My colleagues and I had the opportunity to represent Attivio at the recent Tableau 8 Roadshow as a partner vendor. Unlike some BI events I have experienced over a number of years, the Tableau 8 Roadshow attendees were very much user-based rather than IT-focused. Attendees were interested in finding out how participating vendors add value to Tableau and help solve business problems, as opposed to being fixated on various technical aspects.

This business solutions focus suited my colleagues and me quite well: while my colleagues and I are very well-versed in Attivio's unique capabilities as an "Analyze Everything" platform, we are heavily focused on how AIE solves specific business problems and helps organizations get the more out of next-generation data visualization tools than they ever imagined possible.

For example, while some vendors might have talked about their products in the abstract with a lot of techno-speak, we demonstrated an actual healthcare data viz, developed by our partner Hitachi Consulting, that uses Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) as the information backend. The data viz also addresses a serious real-world problem: healthcare providers not getting paid for all services provided – an issue the attendees readily understood, even if they did not work within the healthcare industry.

One major cause of uncompensated care pertains to missing diagnosis codes, which determine what a healthcare provider is paid for, and how much. Our data viz demonstrates a solution to this issue, presenting existing diagnostic codes assigned by patient, plus missing diagnosis codes that also should have been assigned! How is this possible?

The answer is that Attivio AIE automatically integrates and JOINs together assigned patient diagnostic codes (from a database) together with such unstructured information sources as physician progress notes (free-flowing text) and more. This unified information is then made available for data viz tools with the same ease as accessing a simple database.

The end result: compelling visual evidence of all services provided for each patient beyond what would be visible working with databases alone. In other words, Attivio enables a truly complete business picture.

Just as data viz tools enable users to create highly impactful data pictures, Attivio AIE provides a whole new level of unified information: linking and correlating relevant structured data and unstructured content (emails, documents, case notes, social media... any text-based source) – with no data modeling in advance required.

The payoff of next-generation data visualization tools like Tableau, recently noted by BI consultant Chris Gerrard, applies equally to the payoff provided by Attivio AIE as a next-generation information backend: it's all about "the reduction in the barriers, the friction, between people and their data, just like digital photography removed the barriers between people and the pictures they take."

Attivio dramatically expands what can be "seen" and "pictured" using data viz tools. It's the difference between taking an excellent "data picture" of a tree, and gaining the ability to take complete, vast "museum quality" data pictures that rival the iconic outdoor photography of Ansel Adams.

Just as data visualization tools like Tableau have ushered in a revolution on the BI frontend, Attivio is leading a similar revolution on the information backend, freeing business users and IT professionals alike from the "barriers" that separate silos of enterprise data and content from combining together to enable a complete picture; a true 360-degree view of the business that enables a new level of insights for new business success.

That message seemed to resonate widely with the event attendees, and we welcome the opportunity to bring that new level of BI-driven business value to your organization and your next-gen data viz tool of choice.

Analyze Everything: Driving Agile and Complete BI

Attivio White Paper

Today's business environment requires leaders and managers to "analyze everything"! They need new combinations of structured data (databases) and unstructured content (documents, email, social media, etc.). Traditional BI and IT systems can't keep up, but Attivio can.

This paper will brief you on Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE©), an "Analyze Everything" platform for complete, agile BI, integrating and correlating all your data and content silos, with no advance data modeling required.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”
— The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

Sherlock Holmes turned 125 years old last year, and he’s never been more alive and well. The world seems more captivated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary London detective than ever before. Much of this excitement has been driven recently by the smash BBC One TV series Sherlock, drawing rave reviews for its update of Holmes and Dr. Watson as present-day Londoners fighting 21st-century crime. (Similarly, the U.S. version of the series, Elementary, is also a major new hit).

Pop culture critic and author John Powers cleverly explains Holmes’ enduring appeal as a literary hero and cultural icon:

Sherlock Holmes “possesses no superpowers — his parents weren’t wizards, no radioactive spider bit him — [and yet] his gifts are cool enough to be superhuman. Playing to our fantasies of being smarter than everyone else, Holmes performs jaw-dropping feats of perception.”

It’s no coincidence that heightened interest in Sherlock Holmes coincides with the rapidly accelerating, proliferating sources of information around us: databases, documents/text, big data, social media, web content and more. Like Sherlock Holmes, we all want to make sense of seemingly unrelated information and “be smarter than everyone else” — or at least outsmart the competition, outsmart criminals and fraudsters, outsmart seemingly intractable business problems.

A quick review of Conan Doyle’s novels and short stories reveals Sherlock Holmes shared useful advice on effectively accessing, analyzing — and yes, unifying — information. His advice rings truer than ever in today’s increasingly information-rich but insight-deficient world.

