using software, the railway can create bespoke travel itineraries for individual customers to help plan their journeys.
We should always aspire to improve customer travel experiences, because it will forever change the way in which they perceive the service.
Trains that allow both work and play will put the industry in a unique position
The future is digital Fanni: What needs to happen to implement these changes?
Ben: We aren’t currently implementing all of these changes, simply because we do not have the extra revenue. Hopefully with disruptive substitute solutions (like driverless cars), it will force us to evolve; but funding for this still needs to be generated.
With regard to the cost element, removing the need for people to maintain the infrastructure manually can be quite emotive. I don’t see why we can’t eventually employ self monitoring technology that can report back. assets can’t eventually do this.
Fanni: It seems that everybody is looking at how they can make better usage of asset generated data. What’s your view on this?
Ben: With asset generated data you can have a bridge that can feed data back on whether the bridge is performing well. But this is retrospective, I want to be able to go further than that. If you can equip a bridge with sensors telling you when a bridge is not doing well, there is no reason why you cannot apply self-healing material.
To summarise, data and the digital railway is the answer to the 4 Cs question. While trying to safeguard its future, you can also enable technology to provide a much better customer experience, at less cost and also address the capacity challenge.
Hopefully this will encourage a mobile shift, ultimately getting more people travelling in a more carbon-light environment. This is what digital rail is all about and where it can end up.
With customers in mind, we are seeking to create more enjoyable travel experiences.
Construction
Interview with an industry expert
For more information please contact:
Lindsay Shaw
Context Following the roundtable event we have put together a summary and our interpretation of what was shared on the day. We explored; cultural change and the need for FM and Construction companies to educate their client base. We also explored data discover and insight mining.
Findings Dropped productivity: Britain is ranked #6 for having the lowest level of productivity in the G7. (7 industrial countries).
Race to the bottom: Margins are reduced. FM needs to be more proactive rather than reactive, which will help to get away from the “race to the bottom.”
Data rich insight poor: Data within the Industry is not used efficiently.
Challenges Clients are unsure what they want.
Cultural change: It is not about technology but behaviour. There is a real need to change behaviours. This is a slow process.
Lack of data experts: There is not enough data skills in the organisation.
The use of BIM can be misleading. People involved with BIM are not necessarily data experts.
Competition: We are entering a time of digital disruption from big technology companies entering the industry, e.g. Apple or Goggle as well as competitors from overseas moving to the UK.
Construction
Roundtable findings: The impact of data in Construction and FM Using data from buildings, processes and people to control costs, increase profit and gain insight in Construction and Facilities Management
Figure 1: What are the driving forces with your organisation?
Trovus A Logicalis Company in collaboration with SAS, chaired an event in May 2015, inviting COOs, CEOs, IT Directors, Finance Directors, BIM Specialists and Strategy Directors from leading Construction and FM firms, such as Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall and Kier Group.
We conducted a survey with the attendees prior to the roundtable, asking a series of questions. The results are presented in Figure 1, 2 and 3.
Continued…
Roundtable findings
Opportunities The output should be focused on data discovery and insight mining: It is important to identify what you want to achieve and you will need to see the consequences. The basic forms of looking at data to make decisions are:
1. What do I need to see to run the business?
2. What does the client need to run the business?
FM and Construction companies should educate clients about opportunities with data.
Soft landings show the need for everyone involved in the process, see figure 4.
Sensor technology is the next big thing.
Working remotely: buildings can be monitored using self-healing technology. For example, it is not efficient to send people to manually visit a site. Unfortunately, despite using self-healing technology to work remotely, customers prefer to visibly see somebody physically working on a particular job.
Regulation needs to catch up with the fast pace of the industry and there is a need to be asset centric.
Starting points and conclusions
Leadership: FM and Construction companies should be educating the client base to trigger change. Corporate contracts are probably the easiest to influence. Public contracts will be slower to change.
BIM should only be one data source that can be augmented with other types of data to extract commercial value.
Displaying information in an engaging way will change behaviour.
Figure 2: Obstacles to changing approach
Figure 3: Ownership
Dropped productivity: Britain is ranked #6 for having the lowest level of productivity in the G7. (7 industrial countries)
Continued…
Construction
Roundtable findings
Figure 4: Ecosystem
Alejandra Dos Santos
For more information please contact:
Construction
Cultural change: it is not about technology but behaviour. There is a real need to change behaviours. This is a slow process.
