Analytics to keep love life fresh and fun!

Analytics takes a foray into the relationships management domain with a newly launched niche social network – The Ice Break. This online service helps users track, analyze, and enjoy their romantic relationships. Co-founded and seed-funded by YouTube’s first UI Designer, Christina Brodbeck; and former head of YouTube Mobile Dwipal Desai, TheIceBreak is designed to stay with users through all stages of their relationships, whether they are single or not. Brodbeck says that “TheIceBreak will fill a gap that is taking place in the online dating space, which is fraught with high membership churn and low return engagement”.

The site allows for status updates, asks users to rate how satisfied they are with their partner in a variety of areas and then serves up activities based on the answers given, such as answering “Icebreaker Questions” (“What is your ideal Friday night?”) and “Capturing Moments” to send to your partner. Activities like these garner you “Date Night Coins,” which can be used for deals in later iterations of the site. TheIcebreak features an analytics dashboard that shows the user’s happiness over time, and how it compares to the relative bliss of other couples. For those of you who feel that the idea of measuring one’s happiness against that of others goes against the advice of any therapist, note that they do have a fairly experienced clinical psychologist on the team.

A lot of behavioral science has gone into the development of algorithms to calculate couple compatibility and happiness quotient in relationships. This company’s business model will revolve around

• Redeeming Date Night coins for movie nights, etc. The company is currently working on creating these partnerships
• Providing gifting services on occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. They can help your partner find you a gift and you can even put in your sizes
• Rolling out subscription based relationship counseling solutions

Meanwhile, "Whether you're newly together, engaged, married or somewhere in between”, visit TheIceBreak to “keep your love life fresh and fun."

 

Indus Insights is a specialized consulting firm that assists organization in leveraging analytics to drive business performance. They use state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical techniques to unlock game-changing insights hidden in data; and then translate these insights into actionable strategies.

Daily humour - Powerpoint

Big Brother and Big Data

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that US government intelligence agencies are putting big money into social media and big data analytics in order to track people’s online behavior.

Not surprisingly, the federal government is interested in low-cost methods for tracking people’s every move on the Internet. The intelligence agencies have jumped in to fund analytics startups. They are also building their own analytics tools. Two years ago the National Security Agency talked publicly about creating a new type of technology that would grab “essentially every kind of data there is.” In July, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military’s R&D arm, issued a Social Media in Strategic Communication proposal that called for $42 million to go toward better social networking analysis. The idea is to track the spread of ideas on networks such as Facebook, find people participating in “persuasion campaigns,” and develop countermeasures. “We must eliminate our current reliance on a combination of luck and unsophisticated manual methods,” the agency said.

In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, various attempts to leverage analytics in the service of national security have been reported. There was a US Senate Judiciary committee hearing in 2007 entitled “Balancing Privacy and Security: The Privacy Implications of Government Data Mining Programs”. Some people remain skeptical about the viability of predictive modeling to predict outcomes such as terrorist incidents given the lack of historical data. The committee noted consensus as to the value of methods such as link analysis and ‘predicate-based analytics’.

Read More...

Indus Insights is a specialized consulting firm that assists organization in leveraging analytics to drive business performance. They use state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical techniques to unlock game-changing insights hidden in data; and then translate these insights into actionable strategies.

Analytics to help save Zebras

In an intriguing use of analytics, Marwell Wildlife, an international conservation charity and zoo in the UK, has added predictive analytics software as the latest tool in its 15-year effort to protect the Grévy’s zebra, an endangered species.

Marwell Wildlife is using predictive analytics to analyze field data from aerial surveys, camera traps and radio collars to understand the threats to the zebras as well as what could be done to increase their numbers and bring them back from the brink of extinction. They also analyzed data from a survey of the nomadic herdsmen in northern Kenya, home to most of the remaining Grevy’s zebras. In an attempt to gain insight into the effect of humans on zebras, they realized that the zebras needs weren’t compatible with the needs of the herdsmen.

