The “science” in data science for business doesn’t exactly match with how the word is used in physics, chemistry, social sciences or other academic disciplines. Data Scientists do a good job of designing their experiments in data to come up with predictive models using statistically proven techniques.  However, the analogy to the physical and social… Read More

I wish I had dollar for every time someone used the term “top 10”.  I doubt more than a day goes by that I don’t see it somewhere on the internet and hear it in business conversations.  Almost all dashboards are littered with Top 10 charts to show off best customers, products and salespeople. Like… Read More

Most people understand the analogy of the last mile in business stories.  Sometimes it refers to physical delivery processes, sometimes to internet connectivity, and sometimes it is a general concept.  I am going to start using the concept of the last 100 feet in artificial intelligence (AI). It means the same thing as the other… Read More

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bringing a lot of changes to how salespeople work.  Through analyzing customer behavior, even in a business to business sales model, AI is changing how companies are maintaining contact with customers. While much insight is gained from reports and dashboards, especially to monitor activity, most companies lack the ability to apply… Read More

Knowing where to start with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is difficult.   A technology driven approach most often fails because it applies tools without understanding the operational and business processes affected.  Likewise, creating business cases and project plans without understanding how AI processes work often fails as well. Software vendors who provide ERP, CRM and other business… Read More

I just wrote an article for another website on the merger of stream analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). I wanted to get snarkier than I knew the website editors would allow. My position is IoT data streams that don’t have some AI monitoring the incoming data are almost worthless.  You certainly need to store a… Read More

For business process artificial intelligence (AI) work, data scientists often build teams of algorithms.  This is called an ensemble model – taking different algorithms and combining to an end result. Building a model with just one algorithm doing all the work of analyzing and predicting may work well in some business situations.  When the conditions… Read More

There are a lot of metrics which are forecasted in sales and finance.  Warehouse operations has traditionally had their own stock level calculations to minimize inventory.  Other areas of the business do their own predictions for the future too. Most of the time forecasting is done in spreadsheets.  Sometimes with use of some basic spreadsheet… Read More

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technical subject.  Companies place AI into the domain of the IT department.  It is technical, and it uses data, and it involves computers – AI is then IT’s responsibility. I am not saying this is not the right place for it.  What I want to communicate is AI thinking is… Read More

People who don’t understand how machine learning and artificial intelligence is used in business find prescriptive analytics to be both scary and complex.  Let’s alleviate some of those fears.  Your data shows what has been happening over time with your sales, revenue, profitability and many other details about your business’s history. We crunch those numbers… Read More