Race to the bottom: Margins are reduced. FM needs to be more proactive rather than reactive which will help to get away from the “race to the bottom.”
Roundtable findings
We have recently been running bespoke training sessions to a few of our customers, we wanted to make you aware of the benefits of this training for you and your team. Each session is tailored to you and your team’s specific needs however, we have previously covered the following:
How to maximise the benefit from your current installation – TM1, BI, Controller.
How to reduce manual work in the data prep and reporting process.
How to automate data feeds coming into the reporting environment.
What features could make your life easier.
Customised to your needs Please note, these sessions are customised to your needs so we will be seeking to better understand what your biggest pain points are and focus on those. Get in touch, I’d like to arrange your session.
Cognos
How training can improve ROI on your Cognos investment A lot of our customers are keen to maximise the value they get from their current Cognos installations. Dominic Piner, Client Account Manager at Trovus A Logicalis Company shares more information about our onsite bespoke training options.
Windows Server Upgrades: how to keep Cognos Running Effectively Are you upgrading your Windows Server 2003?
Most of our customers have been going through a Windows Server 2003 upgrade which can potentially impact your IBM Cognos Environment.
Are you planning to upgrade any of your Windows Servers?
Minimise the disruption: our experience The sort of pre-cautionary measures we put in place for other organisations included:
Auditing your current set up.
Understanding what features might be affected.
Advising on the best ways forward.
Kevin Gough
Dominic Piner
For more information please contact:
To discuss your upgrade or to find out more information please contact: [email protected]
The Impact of IBM Analytics This a complete front-end redesign and also a re-branding of the IBM Cognos BI product. It is now IBM Cognos Analytics (in line with Watson Analytics).
There will also be a new major release of TM1 coming up. The software will be released towards the end of the year but will be available via www.analyticszone.com shortly as a pre-release public demo.
Benefits: Single Interface (Consolidation of reporting studios into one common interface).
Smart search.
Intent-driven modelling interprets intent and proposes a data module to preview, use or augment.
Guided report creation using built in intelligence.
Lower skills required for dashboards and reports.
Same user experience across mobile and desktop.
Dashboarding using drag and drop from a mobile device.
On-demand menus.
Dashboard visualisations automatically recommend.
What to do next: If you would like to know more about this release, do let me know and I would be happy to arrange a free demo or call to discuss how you can get value from this upgrade.
Cognos
Kevin Gough For more information please contact:
Continued…
we generate insight to highlight improvements in existing processes or source where new processes are required.
Following this roundtable event we put together a summary and our interpretation of what was shared in the room, exploring; how to operationally work efficiently using IBM Accelerator tools within the business and the benefits of doing so.
Opportunities
Operational Efficiency: •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
we generate insight to highlight improvements in existing processes or source where new processes are required.
Customer Insight: we help attract, acquire, engage and retain customers.
Risk management: we support regulatory compliance, operational risk or credit risk management.
Monetise the data: by developing real insight, enables a business to monetise and drive value from internal data they hold and external data they can access.
Challenges
Building a data driven culture is as much about the people and processes as it is about the technology.
The skills required to deliver pervasive insight can sit within many teams or not exist at all.
The value of data and the information it provides may not be understood. Instinct and gut feel are seen as preferable.
The opportunities are large, so finding a path to engage quickly and begin to build momentum and support, can be challenging.
The impact of IBM Analytics within business: DB2 Blu to improve speed and performance of reporting
Trovus A Logicalis Company in collaboration with IBM, chaired an event in November 2015, inviting; IT Directors, Directors of Knowledge, Risk and Legal Services, Marketing Directors, Heads of Enterprise Architecture and Heads of Bid for Construction from leading organisation, such as Osborne, Carillion Southern Housing Group, Pinsent Masons and Mace Group to name a few.
The diagram below shows how we generate value from The diagram below demonstrates the benefits of using data
Cognos
Roundtable findings
Continued…
Cognos
IBM Power 8 and DB2 Blu IBM Power 8 is designed for big data.
DB2 Blu is extremely performant.
IBM have 8 highways for data where most have only 2. The ability to get through data is far greater, 4 times faster.
It can compress data. This reduces storage costs, the benefit is that with IBM there is no need to uncompress to run analysis.
Dynamics cube (within Cognos) puts the right data in the correct place.
DB2 Blu can be placed within columnar storage.
This all combined makes phenomenal changes to delivery.
