Dhara Consulting Group: Recent Comments

Comment on Small and Medium Enterprises and the mash-up

Fred — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:35:39 GMT

Sorry for not getting to this sooner - your comment was in the middle of a number of spam entries. I agree and that is where we are taking our thoughts in the blog and our research into real world mash-ups. Mash-ups without the knowledge set are just another cool tool, and only a partial solution. We choose to talk about mash-ups as an "introduction" because the concept is easily understood.

Fred Geiger

Comment on Semantic Web and Air Travel

John — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:03:54 GMT

very thought provoking indeed

Comment on Small and Medium Enterprises and the mash-up

Joseph Nalbadien — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:55:02 GMT

While I agree that Mash-up is a good idea, I have to state that it is at best a simplistic solution and at worst subject to misinterpretation. The underlying complexity of data sets and their interrelationships have to be sufficiently understood for these ideas to bear fruit.

A more rigorous approach, by using "semantic" expressions and inter-relationship between data sets needs to be investigated.

Your thoughts?

Comment on Home - Personal Mash-up

Sean — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:00:49 GMT

These idea have been around for years and years and have to a certain degree have been implemented in silos. The new and refreshing activities that are starting to pop up now will help to put more structure into these types of efforts. As the tools to help standardize the way we look at turning data into information are developed from a technology perspective, it will open up solutions across the board. With so many different sources of data from internal systems, intranets, extranets, the internet, etc, being able to collect, organize, and perform logical processing post-collection in a standard way will be extraordinarily powerful.

Comment on Derivatives

Cal Ball — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:10:59 GMT

So, Kaplan and Norton first published the idea of a Balanced Scorecard in 1992. From there, the notion for all manner of dashboards with forensic drill-down (see Pilot Software for instance)buzzed in the market. These ideas make as much if not more sense today as they did then and yet development and implementation of these concepts are apparently still lagging. Some the analytics challenges are widely known such as the volume and complexity of the data overwhelms traditional OLAP cube solutions (see Panoratio Database Images for a unique solution to that problem). What do you believe are the greatest hurdles? Are they technology or "disbelief in the benefits" hurdles - both? Thanks Fred.

Comment on Derivatives

Fred — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:21:07 GMT

Cal - there is an interesting article - Is It Critical to use Customer Analytics - this month (August) in the magazine Retail Solutions Forum - that discusses the "mash-up" of some of the items that were raised in your questions. On-line link Hope this helps.

Fred

Comment on Derivatives

Fred — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:55:59 GMT

I used the term derivatives to indicate a formula derivation of ingredients based on a relationship (yield per case) that varied based on the item being produced.

In the area of your examples, I am sure that the "mash-up" of customer information is a challenge for many retailers. Household combinations are a big issue for data warehouses in the retail environment. But the profitability of the items purchased, and the shopping tracks through the store are examples of where customer data can be combined in a derivative like sense. Thanks for you comments Cal - good insight.

Fred

Comment on Derivatives

Cal Ball — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:27:38 GMT

Interesting - I had not thought about derivatives except in the financial sense. Back to the supermarket, how about applications driven off inventory and customer loyalty information? Just now, my grocery store is beginning to deliver personalized marketing to me based on items I have bought - tracked because I use my loyalty card to obtain a discount. I can imagine that this is just the beginning of what can and will be done with this data in the future. I have heard the mission phrase of "getting into the cart with the customer" in the context of supermarket marketing - any comments? Thanks Fred!

Comment on Workflow

Fred — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 21:12:22 GMT

I assume that you mean how does the manager's input work. That depends on the systems in place feeding the information. Some retailers do it manually - some have work flow tools. The nature of mash-up technology is that it is providing a view of information that is in different systems.

We, at DCG, have been looking at technology that would allow additional update functionality and reporting in the mash-up itself. This might add a layer of reconciliation to the reporting tool itself.

Fred

Comment on Science Fair Project

Mark — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:24:04 GMT

Many supermarkets track my purchases with some type of "customer relation" card or by phone number. My personal buying habits do not vary widely by brand or quantity.

Why have the large chains not used the data they already collect more effectively other then for reordering?

I would love the opportunity to simply have them deliver the same products on a routine basis to my home. This would foster true loyalty, while removing the time commitment for those of us who are "shopping challenged"