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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 … Continue reading Beware of the Top 10 Zombies – Reports that Live Forever

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 … Continue reading The Last 100 Feet of Artificial Intelligence

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 … Continue reading AI Helps Avoid Voice Mail in Sales Calls

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 … Continue reading Assessment – First Step is Learning How Artificial Intelligence Can Impact Your Business

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 … Continue reading Stream Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

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 … Continue reading Building the Prediction: Teambuilding with Algorithms

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 … Continue reading AI for Prediction: Repeatable Foundation

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 … Continue reading Programmers Need a Different Mindset for AI and Machine Learning

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 … Continue reading Prescriptive Analytics produces credible ROI

… your business could get additional help without adding personnel? … your computer systems could be trained to detect when a customer is going to leave? … a tool could warn you when a vendor will not serve you well enough to support your clients?   Monitoring internal activities and projecting into the future is … Continue reading What if…