Stories about: SPSS

In its first incarnation, business intelligence helped the decision-making process by analyzing the enterprise's transactions, operations, purchasing trends and the like. Now it takes the next step: using the past to predict future trends and needs to push ever close to the leading edge. Jeff Angus reports.

If you've ever wondered which conceptual shower the great business process management (BPM) idea came down in, the chances are you are not alone. Julian Bajkowski and David Margulius report

Lately it seems the moon and the stars are perfectly aligned for BPM -- the tools and methodologies for modeling, developing, and maintaining enterprise business processes. Scores of vendors now offer BPM software, which provides the means to analyze, optimize, and automate business procedures, from procurement workflows to insurance underwriting.

SPSS, a provider of software for predictive analytics, unveiled the results of its behind-the-scenes work with the Microsoft database development team this week. SPSS announced a version of its statistical analysis toolset that can be embedded into the next version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

The field of advanced analytics, once the proprietary domain of companies willing to deploy costly enterprise software from the likes of SAS Institute and SPSS, now has an alternative from a startup, Apollo Data Technologies, which is offering predictive analytics solutions as a service.

When Tony LoFrumento joined Morgan Stanley in 2001, he was given a wide-ranging goal: to create a CRM and business intelligence (BI) infrastructure that would enable the financial services company to transition from a product-focused entity into a client-centric business. In developing a CRM strategy for Morgan Stanley, LoFrumento opted to put his resources into customer analytics -- building a centralized data mart, developing predictive models for such areas as client profitability and performance measurement, and bringing in BI, analytics and Web-based reporting tools to analyze and disseminate information -- rather than deploy an operational CRM platform.

As the media sector weathers vast change, SAS Institute has launched a series of software-based initiatives for beleaguered industry executives.

The potential for mining cost-saving and revenue-boosting ideas from data is increasing as companies build bigger data warehouses, applications become more integrated, computers grow more powerful and vendors of analytic software introduce products that are easier to use.

J.D. Edwards & Co. this week unveiled supply chain management software designed to help companies predict and prepare for future sales.

Decision-support systems are interactive computer-based tools used since the 1960s by decision-makers to help answer questions, solve problems and support or refute conclusions.

Web analytics -- software that tracks user behavior on a Web site -- is, in theory, not that far removed from the BI (business intelligence) products that have been around for much longer. Both aggregate data and perform statistical analyses to produce reports that tell how well or poorly things are going.