| The Ventana Research Value Index for Business Intelligence (BI) 2012report is now available.What is it? The Ventana Research methodology is a framework that evaluates application vendors and their products in seven categories: usability, manageability, reliability, capability, adaptability, total cost of ownership, and return on investment.
Who’s Number 1? Information Builders. We are thrilled to announce that the Value Index for BI in 2012 shows that Information Builders is the industry’s top supplier. The company was ranked first out of all the BI vendors surveyed and assessed, as a result of the strength of its:
It’s great to be recognized for the hard work and innovation that goes into our WebFOCUS BI platform. It’s also gratifying to acknowledge the people responsible for our consistently superior customer service. In fact, we’d like to share the Ventana Research Value Index for Business Intelligence 2012 report with you so you can see the results, too. Best regards, Jake Freivald |
Information Builders Is Top Supplier in Ventana Research’s Business Intelligence Value Index
October 30, 2012
Sr. Software Engineer
August 7, 2012
This position will receive assignments from the IT Development Manager or a designated project leader. These assignments will concern the development of new web pages using Web2.0 technologies or the modification to existing computer-based business information systems and may include analysis, trouble shooting and problem determination in any aspect of the application environment including but not limited to web application development, web application maintenance and database system support. Must Have: Bachelor’s degree 3+ years working in information technology Demonstrated knowledge of programming on high-level language applications including web architectures and relational databases. Experience in creating enterprise search solutions and knowledge of FAST Enterprise Search Platform Programming using the MVC framework and Knowledge of Python a plus Experience with search optimization techniques and indexing and search servers Classic ASP and .NET 4.0 framework using JavaScript, VB, VB.NET, C# Use of jQuery, AJAX and Visual Studio2010 Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing within the data processing environment and with functional areas • Excellent problem solving skills PREFERRED SKILLS: • Strong knowledge of database systems, SQL stored procedures and SSIS packages • Writing code compatible with multiple web browsers IE, FireFox and Chrome • Familiarity with LINQ integration in .NET • Work in Team Foundation Server environment • Agile software development methodology
Impact were delighted to be part of the GACP Summer Training Conference held in Savannah in July this year. We launched our new advertising and were present to speak with many police Chiefs and analysts from across the great state of Georgia.
Our Intelligence-led and Predictive Policing solutions were on display and we received many request for demonstrations. We also got the chance to speak with several prospective CAD and RMS partners especially around our ground breaking Cloud First approach.
Our thanks to all who attended and to the GACP executive team who welcomed us and made us feel comfortable as a new vendor to the GACP.
Impact Solutions Consulting, Inc. New 2012 LEiA advertising campaign design.
Mobile Retail Commerce Rises While Social Shopping Drops in Second Quarter, Reports IBM
July 25, 2012
Consumers Buy More Per Online Transaction
Armonk, N.Y. – 16 Jul 2012: Mobile shopping rose while social media sales fell, providing an indication of where US retailers may invest in order to capture the attention and loyalty of the digital consumer, according to a new report from IBM (NYSE: IBM). The IBM Retail Online Index, a cloud-based analysis of the online retail sector reported that retailers experienced 15 percent growth in sales from mobile devices but saw a 20 percent decline in sales traced to social media based on a much smaller base over this three-month period.
Contact(s) information
Doug Fraim
IBM Media Relations
1 (617) 501-6376
dfraim@us.ibm.com
Mike Azzi
IBM Media Relations
1 (914) 766-1561
azzi@us.ibm.com
This report follows today’s news from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau which announced its estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales. According to the findings, retail sales fell 0.5 percent in June from May, the third straight month sales have been down from the month before. On a positive note, June 2012 sales were 3.8 percent above the pace of June 2011.
The IBM Retail Online Index integrates factual marketplace data from its analytics offerings including the Benchmark with insights from the IBM Social Sentiment Index, an advanced analytics and natural language processing tool that analyzes large volumes of social media data to assess public opinions. The combination of these two offerings provides the most accurate and immediate snap shot on the state of the online retail market.
IBM’s Retail Online Index identified several trends of importance to chief marketing officers (CMO), e-commerce leaders and customer service professionals. Over the second quarter consumers continued to embrace mobile devices as a shopping tool, with mobile commerce accounting for 15.1 percent of all online purchases, an increase of more than 14 percent. Despite this momentum retailers are still struggling to sustain substantial success with their social media efforts, evidenced by a more than 20 percent drop in social shopping.
