© 2013 IBM Corporation

The Power of Graph Analysis: Grasping the Shape of Business Influence

James Kobielus [jgkobiel@us.ibm.com]Big Data Evangelist

Open Analytics DC Summit, Arlington VA, March 25, 2013

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Graph analysis can help you see deeply into

influence patterns that you might in turn

influence for the better.

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Influence is often invisible, but has concrete value

Getting things accomplished demands effective use of influence.

Organization charts don't tell the full story of business influence:

Internally: they flatter the chain of-command

Externally: they are next to useless

Turning influence into a business asset demands that first you identify:

who has influence

over whom

with respect to what range of topics and decisions, and

with what potential impact on your own bottom line

© 2013 IBM Corporation

• 360-degree view of individuals in full social context

• Hidden, latent, nonobvious connections among people, groups, and organizations

• Shifting patterns of connectedness, proximity, centrality, influence, status, and importance

• Cooperation and collusion, coalition and co-dependency, influence and deference, and affiliation and isolation

Dissect the interpersonal dynamics of communities.

Grasping influence = graphing engagement patterns

© 2013 IBM Corporation

•Established branch of advanced analytics•Mining, categorizing, and predicting interactions and influence patterns in their full social context •Leveraging many sources of data, including:

•Behavioral•Transactional•Clickstream•Geospatial•Messaging•Smartphone•Usage•Call detail records•Social media posts

•Discovering, segmenting, exploring, mapping, visualizing, forecasting, drilldown, what-if analysis•Sometimes known as “social network analysis” or “small world” analysis•Widely applied in social sciences

Graph analysis: what is it?

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Data discoveryData extractionData preparationVariable assessment and selectionClassificationClusteringStatistical analysisRegressionScoringModel deployment

Same project flow as other advanced analytics modeling disciplines

Graph analysis: visual modeling of influence patterns

Can leverage specialized graph analysis tools and graph databases, or more general-purpose

tools and data platforms

© 2013 IBM Corporation

“Links” = interactions and relationships

“Graphs” = social networks of interactions and relationships among

individuals

“Attributes” = characteristics of individuals, relationships, and social

networks

“Nodes” = individuals

“Proximity” = number, type, and weight of links that connect one individual to another 1

23

45

6

Graph modeling: engagement proximity = influence

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Gauge customer influence and engage differentially to boost customer lifetime value

Leaders? Followers?Influencers?

Mavens?Mavericks?

Cliques?Clusters?Outliers?

Vanguards?Laggards?

Late adopters?

Graph analysis: customer engagement

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Using influence graphs in customer engagements

CHANNEL INFLUENCE: Which customers are more influential in some channels than others?

PEER INFLUENCE: Which customers have the greatest impact on awareness, sentiment, and propensities of their peers?

CAMPAIGN INFLUENCE: Which customers promise the biggest bang for your marketing bucks through their influence on their peers?

LOYALTY INFLUENCE: Which customers influence the most peers to stay with you and grow the relationship — or churn and jump to the competition?

PROMOTER INFLUENCE: Which customers are net promoters and potential brand ambassadors?

ADOPTER INFLUENCE: What can influence users to encourage late adopters to accelerate their adoption of new products?

SUPPORT INFLUENCE: Which customers have valuable expertise and should be enlisted as community resources for inquiries and support?

NEGATIVE INFLUENCE: Which customers are the squeakiest wheels who are most likely to spread bad feelings if they are dissatisfied, or are most likely to keep it bottled up?

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Graph analysis: employee engagement

COMMUNITY-OF-INTEREST INFLUENCE: How do communities of interest emerge, endure, and grow?KNOWLEDGE-SHARING INFLUENCE: How do cross-functional knowledge-sharing relationship take root?PEAK-PERFORMER INFLUENCE: Which types of individuals, subject-matter experts, or relationships have the greatest influence on team productivity?MENTOR INFLUENCE: How well are mentors are fostering relationships between mentees and other employees?IDEATION INFLUENCE: Which people are most effective at introducing, disseminating, and gaining adoption for new ideas?NEGATIVE INFLUENCE: Which people in a distributed team are acting as bottlenecks to collaboration, knowledge-sharing, innovation, and ideation?

