Freakalytics®

Practical Analytics for Better Decisions

 Freakalytics™ header image
 

Quick reference for graph and dashboard design- print, Android and iPhone

Freakalytics has published to Amazon, Android and iPhone a new quick reference for building better graphs and dashboards. This app is complimentary on the Android and iPhone thanks to our sponsor, Tableau Software. Note that the iPhone and Android apps are now released: search for "Rapid Dashboards" on the iPhone (click here to open it in App Store web site) and "Rapid Graphs and Dashboards" on the Android application stores (click here to go to it in the Android Market web site.)

The Amazon version, “Rapid Dashboards Reference Card”, has all 64 tips readily available on four full-color, laminated pages. The card serves as a handy reference for yourself, your team and even your business audience during design meetings.

iPhone preview, also on Android
Page 1 Excerpt, buy it at Amazon
Page 3 Excerpt, buy it at Amazon

Over the coming year, we will post a sampling of the tips from the reference card on our site. Freakalytics, helping you take your graphs and dashboards from good to great!

→ 2 Comments- Add Yours

Groupon madness, estimate your short and long-term profit or loss

It seems that you can’t avoid Groupon in the news lately. Consumers are mad about using Groupon since they can find great deals at often unheard of discounts. Even for customers, there is a often a down-side with reports of customers mobbing unprepared businesses and leaving frustrated or unhappy with the experience.

My review of multiple profit estimates shows that without a high rate of repeat business, your Groupon gains will likely end up as a big loss! However, if you can handle the volume of business and are considering offering Groupon at your business, you should download my spreadsheet to estimate the short and long term profitability of your participation.

1) The example used in the spreadsheet is based on a local restaurant. Their standard entree cost is $32.55 with the Groupon deal offered at $14.79. The fee to Groupon is half of the $14.79, leaving the business with $7.40 to cover $8.90 in marginal food and staff costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

→ 8 Comments- Add Yours

A response to the TDWI article, “An Imperative to Build, Not Buy, Agile BI”

As TDWI and vendors catch on to the success of “Agile BI” being created with products like Tableau, I find the need to reply to the idea that the same old technology will work in this new world.  This article from TDWI energized me to write a response to this frequently cited idea.  In case you aren’t familiar with the acronmym “BI”, it simply means business intelligence, typically referring to traditional tools like Cognos, Business Objects, Excel, Microstrategy, SAS and many other products. 

What is Agile BI? 
“Agile BI” is new-found jargon that describes what

Read the rest of this entry »

→ 3 Comments- Add Yours

Simple Dashboard Design Strategies Presentation and Making Oil Personal Dashboard

The “Simple Business Dashboard Design Strategies” presentation can be downloaded here. I am presenting this presentation today at 4 PM Pacific on Stacey Barr’s Measure and More Webinar.

The dashboard example in this presentation is available below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Add Your Comment Here

Listen to the Analytic Talk Show with Stacey Barr

“A Week in the Life of an Analyst Rock Star: Using Analytics to Dramatically Boost Bottom Lines“

You can download the examples discussed here (Adobe PDF file). Once you have the examples downloaded, click here to listen to the recorded webcast (download as an MP3 file).

The case studies and topics discussed on this webcast include:

  • How a niche winery analysed it’s customer segmentation using the Customer Lifetime Value metric and dramatically increased it’s marketing ROI
  • An oil and gas reserves case study that demonstrates the emerging value and impact of using analytics and powerful metrics visualisation in journalism
  • How analytics reveals strategies for maximising the uptake in a community of “green practices”

WITH: Stacey Barr and Stephen McDaniel, co-founder of Freakalytics, LLC and author of “Rapid Graphs With Tableau Software” and “SAS for Dummies”. Stacey is “The Performance Measure Specialist” from “Down-Under” and is a recognized expert at how simple improvements in performance measurement can radically improve your business. Stacey was delightful to work with and I encourage you to visit her website for advice on making measurements powerful, easy and fun!

Add Your Comment Here

Rapid Graphs- Tableau for Customer Segmentation and Lifetime Value Analysis

This was presented at the Tableau Conference 2009. It is about the tremendous opportunities to leverage customer segmentation and lifetime value data at the individual customer level. Click here for the presentation.

Identifying segments for every customer can unlock long-hidden value for your marketing team. Combining this information with Tableau creates a simple means for marketing owners to evaluate and improve their decisions.

A second opportunity is adding lifetime value estimates to each customer as you acquire them and as their behavior adds additional information to inform their value. With lifetime value estimates, you will gain a huge competitive advantage in evaluating your the long-term value of your marketing investments and product decisions. Are your most expensive programs just impacting short-term outcomes and only reaching lower value customers? How are your customers being affected by a blend of marketing programs over time?

Click here to see a summary view on Tableau Public which was constructed from part of the Tableau workbook used in this presentation. Many thanks to Ellie Fields at Tableau for selecting the views and publishing this summary!

→ 1 Comment- Add Yours

Maximizing Sustainability by Incorporating Consumer Behavior & Environmental Expert Opinion

Download the full paper by Eileen McDaniel, Ph.D., “A Practical Framework for Green Policy Decision-Makers: Maximizing Sustainability by Incorporating Consumer Behavior and Environmental Expert Opinion” (PDF.)

Executive Summary
Which “green” activities are consumers performing in their everyday lives?  Activities that-
•    Save them money?
•    Are easy to do?
•    Are the most beneficial to the environment?
•    Some combination of the three?

By combining insights from a recent survey of consumer behavior with expert opinion on green activities I found that:
•    Activities that experts rank as the most beneficial for the environment are not always performed frequently by consumers.
•    Economic benefit to the consumer is a stronger predictor of frequently-performed activities than environmental benefit.
•    However, convenience to the consumer is the best predictor of green behavior!

Decision-makers for sustainability programs can tailor this method to their particular location by:
•    Compiling a list of green activities specific to their region.
•    Surveying local consumers and experts.
•    Altering which dimensions are included in assessing the importance of various green activities.

“Newcomer” communities can maximize the impact of launching their green programs by:
•    Prioritizing activities that are convenient and economical for the consumer.
•    Motivating consumers with educational programs and incentives.
•    Waiting until the environmental program has gotten off the ground before encouraging activities that are low in convenience and economic benefit- unless they can be financially subsidized.

Newcomer Communities

Newcomer Communities


Read the rest of this entry »

→ 1 Comment- Add Yours

Data warehousing success- 100% Vision / 80% Tactical / 20% of the Work

My Background in Data Warehousing

I have been involved in the creation, development, and maintenance of seven data warehouses through the years- one of them before I even knew about the term “data warehousing”!  I have built them with SAS and Oracle, SAS alone, Informatica and Oracle, Oracle alone, and SQL Server.

I have also visited many companies as an adviser, consultant and user of their data warehouse. In these many visits, I have seen some successes and many failures. Often, the failures could have been prevented with some key guiding principles.

Data Warehousing or Enterprise Data Integration?

Data warehousing is now known by a new buzz word, Enterprise Data Integration. In fact, SAS recently renamed SAS ETL Studio as SAS Data Integration Studio (they also added some new features around the EDI area, one new feature was around continual data acquisition so that near real time data feeds are available in the data warehouse.) Another great part of SAS EDI is SAS Data Quality, this should be a consideration throughout the entire process, but I won’t directly comment about data quality in this post. Since most people still use the term data warehousing, so I will keep the popular terminology over the analysts and even SAS.

What Does it Take to Build a Successful Data Warehouse?

Read the rest of this entry »

Add Your Comment Here