Enterprise Analytics - Optimize Performance, Process, and Decisions Through Big Data

Real Evangelism shows how aspects of church culture actually dampen the evangelistic task entrusted to it. Smith exposes what he calls "subtle substitutes" to evangelism. While there is nothing wrong with ministries that help established Christians, Bailey Smith impresses upon the church that these types of ministries must not take place of reaching out to the lost.

• Understanding how Decision Management Systems can transform your business
• Planning your systems “with the decision in mind”
• Identifying, modeling, and prioritizing the decisions you need to optimize
• Designing and implementing robust decision services
• Monitoring your ongoing decision-making and learning how to improve it
• Proven enablers of effective Decision Management Systems: people, process, and technology
• Identifying and overcoming obstacles that can derail your Decision Management Systems initiative

This book describes how to gather and define software requirements using a process based on use cases. It shows systems analysts and designers how use cases can provide solutions to the most challenging requirements issues, resulting in effective, quality systems that meet the needs of users.

Use Cases, Second Edition: Requirements in Context describes a three-step method for establishing requirements—an iterative process that produces increasingly refined requirements. Drawing on their extensive, real-world experience, the authors offer a wealth of advice on use-case driven lifecycles, planning for change, and keeping on track. In addition, they include numerous detailed examples to illustrate practical applications.

This second edition incorporates the many advancements in use case methodology that have occurred over the past few years. Specifically, this new edition features major changes to the methodology's iterations, and the section on management reflects the faster-paced, more "chaordic" software lifecycles prominent today. In addition, the authors have included a new chapter on use case traceability issues and have revised the appendixes to show more clearly how use cases evolve.

The book opens with a brief introduction to use cases and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). It explains how use cases reduce the incidence of duplicate and inconsistent requirements, and how they facilitate the documentation process and communication among stakeholders.

The book shows you how to:

• Describe the context of relationships and interactions between actors and applications using use case diagrams and scenarios
• Specify functional and nonfunctional requirements
• Create the candidate use case list
• Break out detailed use cases and add detail to use case diagrams
• Add triggers, preconditions, basic course of events, and exceptions to use cases
• Manage the iterative/incremental use case driven project lifecycle
• Trace back to use cases, nonfunctionals, and business rules
• Avoid classic mistakes and pitfalls

The book also highlights numerous currently available tools, including use case name filters, the context matrix, user interface requirements, and the authors' own "hierarchy killer."

Here's part of the content - you would like to know it all? Delve into this book today!..... : For a health insurance provider, predictive analytics can analyze a few years of past medical claims data, as well as lab, pharmacy and other records where available, to predict how expensive an enrollee is likely to be in the future.

...While mathematically it is feasible to apply multivariate regression to discrete ordered dependent variables, some of the assumptions behind the theory of multivariate linear regression no longer hold, and there are other techniques such as discrete choice models which are better suited for this type of analysis.

... In a classification setting, assigning outcome probabilities to observations can be achieved through the use of a logistic model, which is basically a method which transforms information about the binary dependent variable into an unbounded continuous variable and estimates a regular multivariate model (See Allison's Logistic Regression for more information on the theory of Logistic Regression).

...It can be proved that, unlike other methods, this method is universally asymptotically convergent, i. e. : as the size of the training set increases, if the observations are independent and identically distributed (i. i. d. ), regardless of the distribution from which the sample is drawn, the predicted class will converge to the class assignment that minimizes misclassification error.

There is absolutely nothing that isn't thoroughly covered in the book. It is straightforward, and does an excellent job of explaining all about Predictive analytics in key topics and material. There is no reason to invest in any other materials to learn about Predictive analytics. You'll understand it all.