For more information please contact:
Lindsay Shaw
Below are proof points: Customer stories of increased speed using IBM
The importance of working efficiently Data is the new natural resource. We increasingly have the need to access data in a timely fashion and need to make prompt decisions.
There is a need to be more agile in the market place.
Consumers also want answers in real time. Having self-service analytics is a key part of a business’ capabilities to become agile.
Every business is trying to save costs. By reducing spend, this results in agility.
Roundtable findings
Get to know us
Rugby World Cup 2015: What we initially predicted Prior to the Rugby World Cup 2015, the Logicalis UK Informations Insights team unveiled its big data analytics predictions.
We all know that the all blacks made history with their Victory at this year s world cup. Prior to the Rugby Wolrd Cup we made some predictions using data to work out the percentages of a team winning the competition. The analytics take into account each of the teams past performances in the tournament and we worked out the odds of New Zealand winning. Before the victory we predicted a 91% probability of winning.
Using data points from matches in all previous World Cup tournaments, the information insights team crunched the numbers and worked out:
91% chance of New Zealand Winning
77% chance of Australia
winning
Chris Gabriel, CTO of Logicalis UK commented, “Predicting rugby games is just one use of big data analytics. As a proud Welshman, I am disappointed my colleagues only gave my home nation a 23% chance of lifting the trophy.”
New Zealand
91%
Australia 77%
Continued…
Get to know us
For more information please contact:
Fahrida Benzerrouk
Figure 1: Dashboard visualisation of Rugby World Cup predictions
Million base is a database of 2.2 million chess games. Steve Tung, Data Visualiser at the Exploratorium used diagrams shown below to visualise chess piece journeys. These visualisations are based on this data for each piece moving on the board. Of course, because of starting points and game rules, there’s a unique pattern for each piece. We thought we would share these visuals with readers as it shows how there is data behind so much more than we realise.
Chess pieces: Moving patterns
Above is the footprint for the white knight. Each thin line represents 500 moves, and from what looks like a little bit of random noise to offset each, you see a more prominent path for more frequent hops.
Above is the black queen, with relatively more board coverage than others.
The white king above, has relatively more limited movement.
In contrast, here’s the black pawn that starts in position b7.
Get to know us
Slough, Berkshire, 6th May 2015 – Logicalis has today announced that its UK operation, Logicalis UK, has acquired a company trading as Trovus, who are a leading provider of analytics dashboard solutions to business executives.
The transaction is in line with Logicalis’ go to market strategy, and desire to establish itself as a driving force in the emerging digital markets driven by social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies (SMAC).
Arnaud Spirlet, Head of European Markets for Logicalis, commented: “Analytics is a crucial element of the SMAC model, since it provides line of business managers with the actionable insight they need to drive business innovation and competitive advantage from disparate business data. This acquisition strengthens Logicalis’ position as a trusted advisor and leading provider of consulting and solution services in a market that, according to ABI Research, could be worth $114 billion globally by 2018.”
The deal sees Ed Charvet, managing director of Trovus, appointed to the role of Director of Information Insights at Logicalis UK. He will lead the organisation’s business unit strategy, extending its portfolio of information insight consulting, solutions, and managed service offerings such as the company’s Spatial Intelligence wireless and behavioural analytics offering.
Charvet commented: “Trovus and Logicalis have partnered successfully for some time, giving clients the benefits of both highly focused BI consultancy, and the ability to scale organisation wide using Logicalis’ deep technical resources and global reach. The fit is a great one and positions Logicalis perfectly between the pure consultancy firms and the specialist vendors.”
Trovus provides business insight solutions, professional services and managed services, and helps organisations make available powerful and time-relevant insights for business users across all major organisational functions - including finance and billing, business operations, HR, sales and marketing. Its clients range from global businesses to regional market specialists across a number of verticals, including professional services, financial services, construction, technology, telecoms, healthcare and the public sector.
Charvet added: “This is a fast-moving market and our clients increasingly need access to national and international services and expertise. We can now meet those needs, based on one of the most comprehensive analytics offerings in the market.”
Acquisition Logicalis UK acquires leading provider of analytics solutions.
