SignalCentral: The Hottest Spot for Big Data Science

It’s no longer enough to simply manage suppliers. Without a strong handle on everything that’s happening in your company’s supply chain, you will miss big savings opportunities.

In a recovering economy, procurement managers need to know more about how their organization's total supply chain works than ever before. As business starts to fire on all cylinders again, it’s clear things have changed. Not only are we experiencing the truly global, challengingly mercurial commercial landscape everyone talked about before the bust, but the need to keep a close eye on exactly what’s going on day to day has shattered old supply chain and procurement best practices — even from just a few years ago. But now, new spend analytics solutions offer impressive capabilities that allow supply chain managers both deep and wide views of their spend. With these tools, it’s possible to shine a spotlight on problem areas that were previously hidden in siloed expense reports, forgotten contracts, and operations with little or no oversight.

Since retail clinics started gaining popularity in 2007, healthcare professionals have been worried — for all sorts of reasons. Will patients still get the care they need? Will they visit their doctors less? How will these clinics impact patient volume in nearby emergency departments?

The Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Leadership Award is presented each year to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for customers. It recognizes the company’s inordinate focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and ultimately customer base expansion. Frost & Sullivan does not accept solicitations or applications for this award, instead basing its decisions on extensive private market research and confidential interviews with end users. Opera Solutions is proud to be the recipient of the 2013 Customer Value Leadership Award for Global Big Data Analytics.

Forbes’ contributor Christopher Versace recently talked with Opera Solutions CEO Arnab Gupta about how Big Data is perceived in business today — and where it’s going in the future.

A Dodd-Frank Act stress testing guide for senior bank executives whose institutions have $10B in assets or are growing quickly.

Think regulatory stress testing is only for the biggest banks? Well, maybe for right now, but this practice continues to be required of increasingly more banks, which means if you haven’t had to worry about stress testing yet, you might need to soon. Regulatory stress testing is designed to see if you have enough capital to survive a series of arbitrary shocks to the economy; it should not be confused with the types of analyses that support critical financial measures such as risk-adjusted returns or those that determine economic capital requirements.

You may not be paying much attention to data science, but it’s paying attention to you — and will deliver personalized search results in due time.

For those of us who prefer to stay on the shopping side of recommender engines, how online retailers seem to know which hotels we’ll book, what flights we’ll take, or what brand of pots and pans we’ll buy next is simply math, or for those of us with a little more knowledge, algorithms. For most everyone else, it pretty much falls under something more akin to science so advanced it might as well be magic. Of course, for the machine learning data scientists who create these recommender engines, all engines are different, complex — and definitely not magic.

Who should handle the management and implementation of Big Data
analytics in the enterprise? If you don’t know, you’re not alone.

Nearly all enterprises are struggling with the right operating model for Big Data analytics. When business intelligence was the biggest data challenge, companies could consolidate data management under a global CIO or CTO’s umbrella. But Big Data analytics is a game changer. With the right solutions implemented well, Big Data analytics can have a powerful impact on frontline business units, corporate marketing, operations, and finance. But getting the right solutions and implementing them well is outside the purview of a typical CIO or CTO, and enterprises are still struggling to figure out exactly who should own the management of this highly complex area.

Big data moves fast, but you can prime your company to always have the latest technology and ultimately grow with its data.

When you bring up the subject of Big Data, the conversation can go one of two ways: into the past or into the future. If the first question to come up is, “What kind of data warehouse do you use?,” you know you’re talking to someone living in the past. The new reality is that the demand for data storage is increasing much faster than the cost of data storage is decreasing, meaning enterprises will run out of affordable storage soon — if they haven’t already. A more forward-looking question might be, “What’s your plan to deal with the growing volume of data?”

An exploration of how employers can better use the data available on social networks to improve and expedite the hiring process.

I have been an avid user of LinkedIn since 2004, first as a prospective employer, then as a networking tool, and more recently as a content site. It’s been amazing to see the evolution of the platform and the tremendous value I have been able to derive from it over time. One of the most interesting views that LinkedIn affords you over time is the InMaps visualization of your professional network.

Have we witnessed a Big Data bust, or is this just a temporary lull in excitement?

With the addition of “Big Data” to the Oxford English Dictionary this past June, the term has officially gone mainstream. Nearly all technology hype cycles of late, be they cloud computing, social media, or smart phones, have had periods of intense media coverage and interest. Big Data is no different. For the better part of three years, it has had a flurry of content and speculation filling the airwaves — often with minimal coherence. This lack of focus has temporarily plagued every tech hype cycle, which means Big Data is in for a rough period ahead.