Praise for Successful Business Intelligence

"If you want to be an analytical competitor, you've got to go well beyond business intelligence technology. Cindi Howson has wrapped up the needed advice on technology, organization, strategy, and even culture in a neat package. It's required reading for quantitatively oriented strategists and the technologists who support them." --Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor, Babson College and co-author, Competing on Analytics

"When used strategically, business intelligence can help companies transform their organization to be more agile, more competitive, and more profitable. Successful Business Intelligence offers valuable guidance for companies looking to embark upon their first BI project as well as those hoping to maximize their current deployments." --John Schwarz, CEO, Business Objects

"A thoughtful, clearly written, and carefully researched examination of all facets of business intelligence that your organization needs to know to run its business more intelligently and exploit information to its fullest extent." --Wayne Eckerson, Director, TDWI Research

"Using real-world examples, Cindi Howson shows you how to use business intelligence to improve the performance, and the quality, of your company." --Bill Baker, Distinguished Engineer & GM, Business Intelligence Applications, Microsoft Corporation

"This book outlines the key steps to make BI an integral part of your company's culture and demonstrates how your company can use BI as a competitive differentiator." --Robert VanHees, CFO, Corporate Express

"Given the trend to expand the business analytics user base, organizations are faced with a number of challenges that affect the success rate of these projects. This insightful book provides practical advice on improving that success rate." --Dan Vesset, Vice President, Business Analytics Solution Research, IDC

Predictive Analytics: Microsoft® Excel

Excel predictive analytics for serious data crunchers!

The movie Moneyball made predictive analytics famous: Now you can apply the same techniques to help your business win. You don’t need multimillion-dollar software: All the tools you need are available in Microsoft Excel, and all the knowledge and skills are right here, in this book!

Microsoft Excel MVP Conrad Carlberg shows you how to use Excel predictive analytics to solve real-world problems in areas ranging from sales and marketing to operations. Carlberg offers unprecedented insight into building powerful, credible, and reliable forecasts, showing how to gain deep insights from Excel that would be difficult to uncover with costly tools such as SAS or SPSS.

You’ll get an extensive collection of downloadable Excel workbooks you can easily adapt to your own unique requirements, plus VBA code–much of it open-source–to streamline several of this book’s most complex techniques.

Step by step, you’ll build on Excel skills you already have, learning advanced techniques that can help you increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve productivity. By mastering predictive analytics, you’ll gain a powerful competitive advantage for your company and yourself.

   •   Learn both the “how” and “why” of using data to make better tactical decisions

   •   Choose the right analytics technique for each problem

   •   Use Excel to capture live real-time data from diverse sources, including third-party websites

   •   Use logistic regression to predict behaviors such as “will buy” versus “won’t buy”

   •   Distinguish random data bounces from real, fundamental changes

   •   Forecast time series with smoothing and regression

   •   Construct more accurate predictions by using Solver to find maximum likelihood estimates

   •   Manage huge numbers of variables and enormous datasets with principal components analysis and Varimax factor rotation

   •   Apply ARIMA (Box-Jenkins) techniques to build better forecasts and understand their meaning

Category: Spreadsheets

Covers: Microsoft Office Excel

TURN YOUR CHALLENGES INTO SUCCESSES – LEARN HOW AND WHY SOME TEAM STRUGGLE AND SOME SUCCEED

This groundbreaking resource defines what business analytics is, the immense value it brings to an organization, and how to harness its power to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Author Evan Stubbs provides managers with the tools, knowledge, and strategies to get the organizational commitment you need to get business analytics up and running in your company.

Drawing from numerous practical examples, The Value of Business Analytics provides an overview of how business analytics maps to organizational strategy and through examining the mistakes teams commonly make that prevent their success, author Evan Stubbs uncovers a four-step framework which helps improve the odds of success.

Built on field-tested experience, The Value of Business Analytics explains the importance of and how to:

• Define the Value: Link analytics outcomes to business value, thereby helping build a sense of urgency and a need for change.
• Communicate the Value: Persuade the right people by understanding what motivates them.
• Deliver the Value: Link tactical outcomes to long-term strategic differentiation.
• Measure the Value: Validate wins and deliver continuous improvement to help drive ongoing transformation.

Translating massive amounts of data into real insight is beyond magic—it’s competitive advantage distilled. Nothing else offers an equivalent level of agility, productivity improvement, or renewable value. Whether you’re looking to quantify the value of your work or generate organizational support, learn how to leverage advanced business analytics with the hands-on guidance found in The Value of Business Analytics.

Drawing on the successes and failures of countless organizations, author Evan Stubbs provides a reference rich in content that spans everything from hiring the right people, understanding technical maturity, assessing culture, and structuring strategic planning. A must-read for any business analytics leader and an essential reference in shifting the perspective of business analytics away from algorithms towards outcomes.

Learn how to increase the odds of successful value creation with The Value of Business Analytics.