Sherlock Holmes on Big Data Analytics and Information Management

Now the skillful workman is very careful as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. — A Study in Scarlet

Holmes draws a wise distinction regarding information of direct, immediate impact that one should remain continuously aware of and be ready to act upon. And today there is indeed “a large assortment”  of information exists across a wide assortment of sources — databases, CMS, email, SharePoint, web and other information silos:

A man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. — The Five Orange Pips

A “lumber room” in Holmes’ late 19th century Britain stored replaced furniture and related items, particularly in a wealthy Briton’s mansion. As all furniture was custom-made and of possible future use, it would be stored rather than sold or discarded. With the advent of innovations including Hadoop, organizations now have Big Data “lumber rooms” that enable efficient, cost-effective capture and retention of huge volumes of information.

Bringing “perfect order” to these far-flung, siloed information sources by readily combining them for easy access and analysis remains one of today’s most critical challenges. It is also the very mission of unified information access technology, led by Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine, which freely integrates, correlates and presents data and content alike, leaving no vital information behind.

Sherlock Holmes on Analytic Thinking and Agile Business Intelligence

It is of the highest importance… to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. — The Reigate Puzzle

For decades, business intelligence (BI) systems have provided managers with reports and dashboards that boil down detailed structured data (databases, data warehouses) into performance metrics trended over time — in an effort to provide quick focus on the vital facts.

However, KPIs alone cannot tell you the whole story about the business; even worse, misguided managers may end up superficially ‘managing to the metric’ instead of managing the business itself:

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. — A Scandal in Bohemia

As an example I explored in a recent article, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote in 2008 that Starbucks’ had lost its way in large part due to management overlooking ongoing business missteps in favor of focusing on a single metric which proved to be a poor indicator of the company’s true health:

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. — The Boscombe Valley Mystery

Simply put, the numbers can tell you what is happening, but the most effective managers of leading organizations will also insist on understanding why.

There are few people able to deduce what the steps were which led up to a given result. This is the power of reasoning backwards, or analytically. — A Study in Scarlet (paraphrased)

The most successful managers are those who think analytically; they refuse to merely accept performance metrics at face value, choosing instead to gain a deep, “root-level” understanding of the company's operations and customers. Doing so requires asking probing, in-depth “get your hands dirty” business questions. Getting the answers to such vital questions requires the ability to go beyond numbers alone and gain complete agile business intelligence drawn from the entire spectrum of enterprise information — structured and unstructured, internal and external.

Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine empowers managers with the ability to “analyze everything” by integrating and correlating all silos of structured data and unstructured content, and exposing this unified information to popular BI tools, through native SQL support and ODBC/JDBC connectivity, for powerful self-service visualization and analytics.

On a final related note, one of the most memorable Sherlock Holmes stories featured the detective solving the case of a stolen racehorse and its murdered trainer:

[Police inspector:] “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
[Sherlock Holmes:] “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.” — Silver Blaze

Holmes solved the mystery in part by observing the guard dog did not bark, concluding the intruder was not a stranger to the dog. Sherlock Holmes’ brilliance lies in his uncanny ability to carefully observe information and joining together seemingly unrelated facts to assemble a complete picture of a crime.

Attivio empowers today’s managers and executives with a similar ability to work with a complete business picture, by JOINing and presenting all related data and content matching a user query — on an ad hoc basis, with no advance data modeling required. By unifying and presenting all enterprise data and content, Attivio provides a complete business picture that enables Big Data analytics and insights to solve new challenges:

If you have all the details of a thousand [past crimes] at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand and first. — A Study in Scarlet

Analyze Everything: Driving Agile and Complete BI

Attivio White Paper

Today's business environment requires leaders and managers to "analyze everything"! They need new combinations of structured data (databases) and unstructured content (documents, email, social media, etc.). Traditional BI and IT systems can't keep up, but Attivio can.

This paper will brief you on Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE©), an "Analyze Everything" platform for complete, agile BI, integrating and correlating all your data and content silos, with no advance data modeling required.

North Pole deploys new active intelligence platform to know who's
naughty or nice this holiday season; coal distribution expected to increase

Santa's Village, North Pole -- December 11, 2012 -- Frustrated by a lack of insight and integration from elves on the shelves worldwide, Santa has deployed the Active Intelligence Engine® from Attivio to better understand children’s behavior and pinpoint who is really naughty or nice this holiday season.

By ingesting information in all shapes and sizes from millions of sources worldwide, Santa can look at structured data like school report cards, chore charts and detention records alongside unstructured content like texts sent after lights out and unauthorized screen time, to get the whole story on little Nel and little Will.