Get to know us
Our new website
www.uk.logicalis.com/TrovusLogicalis
Due to the Acquisition and working in collaboration with Logicalis, we now have a new website which can be found on www.uk.logicalis.com/TrovusLogicalis
Get to know us
Trovus Signs Strategic Partnership with SAS
Slough, UK, 01st October 2015 - Trovus, a Logicalis company and leading provider of analytics dashboard solutions, has today announced a strategic partnership with international business analytics leader SAS. Trovus signs with SAS as part of SAS’ Alliance programme; a network of strategic partnerships that creates new avenues for delivering and implementing SAS solutions. New and existing SAS customers will benefit from Trovus’ independent consultancy and design expertise to build SAS products into a wholly bespoke, multi-vendor data analytics solution that meets the exact requirements and vision of an organisation. Trovus’ acquisition this year by IT services provider Logicalis further complements SAS’ Partner Strategy. Ed Charvet, head of Information Insights Business Unit at Logicalis, and formerly managing director of Trovus, explains; “In many organisations, responsibility for data is still unclear. The tug of war between IT and line of business leaders is a common experience. Trovus and Logicalis talk the language of both. We can engage all stakeholders, ensure the seamless integration of data throughout the business, and help business leaders mine data insights.” “It’s a top to bottom approach that maximises the effectiveness of a data strategy, allowing organisations to quickly identify and action the insights that enable transformation and create competitive advantage.” Likewise, the partnership with Trovus allows SAS to identify new revenue streams and access new markets, industry verticals and customer segments. Richard Bradbury, SAS’ Alliances Director in the UK, added: “When searching for partners we look for companies with both the right level of expertise and a fundamental understanding of analytics that will help end users create better, more informed business decisions. Trovus and Logicalis offer much more. Their top-to-bottom approach engages and unifies stakeholders and embeds analytics at the heart of business strategy and vision. Logicalis’ global market reach and heritage in retail, financial, public, and professional services are also industries in which SAS is committed to developing sector specific solutions for. We’re pleased to welcome Trovus and Logicalis to this new program. There’s a great synergy between us.”
We are pleased to announce The partnership between SAS, and Trovus A Logicalis company.
Get to know us
Meet the team
I work with customers to understand the key challenges and opportunities they are facing and identify solutions andtechnology that can support their business in overcoming or realising them.
Interesting Fact: I once appeared as part of a line dancing act on the generation game.
I work with clients to specify, design, and implement finance related applications. Interesting Fact: I like to play with fire and have a hot glass studio in my garden.
Following the recent acquisition, we wanted to give readers an idea of our new team and an opportunity to get to know us more. We are a unique bunch.
I am the COO for the Information Insights division of Logicalis. A typical day for me involves a bit of marketing, a bit of sales a bit of consultancy and a bit of finance. I wear a myriad of hats, essentially focusing on just making things happen.
Interesting Fact: I am secretly dreaming about one day building a house up from scratch with a massive fireplace.
I am the Business Unit Director of Logicalis Information Insights, the business intelligence division of Logicalis.
Interesting Fact: I am a real foodie despite my outward appearance
I have worked with analytics toolsets for the past 10 years including IBM Cognos, Microsoft, Tableau and a number of specific analytics appliances and solutions to solve business problems and enhance business processes.
Interesting Fact: I enjoy exercise and I am currently training for a half-ironman.
Edward Charvet Fanni Vig Richard Simmons
Carole Hughes
Scott Hodges Professional services manager with 11 years experience in the business analytics field
Interesting Fact: I am a keen snowboarder and football fan.
Kevin Gough
Get to know us
Continued…
.
Marketing and Engagement Manager. Two of my most recent projects involved creating this quarterly smart data magazine and organising our biggest event yet: Intuition Vs Information evening.
Interesting fact: My cousin Brendan Galloway is signed for Everton, all bets are on for him to be playing for Manchester United at some point.
I am Marketing and Engagement Executive.
Interesting fact: I am a proud owner of a Blue Peter badge… oh and I once appeared in a Mc Donald’s advert.
Client Account Manager – Working with clients to deliver real customer value.
Interesting Fact: Chaperone for Rex the office Goldfish.
I am BI analyst specialising in Predictive Analytics My daily routine is a mix of statistics, technology, visualisation, liaising with clients and some cups of coffee!
Interesting fact: Out of work, I like socialising, travelling and hiking.
Client Account Manager: I work directly with clients, ensuring they obtain maximum value from technology.
Interesting Fact: I once represented England at the European Judo Championships—winning a Gold and 2 Bronze medals (a while back now admittedly).
Account manager within Information and insights.
Interesting Fact: Half Colombian that runs a hamster farm in his spare time.
Tom Donaldson Mark Chescoe
Alejandra Dos Santos Dominic Piner Fahrida Benzerrouk
Lindsay Shaw
Get to know us
Continued…
Business Intelligence Consultant.