According to IBM’s State of Marketing 2012 survey, one explanation for social commerce’s failure may be the absence of a CMO and CIO alliance which is critical as marketing and online commerce become increasingly technology-driven. The lack of this alliance hinders the deployment of integrated technologies capable of fueling effective social media efforts. A second factor is marketing’s inability to form a clear consensus on how to utilize social channels. As a result, the retail online index saw a decline in positive sentiment around social media, which according to the online index dropped from 25.1 percent in Q1 to 18.6 percent in Q2. Leading factors for this shift were the lack of deals being offered by retailers through these channels, which were more prevalent in Q1.
“Shoppers today are shifting from a singular online approach to a multi-channel experience that includes both mobile and social media. As a result, retailers must be prepared to connect with their customers on all fronts, or lose them to the competition,” said Craig Hayman, General Manager, IBM Industry Solutions. “As we enter the home stretch for the 2012 holiday season, we will continue to watch how CMOs and CIOs tackle these challenges and create social media efforts that deliver value to the customer while driving revenue for the business.”
Over the second quarter, while online traffic and sales for Q2 were down 6.7 percent and 2.3 percent from Q1 respectively, there were signs of optimism. Specifically, for completed orders, shoppers bought more items (average items per order grew 2.6 percent) and spent more for each transaction (average order values for each purchase grew by 2.3 percent) over the second quarter.
Part of IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the Retail Online Index draws data and insights from IBM’s big data offerings to provide the industry’s most comprehensive look into the pulse of online retail through traditional and social media channels. The index analysis for second-quarter 2012 reveals the following trends:
Online Retail Sales for Q2 2012 versus Q1 2012:
· Consumer Spending: Total online sales for the quarter were down 2.3 percent over Q1 2012.
· Average Order Value: The average value for each order in Q2 grew by 2.3 percent.
· Items Per Order: The average number of items per order increased by 2.6 percent.
· Page view Per Session: Page views per session dropped by 2 percent to 6.4 pages.
· Mobile Sales: Sales from mobile devices reached 15.1 percent, up from the 13.3 percent in Q1 2012.
· Mobile Devices: While Apple’s iPhone continued to rank one for mobile device retail traffic at 8.2 percent, Android surpassed the iPad which finished at 6.8 percent and 6.7 percent respectively.
· Social Traffic: Shoppers referred from social networks generated 1.3 percent of all online traffic over Q2 2012, a slight increase from the 1.1 percent seen the previous quarter.
· Social Sales: Shoppers referred to retailer sites from social networks generated 1.9 percent of all online sales over Q2 2012, a decrease from the 2.4 percent seen in Q1.
Online Retail Categories for Q2 2012 versus Q1 2012:
· Consumers further intensified their focus on the home with home goods sales growing by 35.3 percent in Q2.
· Department stores continued to catch the attention of consumers with sales growing 3.7 percent
· Jewelry stores maintained its upward track with sales growing by 1.4 percent.
Consumer Sentiment for Department Stores for Q2 2012 versus Q1 2012 based on the IBM Social Sentiment Index:
· Social Media: A potential result of retailers failing to deliver compelling campaigns through these channels, positive sentiment around social media dropped by 6.5 percentage points, from 25.1 percent in Q1 to 18.6 percent in Q2.
· Loyalty and Pricing: Where sales and clearing inventory were priorities in Q1, retailer prices returned to more normal rates in Q2, a shift that fueled negative sentiment around pricing which grew by 2.1 percentage points. These factors also impacted consumer loyalty where negative sentiment grew by 2.1 percentage points.
IBM Retail Online Index
The IBM Retail Online Index features data from IBM’s analytics offerings including the Benchmark and IBM Cognos Consumer Insight. The IBM Benchmark is the only analytics-based, peer-level benchmarking solution that measures online marketing results, including real-time sales data. All of the data is aggregated and anonymous. Analysis of public social media content came via IBM Cognos Consumer Insight which provides insight into underlying holiday shopping trends, hot topics of discussion and consumer sentiment. This index is combined with the IBM Social Sentiment Index to measure positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared in public forums such as Twitter, blogs, message boards and other social media, and provides quick insights into consumer conversations about issues, products and services. Follow the conversation at #bigdata #IBMIndex
About IBM Smarter Commerce
IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative delivers software and services to help companies transform their business processes to more quickly respond to shifting customer demands in today’s digitally transformed marketplace. The initiative is driven by the demands from organizations who are increasingly looking for ways to bring new levels of automation to marketing, sales and fulfillment to secure greater customer loyalty. The growth of mobile, social and online commerce are key trends within Smarter Commerce.