Predictive analytics also enabled the organization to get a better understanding as to the reasons behind people’s attitudes and behaviors, so it could figure out where to focus its efforts to save the zebras. The analysis of its survey gave Marwell Wildlife a piece of valuable information that might aid in the effort to save the Grevy’s zebra—people hunted them for their fat, which they claim has medicinal value, rather than for food. By analyzing the data, the organization also learned that the people would use commercial medicine if it were available, which would help save them as well as the zebras.

Marwell Wildlife is also planning to use analytics in its fundraising activities – ranging from bringing in more donors to effectively analyzing its donor base to determine who gives to Marwell, when they give and why.

Read More...

Grévy's zebra, also known as the Imperial zebra, is the largest wild equid and one of 3 species of zebra, the other two being the plains and the mountain zebras. It is found in Kenya and Ethiopia. Compared with other zebras, it is tall, has large ears, and its stripes are narrower. The Grévy's zebra lives in semi-arid grasslands where it feeds on grasses, legumes, and browse; it can survive up to 5 days without water. It differs from the other zebra species in that it does not live in harems and has few long-lasting social bonds. Male territoriality and mother–foal relationships form the basis of the social system of the Grévy's zebra. This zebra is considered to be endangered (population has declined from 15,000 to 3,000 since the 1970s).

Indus Insights is a specialized consulting firm that assists organization in leveraging analytics to drive business performance. They use state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical techniques to unlock game-changing insights hidden in data; and then translate these insights into actionable strategies.

Analytics to predict longevity

Life insurance companies have found a new use for the vast dossiers of data: predicting people’s longevity. Insurers have long used blood and urine tests to assess people's health. In a remarkable use of consumer marketing data, insurers are now exploring whether online shopping details, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities and social-networking information can reveal nearly as much about a person as a lab analysis of their bodily fluids.

In one of the biggest tests, the U.S. arm of British insurer Aviva PLC looked at 60,000 recent insurance applicants. "Requiring every customer to provide additional, and often unnecessary, information" such as blood or urine samples, "simply makes the process less efficient and less customer-friendly," says John Currier, chief actuary for Aviva USA. They showcased, before the Society of Actuaries, two hypothetical 40-year old insurance customers “Sarah” and “Beth”.

Sarah reads design and travel magazines, has a short commute, runs, bikes, plays tennis and does aerobics. She eats healthy food, watches little TV and travels abroad. She is an "urban single" with a premium bank card and "good financial indicators". Beth, on the other hand, has a 45-mile commute, is divorced with no kids, frequently buys fast food, walks for exercise, buys diet and weight loss products, and is an avid TV watcher.

Sarah falls into a “healthier risk category”, while Beth is a candidate for worse-than-average predicted mortality. Based on that, the insurance company would proactively make efforts to retain Sarah with a preferred policy. On the other hand, they would recommend not sending Beth offers or using more aggressive retention methods.

Making the approach feasible is a trove of new information being assembled by giant data-collection firms like Acxiom, Experian, Infogroup, etc. Some retailers share information about purchases made by people, including item description, price and the person's name. Increasingly, information comes from people's online behavior. Acxiom says it buys data from online publishers about what kinds of articles a subscriber reads—financial or sports, for example—and can find out if somebody's a gourmet-food lover from their online purchases. Online marketers often tap data sources like these to target ads at Web users. These companies then sort details of online and offline purchases to help categorize people as runners or hikers, dieters or couch potatoes. They also scoop up public records such as hunting permits, boat registrations and property transfers. They run surveys designed to coax people to describe their lifestyles and health conditions.

Data mining has long been used for targeted advertising, but if this method was implemented for insurance, it's questionable whether it would be subject to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Other insurers exploring similar technology include American International Group Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc.

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Indus Insights is a specialized consulting firm that assists organizations in leveraging analytics to drive business performance. They use state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical techniques to unlock game-changing insights hidden in data; and then translate these insights into actionable strategies.

First Look: The second annual New Intelligent Enterprise survey

MIT Sloan Management Review conducted a large scale global survey of 4,000 executives, managers and analysts from a wide range of industries. The theme of this 27 question survey was Analytics, with a somewhat broader scope. Nina Kruschwitz, MIT Sloan Management Review’s managing editor and special projects manager, published a few interesting trends in the preview, with the full report due in Fall this year.