COMMUNITY-OF-INTEREST INFLUENCE: How do communities of interest emerge, endure, and grow?KNOWLEDGE-SHARING INFLUENCE: How do cross-functional knowledge-sharing relationship take root?PEAK-PERFORMER INFLUENCE: Which types of individuals, subject-matter experts, or relationships have the greatest influence on team productivity?MENTOR INFLUENCE: How well are mentors are fostering relationships between mentees and other employees?IDEATION INFLUENCE: Which people are most effective at introducing, disseminating, and gaining adoption for new ideas?NEGATIVE INFLUENCE: Which people in a distributed team are acting as bottlenecks to collaboration, knowledge-sharing, innovation, and ideation?

Assess employee influence and create environment to boost performance, innovation, knowledge sharing, and ideation

Source: managementpocketbooks.wordpress.comSource: managementpocketbooks.wordpress.com

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Assess partner influence and create environment to boost strategic goals, agendas, and teaming arrangements?

STRATEGIC INFLUENCE: Which actual or potential partners have the the right degree of influence for realizing desired business outcomes? AGENDA INFLUENCE: Who within our organization or our partner has the influence necessary to disseminate and gain adoption of key messages, ideas, or agendas among key internal or external stakeholders?TEAMING INFLUENCE: Who within or organization or the partners has the influence needed to establish, strengthen, and sustain the teaming arrangement at the heart of the alliance?

Graph analysis: partner engagement

Source: www.ahrq.govSource: www.ahrq.gov

© 2013 IBM Corporation

How to use graph analysis to influence the influencers?

•CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:•Engage with influencers on social media•Use graph analysis to assess degrees of customer influence•Establish differentiated engagement approaches and incentives based on degrees of influence•Experiment with mixes of all of these established and emerging influence channels, including but limited to social media•Compile the data, metrics and analytics needed to assess whether you achieved the expected return on your investments across various influence channels•Have an agile decision framework to help guide continual adjustments of your marketing mix among channels commensurate with their relative effectiveness

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: •Use social graph analysis is to feed back results to the entire network in a structured setting in which discussion can be productively facilitated.•Viewing the graph analysis diagrams seems to be particularly powerful•Revealing these previously hidden barriers constructively can be a powerful tool for creating new opportunities for cross-group relationship development.•Graph analysis can also suggest ways of restructuring organizational charts or implementing new processes.

•PARTNER ENGAGEMENT:• Use social graph analysis on partner organizations to assess where they and their employees stand in degrees of strategic, agenda, and teaming influence•Use these analyses as inputs into strategic partnering decisions

•CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:•Engage with influencers on social media•Use graph analysis to assess degrees of customer influence•Establish differentiated engagement approaches and incentives based on degrees of influence•Experiment with mixes of all of these established and emerging influence channels, including but limited to social media•Compile the data, metrics and analytics needed to assess whether you achieved the expected return on your investments across various influence channels•Have an agile decision framework to help guide continual adjustments of your marketing mix among channels commensurate with their relative effectiveness

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: •Use social graph analysis is to feed back results to the entire network in a structured setting in which discussion can be productively facilitated.•Viewing the graph analysis diagrams seems to be particularly powerful•Revealing these previously hidden barriers constructively can be a powerful tool for creating new opportunities for cross-group relationship development.•Graph analysis can also suggest ways of restructuring organizational charts or implementing new processes.

•PARTNER ENGAGEMENT:• Use social graph analysis on partner organizations to assess where they and their employees stand in degrees of strategic, agenda, and teaming influence•Use these analyses as inputs into strategic partnering decisions

© 2013 IBM Corporation13

Thank You!