Interesting Fact: I am the Founder and Trustee of LunchBoxGift. Find out more on page 56.
Data Management / Data Warehousing consultant, I work with clients and colleagues to help deliver new views and insights on customer data.
Interesting Fact: Favourite holiday destination is the Algarve – the coast is spectacular and the golf is great.
BI Analyst/Developer , working on data integration solutions, working closely with clients to transform their data insights.
Interesting Fact: I am a big Arsenal fan.
I am a data analyst, I enjoy working with clients and analysing interesting data sets.
Interesting fact: I am a first generation BI Graduate. I also have a cat called Dora and I love watching cartoons.
Tomiwa Adetola Anis Makeriya Mick Riley
Memuna Janneh
I am passionate about working with customers to design and implement quality solutions.
Interesting Fact: I appeared as a contestant on a TV game show “Whose House”.
Alan Bourne
Youngest member of the team at 4 yrs. Currently working as a Marine Data Scientist, mainly focused on Algae-rhythms.
Interesting Fact: Recently moved into a Penthouse suite in Bank with best friend Scuba Steve.
REX
Get to know us
Continued…
Helpdesk analyst specializing in supporting Cognos BI products.
Interesting Fact: In my spare time I run an on-line school which teaches people how to read Arabic.
I am a technical consultant and support analyst in the Information Insights business unit delivering end-to-end technical solutions for our customers.
Interesting Fact: I’ve recently taken up fishing, I wonder when I’ll catch my first fish?
I work on the helpdesk where I help our customers to resolve their technical issues. Skills with financial planning applications, primarily Cognos Enterprise Planning.
Interesting Fact: I’m an avid tennis fan and for the past 2 years and I have attended matches at the World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena.
Salim Syed Guy Drewett
With over 3 years’experience of supporting Cognos, I mainly specialise in TM1 and Cognos Express and have a good understanding of both Cognos Planning and Cognos BI.
Interesting Fact: I have been playing badminton for over 18years and in that time I have represented 3 different counties.
Thomas Rogers Alexander Hurst
Database analyst - Work with clients data to provide greater insight into a customer’s business. Interesting Fact: My favourite place is Newcastle (St. James Park).
Alan Taylor
We hope you enjoyed finding out more information about the team.
Let us know how we can help solve your data / business challenges. We are always happy help.
Get to know us
The information insights support team is permanently manned by five highly skilled team members with over 28 years combined experience with the currently supported portfolio of products.
What we do is typically different to a number of other support desks and support providers. We work hard to create good working relationships with all of our clients, and appreciate that our clients don’t want to spend their time dealing with support issues. With this in mind, we try to deal with all calls in as expeditious manner as possible.
All team members are subject matter experts not only in the direct applications, but also on the surrounding architectures, and operating environments. We won’t stop where others would!
We pride ourselves on our ability to log, progress and resolve calls from first contact, and typically half of all calls we receive are dealt with in this manner.
We put our customers at the forefront of our service, and look to capture all customer sentiment on a per call basis. We believe that this will give us a true reflection of customer satisfaction, as it gives us the ability to
determine any positive or negative sentiment or comment.
Our customers are never shy of responding, and we gain on average a 21% response rate. This is higher than the expected average of between 10-12%. This alone speaks volumes about the relationships we have with our customers, and their openness and honesty with their responses.
We employ a net promoter scoring system to our satisfaction survey, believing that this gives us the best vehicle to monitor satisfaction.
On this note, we gain a whopping 94% response as satisfied, and 68% responded with extremely satisfied!
A more telling statistic is that 69% of all respondents would be “extremely likely” to recommend our services to other companies or contacts with similar requirements. This speaks volumes.
Here’s a few comments directly lifted from the text comment area of the satisfaction survey:
“Nothing to add, a really quick comprehensive response, it was exactly what I was looking for. “
“Excellent as ever!”
Helpdesk is brilliant and the service is second to none. If you want an example of professional excellence this is it!”
The Jewel in the Crown! Kevin Gough, Professional Services Manager at Trovus A Logicalis company shares the tremen-dous results from the helpdesk team and feedback from some customers.
“As always, going the extra distance to help!”
So why don’t you give us a try? Come and see what real service looks like.
Contact me for any questions or more information:
Get to know us
Kevin Gough
“Great response.Great service. Thankyou”
Ascot
Royal Ascot is a British racecourse, located in Ascot, Berkshire and is one of the leading racecourses in the UK.