1. Access to Data needs Improvement: Only about 4 in 10 respondents have access to the information they want either to a great extent or completely. The majority are less satisfied with their information access — and almost 1/5 either have limited or no access to the data they need to succeed in their jobs
2. Consistency is key: Organizations are concerned that the quality of the data they use in decision making is consistent. It may be more important to have uniformly consistent data quality across the organization, rather than perfect data from one business unit and poor quality data from another
3. Walk the Talk: respondents want leaders to practice what they preach. If the organization’s leaders make fact-based decisions themselves, in service of the organization’s long-term vision, and demonstrate a willingness to share data across silos, will the rest of the organization be more willing to do the same
4. Organizations unsure how to use data: Organizations continue to struggle to understand how to use analytics to improve the business and to find the time to figure it out. Many of the challenges relate to organizational politics such as who owns the data and who has access to it
5. Not easy to integrate data: The top two challenges that organizations have in using analytics effectively are reminiscent of the challenges that companies have always cited for using business information. Integration is never an easy task, and as organizations take on bigger, bolder goals, the complexity can be overwhelming
6. Primary Business Objectives have not changed: While the top three business objectives remain the same this year compared with last, their order has changed. In 2010, innovating to achieve competitive differentiation was number one; this year it’s growing revenue. There also seems to be a new focus on expansion: Penetrating new markets and acquiring new customers are getting more attention than squeezing more out of what you already have (such as workforce performance or operating speed)
7. Technology is not the problem: Respondents believe that organizational or cultural challenges are almost twice as hard to solve as technological issues. That suggests that leaders have their work cut out for them — and underscores the need for leaders to practice what they preach before the organization is able to use analytics most effectively.

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A web site and print magazine published at the MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Sloan Management Review’s mission is to lead the conversation among thinkers, professors, and managers about the coming sea changes in management practice that will transform how people innovate and lead.

Indus Insights is a specialized consulting firm that assists organization in leveraging analytics to drive business performance. They use state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical techniques to unlock game-changing insights hidden in data; and then translate these insights into actionable strategies.

InsighterCom - Newsletter from Indus Insights

Greetings! Welcome to the very first edition of InsighterCom. Through this periodic newsletter, we will share with you how analytics can add value to businesses, with a special focus on digital businesses (e-commerce, phone commerce) and direct-to-consumer strategies (digital marketing, loyalty programs, etc.)

We will kick-start this first edition with two topics. In the first topic, we take a stock of the size of the Internet population in India and draw some comparisons. In the second one, we discuss how to address the issue of limited availability of customer data – a constraint we often hear from our clients.

(A) The Internet Landscape in India

Through this newsletter, we plan to periodically discuss the overall digital landscape in India. As a first step, we start by looking at the foundational layer – Internet and its presence in India. While much has been written about this topic, the message often gets lost in a lot of statistics that most people find difficult to relate to. In order to make these numbers more tangible, here are some comparisons that we hope you will find useful:

• Current Internet penetration in India is about 5%. The penetration of cars in India is about 1%. We wouldn’t call the auto industry an unattractive sector because of low penetration, would we? Then why Internet & e-commerce?
• India has about 70-100 Million active Internet users (depending upon which source you want to believe). The entire population of France is 62 Million. There are more Internet users in India than there are people in France
• When Amazon was launched in the US (in ’95), the Internet penetration in that country was < 10%, and the number of Internet users was about 25 Million. India has 3x as many users now as the US had then
• The number of fixed broadband users in India is half that of France, and the penetration is doubling every 2 years
• India has 20 Million Facebook users. The readership of Times of India, the leading English daily of the country, is about 7 Million
• Facebook penetration in India is growing at 200%, while Times of India readership grew at ~2% last year
• As 3G networks get rolled out, it is expected that there will be about 100-150 Million users accessing high speed mobile Internet by 2015. While we expect a significant overlap between the mobile & fixed Internet user populations, making estimations of incremental users difficult, what can’t be doubted is that how people access the web is going to change drastically. The mobile Internet boom will probably be faster than the overall Internet growth in India

To sum up, the overarching message about Internet in India is that it is already sizeable,

there is considerable growth still to happen, and that mobile Internet is going to alter usage behavior significantly. So be prepared!