"Rudolph may guide Santa's sleigh, but Big Data is driving it," said Senior North Pole Technology Analyst Albert I. Elf. "Santa's had to rely on his gut for a long time, which possibly explains his wide girth. With Attivio, he can easily analyze all related information as it comes in to make smarter, real-time naughty or nice decisions and significantly impact production and distribution at the North Pole."

“Santa’s elves are extremely hard working and great at gathering information,” said a North Pole spokesperson. “The struggle is tying it all together to make faster and more informed decisions. Santa doesn’t just want to know that Nel’s grades have slipped, he wants to know why she is falling behind. That kind of insight doesn’t come from one source. It takes a village to gather naughty or nice intelligence, and an engine like Attivio to analyze it.”

Can't get to the North Pole this year? To learn more about Santa's new big data intelligence engine, click here.

My colleagues and I often describe unified information access as a technology that truly provides "a complete picture of the business." I didn't realize how appropriate that metaphor was until I recently visited a local exhibition of the photography of Ansel Adams (1902-1984).

Renowned for his iconic black and white photos of untouched wilderness in national parks and other areas of the American West, Ansel Adams was a true visionary of modern photography, whose style and innovations exemplify the pursuit of a "complete" picture.

Ansel Adams used sharp focus to maximize the range of visual clarity from foreground to background, resulting in a "depth of field" beyond what would otherwise be seen clearly with the human eye. Adams also developed an innovative system to determine optimal film exposure and chemical photograph processing so that every shade of gray from light to dark was represented.

Ansel Adams' techniques were originally considered radical in his time. As Adams began his career in the 1920s, photography as an art form was still dominated by "pictorial" techniques: soft focus, hand-coloring and other image manipulation methods intended to make photographs resemble paintings. Adams initially experimented with pictorial techniques, but soon rejected those in favor of what Adams would call pure photography, characterized by innovative techniques to maximize the clarity, depth and sharpness of a photograph.

I see a clear analogy between Ansel Adams' pursuit of "pure" (or complete) photography and the pursuit of a complete business picture.

What exactly does Attivio mean by "a complete picture of the business"? We are referring to complete business information, combined from all relevant information sources – structured and unstructured, internal and external – with no data modeling required. This is unified information access – and it too is characterized by innovative techniques to maximize the clarity, depth and sharpness of all enterprise information.

Such a complete business picture enables thorough understanding and unprecedented insights into your customers, your markets, your operations; and empowers the organization to seize new opportunities, solve challenges and fulfill its mission in ways that would otherwise remain undiscovered.

For example, imagine being able to view and analyze all relevant information for any customer, regardless of original source or data type, freely integrated and correlated with no data modeling required. We refer to this as a 360 Degree View of the Customer – a solution built on Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine that delivers a complete business picture of that customer that unifies such diverse structured and unstructured information sources as customer transactional data, account balances over time ("share of wallet"), CRM data, marketing automation data, levels of customer satisfaction, likes and dislikes based on sentiment analysis of text from customer comments via email, chat logs, call transcripts, online surveys, social media…and much more.

A sample 360-degree customer view, powered by Attivio, showing interactions with a customer over time, correlated with major transactions, plus analysis of sentiment expressed by the customer: positive (green) or negative (red). Key phrases extracted from customer interactions are also provided, indicating how often a topic has been discussed, again with customer sentiment indicated. A sales or service rep can effectively lead conversations toward known customer likes/interests and avoid negative areas.

Imagine the new levels of success in personalized customer service, account management and targeted sales efforts achievable with such informational clarity, depth and sharpness!

One more interesting analogy: Ansel Adams' techniques also enabled him to fully control the contrast of his photographs; darkening shadows for a more dramatic effect, for example. Similarly, Attivio's 360 Degree View gives you similar agility and flexibility to heighten the contrast between different sources of information to call out critical details and issue alerts for immediate action.

A recent AIIM survey reported that 61% of respondents agreed it would be "very useful" to link structured and unstructured data, but only 2% said they are currently able to do so. Two percent! With that in mind, take stock of all of the sources of vital enterprise information in your organization – structured and unstructured, internal and external – and the extent to which you can easily join, present and analyze all related data and content sources together.

If your findings reveal an informational picture that is unclear or out of focus, perhaps providing some insights into certain areas while obscuring others – a close review of unified information access technology is in order. Doing so will allow your organization to replace your existing abstract painting of enterprise information with a complete business picture rich in clarity, depth, sharpness and contrast.

To learn more, download the white paper "A Maturity Model for Customer Centricity".