Teryl @ Work

Is 2016 the year of mainstreaming Business Intelligence and Analytics? In IT circles, IoT and Analytics are mainstream!   In the real business world, there appears to be an appetite and a genuine need, but the question is “Is it really happening?” I have rather belatedly read Ajeet Singh’s article – 2016 Anti-Predictions for Analytics, and found it very interesting.   Some of the statistics mentioned were a surprise eg 99% of data still being on premise. Business technology trends do take multiple paths.   I remember when we first started selling biometric solutions at Accsys over ten years ago,  we would get in the door with biometrics, but the majority of clients still felt safer with cards.   It is the same with Employee Self Service, the take up is happening, but it is still largely at the early adopter stage in the SME market, in spite of overwhelmingly strong ROI indicators. So for the majority of businesses, Analyt...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is inspiring some new (and some not so new) lines of marketing speak. Notable is Segment of One. What does that mean? Simply , knowing vast amounts about your spending patterns, marketing effort is so tightly targeted on your needs, aspirations and requirements, it’s like a homing pigeon bullet, straight to the heart of your wallet. So, I am talking to you, Segment of One! Where can this kind of use of big data go wrong? Once again,  simply , in the delivery! Personal Story As a child growing up I lived in the seaside village of Muizenberg. Everybody knew everybody, we went to the same schools, shopped at the same stores, sat on the beach over the weekend, and if you didn’t know somebody, there was always a connection.  It was literally one degree of separation. If I popped into Raad’s, the local greengrocer, he would greet me warmly, and send me home with a watermelon that was just the kind my dad liked. At the pharmacy, the...