(B) They Are Telling – Are You Listening?

A key prerequisite to using analytics is having good quality & quantity of data. Our clients often mention lack of data as a key limitation in being able to use analytical methods. To this, our response is twofold:

1. Don’t Wait for Exact Data – Start Inferring
2. Build a Data Hungry Culture

1. Don’t Wait for Exact Data – Start Inferring
   If you are a consumer facing organization, chances are that your customers are telling a lot to you. If you haven’t heard it yet, it might just be that you are not listening right. We often find organizations being too dependent on data reported directly – through sign-up forms, questionnaires, interviews, etc. While these are valid data collection methods, smart marketers also need to infer information from the data they already have. For example:

·    If you run a typical e-commerce site, you probably send newsletters that customers open, click on, and then visit the website & make purchases. Each such action of the customer indicates to you something about his interests and background. For example, there are customers who would have clicked on women’s shoes or women’s spa, while others might have gone for men’s belts or business books or recipe books or children’s games. A close look at these different behaviors allows you to make reasonable estimates about who your customer is: man vs. woman, professional vs. housewife, has kids vs. doesn't, etc. Armed with this inferred information, you can then identify your core segments, pinpoint opportunity areas, tailor your marketing efforts, etc.

·    While some of the above segments are easy to identify, there are others that are a bit tricky. For example, you may not be able to readily identify business customers or estimate the age of customers. For such purposes, we suggest a two-step approach:

o   The first step is to focus on the customers that have told you who they are – their age, whether they are buying for personal or business use, etc. By comparing these customers with the overall population, you can develop tell-tale indicators of these groups (There is some statistics involved here that we aren't going into right now)

o   The second step is to look for these indicators in your broader customer base, and then assign the customers to the appropriate groups wherever there is a match

·    You can also go beyond basic demographic variables and start identifying other behavioral characteristics. For example, to understand customer satisfaction, analyze the behavior of your current customers – do they come back and buy more/less, how do they differ from new customers, what were the last transactions of those that stopped buying, etc. You will be amazed at the insights that you generate around how satisfied your customers are, what is driving this, where the gaps are, etc. And the best part is that these insights are not based on what customers are saying, but on what they are actually doing!

·    Another great example is to use past purchases to predict what categories and what product price range would a customer be interested in. For one e-commerce client, we developed indicators of “premium” purchases, and then used these to identify target prospects for a high-end product. The result was a 40% jump in overall sales. Amazon adopts the same approach through its individualized recommendations. Our sources tell us that these recommendations drive 20-30% of the company's overall sales, which amounts to ~$9 Billion in incremental sales annually. Once again, this is all based on data that Amazon already has (and in most likelihood, so do you)

These were just a few examples of the information that can be inferred by analyzing the data that most companies already have. So the next time you are tempted to say no to analytics because you think you don’t have customer reported data, think again!

2. Build a Data Hungry Culture

The other data-related aspect that we stress a lot to companies is developing a culture of being hungry for data. Digital commerce is a marketer’s dream come true – the customer tells you how she found you, what she is looking for, how does she make her purchasing decision, what did she compare things with, what all did she end up buying, how many times does she come to your store, etc. But most organizations do not record this information, or do it in a way that can't be systematically analyzed. That is a lot of useful information being thrown down the drain. Done right, this information can be extremely useful, and help create a sustainable competitive advantage for any company. The key is to develop a hunger for collecting data, and collect it in a way that is conducive for analysis.

We will come back to this topic in more detail in the following editions, when we discuss recommendations, gaps, opportunity areas, and pitfalls related to data capture.

Indus Insights is a specialized consulting firm that assists organization in leveraging analytics to drive business performance. They use state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical techniques to unlock game-changing insights hidden in data; and then translate these insights into actionable strategies. Our clients include some of the leading organizations in financial services, e-commerce, digital marketing, and other sectors.

... and we're back!

It's been a while since you heard anything from Indus Insights. Let me revive this blog with a Sherman Lagoon Cartoon on Web Analytics. Watch this blog to keep abreast of the innovative uses of analytics!

Cheers,
Indus Insights