More information on Smarter Commerce can be found at www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_commerce/overview/
To join the conversation, follow hashtag #smartercommerce, #bigdata, and #IBMIndex on Twitter. https://twitter.com/.
The Impact of Social Media
May 17, 2012
One of the great things about working for a company like Impact is that we get to use a lot of the products and solutions we sell. This is no different in the world of social media, we have some phenomenal offerings in the social media and mobile workspce solutions arena; especially around proximity marketing, appvertizing (advertzing on apps), mobile pay and brand engagement.
Closer to my passion is the sheer amount of data and the subsequent analytics that are created in this space. One such data analysis service is right under your nose as a regular facebooker. With just 30 “likes” on your company or organization’s page you open up a new raft of analytics on user engagement.
Try irt for yourself and while you are at it I’d love to see you like our facebook page at Facebook.com/ISC.Impact.
Thanks and see you there.
Reproduced in part: From an original article by Michael CooneyOn: 04 May 2012 For: Network World (U.S.)
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — IBM last week came out with its first iteration of the analytics software package that it expects will help law enforcement, government agencies and private businesses wade through the massive amounts of data they collect to help them predict, disrupt and prevent criminal, terrorist and fraudulent activities.
The package, IBM i2 Intelligence Analysis portfolio, is based on the security software it picked up last year when it bought i2. Law enforcement agencies and corporate security departments use i2′s software to pinpoint fraudulent or improper activity within their logs of operational data. The company’s Analyst’s Notebook digital forensic software can display a visual diagram of people, places or other entities, showing how different parties are linked.
According to an IDG New Service report at the time of the buy, i2 had more than 4,500 customers across 150 countries. The company said that 12 of the top 20 retail banks use its software. The Boston Police Department and the Criminal Justice System in Orange County, Calif., share criminal data through i2′s Coplink platform. In a $9.6 million contract, the U.S. Army procured an enterprise license to use Analyst’s Notebook in its troubled Distributed Common Ground Systems — Army (DCGS-A) intelligence sharing system. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman folded i2′s Coplink into a system it is providing to the Navy to track criminal information from multiple sources.
Follow this link to the full article: http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/ibm-packages-crime-fighting-big-data-analytics/145380
Crime Costs. It’s a fact, it has an emotional cost on the victims and it has the cost of whatever was stolen, damaged or worse still, destroyed, like a life through rape or murder. But did you know that crime has a physical cost too on the city or municipality within which the crime was carried out?
In a 2010 study titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: What Cost-of-Crime Can Tell Us About Investing in Police” author Paul Heaton of the RAND Corporation assembles research using diffrent quantitative approaches and determines the average Social Cost of crime. The report goes on to proffer a suggestion that investing in police officers will in fact reduce crime and thus save the social cost of such crimes. Examples of crime costs range from $8,649,216 for murder, through $87,238 for a serious assault to $9,079 for thefts from motor vehicles.
In 2011 the RAND Corporation published their Cost-Of-Crime Calculator and now law enforcement agencies can use that to determine the cost of increasing or reducing officer headcount, statistics that might just make the difference at the next council budget meeting.
These RAND study crime costs are leveraged for other purposes in 2 new ROI studies on the impact of Intelligence-Led and Predictive Policing solutions. The latest is Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department (CMPD) who gained $7.8M in net benefits leveraging the amazing LEA software solution from Information Builders.
I’m very proud of Information Builders, their WebFOCUS software is one of the best BI tools in the market and punches far above its bodyweight and the team who worked at CMPD represent a great group of dedicated professionals. The CMPD officers and civilian staff alike were some of the brightest and most pleasurable to work with.
The partnership between Impact Solutions and Information Builders came about as a result of a vision to enable even the smallest Law Enforcement Agencies to benefit from these same cost reductions as the larger agencies and I’m happy to say that our Law Enforcement insight and Analytics (LEiA) solution is now available for both on-premise and cloud based solution delivery. Written using WebFOCUS and leveraging content built for CMP; the new gold standard in Intelligence-Led and Predictive Policing, the LEiA solution comes with dashboards, analysis, CompStat reports, alerting, and predictive mapping built on a prepackaged data model and deliverable in a fraction of the time of a custom software deployment.
2012 is going to be a great year for Law Enforcement as we continue to drive costs down and safety up for even more agencies than ever before.
Eight simple rules to make certain that your boss appreciates your contribution. If you are the boss, you’ll want to share this column with your team because it will make your job a heck of a lot easier.
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/keep-the-boss-happy-8-rules.html
Written by impactblogadmin
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