Turning Decisions into Profit with Business Analytics & Optimization

The Platform Approach

Introduction
Never before in human history has so much information been generated at so great a pace or so massive a volume as now. According to a report from the Berkeley School of Management, more data will be created in the next three years than has been created in the last 40,000 years. That is not solely the hundreds of millions of web pages, emails and unstructured data such as word documents and PDFs, but the sheer, nearly infinite number of transactional events and information across every industryfrom financial institutions, utility companies, telecom organizations and manufacturing facilities. Todays business is tasked with tracking, analyzing, making decisions and taking action based on the enormous amount of information generated by their operations. Whats a company to do in light of such unfathomable amounts of data? Big Data storage is one solutionor rather, one partof a solution to help companies manage their information. Business Intelligence helps gain insight into the patterns revealed within all that data. Business Analytics and Optimization (BAO) is the practice of using data to make decisions based what that data is saying in order to optimize business practices for more efficiency. Until very recently, BAO solutions relied upon large service teams tasked with the piecemeal gathering of multiple technology components to mitigate waste, risk and, simply, streamline profitable business processes and operations making the process of streamlining business practices and operations not very streamlined at all. The recent arrival of a productized and packaged version of BAO in the form of a Business Analytics & Optimization Platform (BAOP), changes the complexity of real-time decisioning deployments by pinpointing the best next action for businesses. The results are extremely profitable for companies in multiple industries: the next-generation of adaptable Smart Grids that meets the expectations of a greener and smarter planet; automated discrete manufacturing floors that virtually eliminate waste; and complex financial billing systems that identify failed transactions before they happen, increasing profitability and reducing costs.

Starview, Inc. 2841 Junction Ave. Suite 201 San Jose, CA 94022 www.starviewtechnology.com

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions Business Analytics Optimization Platforms, or BAOPs, provide companies one, complete, packaged solution that takes the benefits of Big Data storage, Business Intelligence, Business Activity Monitoring and Business Analytics & Optimization, and condenses those components into one, packaged and customized solution for real-time analytics and real-time, automated decision-management. Up until the advent of such a platform, solutions such as these remained the unattainable Holy Grail of operational efficiency. Now, BAOP stands to save entire industries millions of dollars thanks to the platforms capacity to intuit and predict problems, identify the next best action, and take proactive automated actions that steer the enterprise and the operational process clear of failures in the stream of contantly changing data. In this white paper, well define BAO and BAOP, compare and contrast custom-built solutions, and explore how platformcentric deployments can work in multiple industries to:

Maximize resources, Mitigate waste, Increase profitability, Streamline operations, and Achieve a greener and smarter planet.

In the next white paper, we will investigate how a BAOP solution drives business value and operational changes within specific industries, including credit card processing, energy and utilities and manufacturing; and, in the final white paper, well review some of the more technical details of what makes an ideal BAOP solution work, including Active Optimization, the Active Model, and the need for abstracted proprietary development languages that reduce time to market, simplify application changes, and enable ongoing simulation for less downtime.

BAO Defined
Business Analytics & Optimization (BAO) is a term that is used very frequently to describe the ability to monetize the insight gained through Business Intelligence into actioninstantly, automatically and continuously, based on historical and real-time data. In short, BAO enables:

Identification of the next best action in real-time so technology can make faster, better-informed decisions at the point of greatest impact, based on all relevant real-time fluid data, historical knowledge, and expert insight; Exact models of how changes in the product and/or customer will affect the company or systems ability to deliver against commitments; The seizure of opportunities in real-time through proactive decision management; Accurate predictions of problems and automatic actions to avoid them; Optimized utilization of the companys most expensive assets; and Automatic balance of supply and demand.

BAO solution deployments encapsulate the knowledge and experience of a companys experts, translating it into automated, real-time decisions that enhance the organizations performance and profitability.

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions

Why BAO Matters

Until now, companies and their competitors were very likely in the same boat: using the same tools, each achieving a similar level of decision-making and operational efficacy. These tools operated as imperfect solutions: information and insight was likely to be lost from time to time in fast-paced, high-volume environments. This missing information and insight was considered the cost of doing business without an alternative. What if that loss was avoidable? If one could gain access to missing information and insight, any improvement in efficiency becomes a competitive and profitable advantage. Even a single percentage point improvement in the speed and impact of decisions can translate into millions of dollars in increased profits. Business Analytics & Optimization (BAO) uses massive amounts of event-driven data to assert all-important transactional decisions: anticipate a spike in energy demand in advance and tap alternative resources to avoid brownouts; reroute materials if a shortage is developing in front of a bottleneck resource; optimize network services through predictive analysis.

Bridging the Gap from Insight to Action

Business Intelligence Strategic Operational Transactional Months Weeks Days Hours Seconds Business Analytics and Optimization

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions close the gap between traditional BI and real-time requirements.

With BAO, decision effectiveness and accuracy improve dramatically, offering the ability to:

Visualize the operational environment as it changes in real-time, Analyze events as they happen and in the context of the current environment, and Make optimal decisions based on opportunities and threats specific to operations.