The team enjoyed a day out of the office and given that the two teams have merged since the acquisition this was a perfect opportunity for some team building.
A few carefully selected bets were placed. Next year we will put our skills to the test and look to do some statistical analysis before we go.
Giving back through Lunchboxgift Read how Memuna Janneh, Business Intelligence Consultant at Trovus A Logicalis Company is making a difference.
Memuna Janneh, is also Founder and Trustee of the charitable organisation, Lunchboxgift. The Lunchboxgift project is an initiative of a UK registered regeneration charity ‘Let Them Help Themselves out of Poverty’ which focused on helping to improve the health and education of communities in Africa. The Lunchboxgift initiative came out of the Ebola epidemic in the Western part of Africa, primarily Sierra Leone. The lives of those affected in these regions have been turned upside down as the virus continued to spread across the country. Through her company, they have served tens of thousands of freshly cooked meals to patients and healthcare workers in 3 Ebola treatment centres in Sierra Leone. Although the country has been officially declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Memuna’s work continues, bringing food to children orphaned by the dreadful disease.
For more information, please visit www.lunchboxgift.com
This year we decided to spend our summer team event at Royal Ascot.
Get to know us
We planned an informal and quirky night around how gut feelings can trick our brain when information is saying the opposite. To make the evening fun, we had a guest speaker, Laurie Miles, Head of Analytics at SAS, who is a guru of applied statistics and analytics.
With 80 senior attendees, the evening involved some informal games and activities including:
‘Gut Feeling’ Vs ‘The Maths’
Stats Do Not Lie: It’s the question that changes.
Data in today’s life: Exploring Intuition Vs Information.
How to use Intuition and Information skills to your advantage based on your environment.
To make the evening fun, we had Laurie Miles who is a guru of applied statistics and analytics share some games and tricks that you wouldn't believe are true!
Poker is a classic example of when people rely too much
on their intuition.
Understanding Intuition Vs Information Why this is important
Decision making should use intelligence to set the context, not drive the answer.
The power of numbers to inform and deceive
Please see below and on the next page for some of the questions asked and games played throughout the evening.
Example question asked to the audience:
What are the chances of sharing your birthday with somebody else?
Trovus/Logicalis/SAS guide to why statistics and intuition both matter
Trovus A Logicalis Company, in collaboration with SAS created a quirky, fun and unique evening based on Intuition Vs Information. We invited; CTOs, COOs, CFO’s, CIO’s, IT Directors, Directors of Analytics and other senior professionals from leading organisations including; EY, KPMG, Balfour Beatty, Linklaters, Berwin Leighton Paisner, AA, Thomas Cook, TFL, and Middlesex University to name a few.
Get to know us
Decision making should use intelligence to set the context, not drive the answer.
Continued…
Context
It is important to understand when to use intuition or information.
Decision making should use intelligence to set the context, not drive the answer.
Trovus A Logicalis Company and SAS have the technology, advisory and delivery capabilities to enable better decision making within your company. Let us help.
How many times can you fold a piece of paper? A piece of paper is 0.193mm thick. Imagine this sheet of paper is folded 40 times. By using your ‘gut feel’ to predict the thickness of the folded ‘wad’, do you predict the height to be a few cm or metres?
The answer is 212,206 km
Thanks for hosting an evening of great fun. Despite having had little success at the poker table, I had the good fortune to meet some interesting people and I enjoyed the food & wine very much. It is a damning indictment of my geekiness that I knew some of the statistics answers too. I'm so embarrassed. Despite that, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to have attended. I look forward to the next one! Thanks again. Group Financial Controller, John Swire
“I had an excellent night that I will remember for a long time... Thank you so much for a fun, relaxed and informative evening.” Analyst, Conde Nast
Get to know us
“It was an excellent event! Nice to mix with some like minded people.” UK Head of Digital Research & Innovation, Balfour Beatty
Continued…
Example question asked to the audience:
Benford’s Law—how random are numbers?
If you would like a 1 to 1 meeting where we could share the findings of the session or demo our SAS/Trovus Logicalis capabilities, please let us know.
Contact us on:
Get to know us
Example question asked to the audience:
[email protected] 0207 337 7300
We generate value from data
Organisations have challenges and opportunities
We listento them
the data
We make
the answer
Processes generate data (structured or unstructured, numeric or text)
They create processes (human
and machine) to overcome or take
advantage of these.
Data into Intelligence can overcome challenges and enable opportunities
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