Can online tests drive multi-channel strategy?

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If you are even remotely connected to the retail/CPG industry, it is hard for you to miss the two buzz words – Multi-channel strategy and “Test and Learn”. Test and Learn is not a new concept; it is as old as the retail industry itself. It refers to how a retailer “tests” a strategy in a few stores and “learns” from it before doing a full-fledged rollout. These tests could be about introducing a new store format, a new assortment type, a new marketing strategy or anything else. What has changed recently is the extent of science supporting these tests. Questions like “What are the right test stores?”, “How do I extrapolate the lifts seen in the test stores to the rest of the stores?” are being answered more analytically than they have ever been in the past. Read more [...]

The little spoken side of Big Data

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These days almost every other article on analytics seems to be talking about Big Data. Most of this hype about Big Data is justified – partly because it is the next big thing, but also because we don’t understand it. When we think about Big Data, we just think “numbers” big. We think terabytes and petabytes. We think huge computing power. We think parallel processing. We think big words like Hadoop and Mahout. In reality, these are easier concepts to perceive than what is not being talked about as much. Read more [...]

Mu Sigma Raises $108 Million In Its Fourth Round of Fundraising

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In what is believed to be the biggest private-equity investment made to date in the emerging market for analytics services, General Atlantic closed a $93 million investment deal with Mu Sigma. This, along with an investment of $15 million by Sequoia Capital brings an end to Mu Sigma’s 4th round of fundraising, which now stands at 108 million. To read more about this, click here. Read more [...]

Five Common Mistakes People Make in the Name of Statistical Analysis

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Imagine you are a regional sales head for a major retailer in U.S. and you want to know what drives sales in your top performing stores. Your research team comes back with a revealing insight - the most significant predictor in their model is the average number of cars present in stores’ parking lots. Read more [...]

Which is the best model for Institutionalizing Analytics: Centralized, Decentralized or Federated?

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If you hang around Mu Sigma (or this blog) long enough, you’ll hear us refer frequently to the notion of Institutionalizing Analytics. That means making analytics a part of your ongoing business processes – weaving it into decision making across the organization. Read more [...]

New EMC study confirms massive worldwide shortage of data scientists

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Earlier this year, a McKinsey study found an alarming shortage of analytics talent required to help companies deal with Big Data. In fact, the report states that by 2018, “the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.” Read more [...]

Determining your Analytics Maturity Level

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Advanced analytics is a powerful tool that can be intimidating for first timers. To take some of the apprehensions out of the journey - and make it easier to take that first step - Mu Sigma has developed an Analytics Maturity Model. This model is built to help organizations determine their current level of analytics maturity and also can build a plan for the future. Read more [...]

What’s your “Simmer Project”?

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At Mu Sigma’s last Customer Summit (2011), I learned of an interesting technique our client Microsoft uses to foster innovation: they allow researchers to work on what they call “Simmer Projects.” These are essentially side projects that aren’t expected to contribute any revenue in the short term – really just experiments. They simmer on the side for a few months - or maybe even a few years - while their creators watch and wait, occasionally adding ingredients, and then decide if they should be moved to the front burner or poured down the drain. Read more [...]

A new direction for analytics – the Analytics and Insights Council

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All organizations – retail or banking, big or small, brick or mortar – are competing on information arbitrage more than anything else. Companies that are market leading are those that are able to glean scores of data about their customers and create actionable insights quicker than the competition. They are also the ones that are enabling the consumption of these insights within different business divisions of the organization and are able to quickly react to seize the advantage. They access more data sources, mine more data, develop more insights and communicate these insights to the business in a quick and timely manner. Read more [...]