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions

The Need for BAOP

More industries and more enterprises require the ability to process large amounts of fast-moving, fluid data in order to meet compliance regulations, maximize resources and mitigate waste. Some of the trends driving this need include the desire for a smarter and greener planet (utilities and energy), opportunity identification in a commoditized market (telecommunications), intelligent predictive trading and ensuring payments and funds are being transacted properly (financial services), as well as waste mitigation and quality assurance (manufacturing). Until the advent of a platform-centric approach to the problem, available solutions to the real-time decisioning conundrum were complex, piecemeal, extremely expensive and difficult to maintain. Enterprises wanting to implement the value posed by BAOs ability to pinpoint problems within the stream of fast-moving data and act on those problems as fast as possible as profit loss increases exponentially with every secondhad but one choice: tie together multiple software components from multiple vendors and connect it all with tens of thousands lines of custom code. Unfortunately, the results are extremely disappointing, more often than not. Examples include:

Lack of standardization, testing and simulation that result in long and unanticipated system downtimes. Disappointing ROI or lack thereof and metrics that never measure up to promised returns. Long, ineffective, expensive and bug-filled path to market. Pure and pricey reliance on third-party developers for the entire application life-cycle. Difficulties managing, integrating and measuring disparate solution tools, often resulting in a skyrocketing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Lack of in-depth reports, troubleshooting, ease-of-changes, and security standards that ensure protected encryption. No packaged connectors for enterprise reporting systems for identifying the value across the whole of the enterprise.

In light of these limitations, how can the next best action be identified, made, and then acted upon for each individual opportunity within a stream of fast-moving fluid data? The answer lies in leveraging an enterprise-centric platform that enables companies to build, test, deploy, and manage realtime, event-driven Business Analytics & Optimization application solutions. These deployments transform insight gained from a customized model of your unique operational system into profitable action.

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions

Introducing the Business Analytics & Optimization Platform

Today, complete and compact intelligent business analytics and optimization software platforms exist for todays real-time enterprise. BAOPs are packaged, compact and complete optimization platforms that enable todays real-time enterprise to intelligently streamline operations and shift business events. BAOPS work by optimizing and processing large amounts of fast-moving, fluid transactions and data, identifying the next best action, and then taking that action. Used in industries like utilities, energy, manufacturing, and financial services, BAOPs allows enterprises to promote more efficient processes that increase profitability, identify new revenue opportunities and differentiate themselves from the competition.

Business Intelligence; timeframe measured in hours or longer

Data via ETL

Data Mart

Analysis

Decision

A C
Data Transform Continuous Analysis

Action

Decision Optimization Dashboard

BAO; timeframe measured in seconds and minutes

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions Key features of the ideal BAOP solution include:

Platform-centric packaging that supports multiple industries and process-driven applications that can be deployed within a specific line of business, as well across the whole of the enterprise. The ability to process large amounts of fluid data, maintain those transactions in memory and then trigger the next best action. A platform that is scalable and deployable on existing standards-based architecture. Support for existing Business Intelligence applications, industryspecific applications and existing business rules. Compact and complete architecture that combines features of event processing, analytics, real-time decisioning and optimization, adaptors and a rules-based Interactive Development Environment. Rich, graphical management tools that make deployment, simulation, testing, reporting and the whole of the development lifecycle easy to manage.

A Business Analytics & Optimization Platform (BAOP) addresses specific problems in the moment that they occur and instantly triggers actions based on customized rules pre-determined by experts within the environment. In essence, it is the Holy Grail of automated, real-time decision management because it guarantees a 100-percent optimization of throughput, regardless of industry or scenario.

How BAOP Works: Active Optimization

Active Optimization is the combined process and technology that enables ongoing, intelligent business decisioning in realtime. Active Optimization aggregates, processes and analyzes large amounts of fast-moving, fluid business data, including events and end-point states, identifying the next best action that will, and does, trigger a change that optimally impacts the business objectives of an organization. Compared to Business Intelligence, the Active Optimization that a BAOP solution empowers is invaluable for its ability to save time, preserve and increase profits, and identify new revenue opportunities. Timeframe comparisons alone between when a problem is identified, predicted and, hence, prevented or resolved reveal exponential benefits to the enterprise.

Business Analytics & Optimization Solutions

Conclusion
Todays real-world and real-time business environment is saturated with large amounts of fast moving, fluid data. Enterprises are struggling with how to process in-flux data in real-time in order to meet a variety of business mandates, including mitigating waste, maximizing resources, streamlining operations and achieving a greener and smarter planet. A Business Analytics Optimization Platform (BAOP) is the only solution that can meet the demands of Active Optimization with maximum ROI. In the next white paper, well cover how a BAOP solution works, along with details on how the BAOP solution benefits specific industries, including finance, energy and utilities, and manufacturing. Find out more. Contact us at info@starviewtechnology.com to see how a Business Analytics & Optimization solution built on the Starview Enterprise Platform can make your business smarter, more agile, and more profitable.