TIBCO Spotfire recently sponsored an event focused on analytics and visualization in the financial services industry. Spotfire is an Attivio Platinum Partner and the event delivered a day full of insights, thought leadership and innovative ideas. In addition to Attivio's presentation, which featured Julio Gomez (GM of Financial Services) and Rik Tamm-Daniels (VP of Technology), the event also included speakers from CEB TowerGroup, Ernst & Young and Teradata.

Analytics in the Financial Services Industry

The widespread use of analytics in the financial services industry is hardly breaking news. But it is important to note that there was a recurring theme that emerged: the increasing variety of data sources now being used to power the calculations. For example, as noted multiple times throughout the day, there is a growing trend toward leveraging unstructured data & content as a key input. Firms are no longer relying solely on the information in their data warehouse and CRM, but instead incorporating email, social media, chat logs, call transcripts, news feeds, and analyst reports as they create advanced analytics about their customers and business.

Additionally, the scope of where analytics are being applied is expanding exponentially. And why wouldn't it? With multiple units within financial services firms capturing an enormous amount of data on a daily basis, it only makes sense to use this content as a mechanism to glean insight into all aspects of the enterprise. Functions such as market risk, credit risk and portfolio management have always relied heavily upon analytics, but the next generation of data analysis includes calculations around customer sentiment, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and much more.

Spotfire showcased a robust data visualization platform with a full range of analytical tools. Attivio enhances the Spotfire application by enabling access to a diverse set of structured data and unstructured content — both inside and outside of the firewall. Furthermore, Attivio's schema-less approach offers the agility required to quickly add new sources of information. This is a key benefit given the rapidly growing number of sources that firms are employing. To quote my colleague Julio Gomez:

"Building an advanced analytics capability that fails to stress agility is LOA - Legacy on Arrival."

Amen.

Spotfire Application Powered by Attivio AIE

Data-driven decision making in the financial services industry is undeniable. What's less certain are the specific types of analytics that firms will create, along with the underlying sources they'll use to produce the calculations. But regardless of what the future holds, Attivio is excited to partner with Spotfire as we strive to help financial services firms find new ways to leverage analytics throughout their organization.

Thanks for having us Spotfire! We'll see you at our next client engagement.

Author Bio

Randy McLaughlin is a Director of Business Development with Attivio and brings over 12 years of experience in the financial services and software industries. Prior to joining Attivio, Randy was a lead analyst at Cutter Associates, a research and consulting firm focused on asset management technology.

Everyone has a story or two of an experience with a helpful sales rep or sadly, too often a poor one ending in frustration for both parties. As a marketing manager for a leading software company specializing in unified information access, I constantly receive calls and emails from quota-based representatives claiming to want to know more about my key business goals.

The reality is they just want to tell me about their product or service which they promise will dramatically improve results because they've seen similar improvements working with companies "just like mine." What they fail to appreciate is that I believe  my company is unlike any other business out there today.

I know this because the professionals I work with have invested great time and effort in building something unprecedented in the information management space – joining structured data and unstructured information together to provide better insight and actionable intelligence. If sales reps aren't going to educate themselves on what's important to me or, at a minimum, be somewhat familiar with my company's strategic initiatives, then why on earth should I spend time familiarizing myself with them?

For B2B companies, the typical sales model is a frontal attack on prospects where there's an expectation that a swarm of rep activity will generate enough pipeline to meet quarterly/annual goals. No doubt sales managers will argue there is a range of important differences in how reps execute that will generate better collective activity, in turn driving more qualified opportunities and increased revenues in shorter periods of time. However, the activity itself – regardless of the underlying sales methodology – will always be flawed when reps lack critical information relevant to the customer. This point is reinforced every time a new rep or one I've been working with struggles to answer a question, provides a poor recommendation, or lacks real understanding of my business and core objectives.

Rather than adjust my expectations down to accept mediocrity, I'm encouraged that sales rep behavior and execution will dramatically improve as companies implement next-generation sales enablement solutions like the ones Attivio is delivering today. During a recent sales enablement webcast showcasing what's possible for financial services institutions, 64% of attendees agreed the next-generation client-facing desktop would be a key differentiator and critical for their ongoing success. For the nearly two-thirds of companies that move to incorporate these types of solutions ahead of the ones who don't, not only will they be rewarded with better than industry average growth at the cost of their lacking competitors, but customers will realize a higher level of service, evidenced in short term satisfaction and long term loyalty.

What does next-gen sales enablement look like?

It's optimizing businesses' sales enablement function for:

• higher win rates
• decreased sales cycles
• increased wallet share
  
• improved customer loyalty

It's providing customer sentiment, along with relevant data from all information sources, at the right time so reps have better insight and actionable intelligence for more effective client interactions. This is what's possible today. This is the solution sales managers will deploy to ensure their preferred sales methodology is executed to the highest degree possible. This is how sales reps will connect with new and existing clients, discussing unique business needs and the relevant products and services that address those needs.

As more businesses embrace the necessity of using the latest technology to create competitive advantage or risk falling behind those who do, both reps and customers will benefit from time spent interacting with one another.

The swarm of activity will evolve from a numbers game where people, titles and verticals are segmented with canned If-this-say-that responses into one of true one-on-one consultation and collaboration. Reps will execute at a higher level, build stronger forecasts, convert more opportunities and reduce wasted time chasing bad deals.

More customers will enjoy superior service and longer engagements with trusted advisors. And for the sales managers who love to tinker with their sales methodology for ever-increasing efficiency, they can take credit for enabling rep performance for maximum success, with the confidence that a lack of critical information didn't undermine execution.

Author Bio

Jack Cooney has been in sales and marketing throughout his career and joined Attivio as a Field Marketing Manager. Previously, Jack held sales positions which included direct and channel software sales at Oracle as well as National Sales Director for Engineering and Computer Science at Pearson Education where he was responsible for business development for online learning products and associated sales training. Along with his passion for sales and marketing, he also enjoys taking his family to car shows and racing events in his "slightly modified" Mustang.

On-demand Webcast

Next Generation Sales Enablement: Do you have what it takes to build the sales agent desktop of the future?

Industry experts Julio Gomez and Jim Dickie highlight the evolution of sales enablement and unveil the next generation approach that will quickly become a requirement in today’s fiercely competitive landscape.

Watch this webcast and you will learn how leading financial institutions are leveraging technology to drive sales enablement and create competitive advantage. In addition, the co-presenters will answer the following questions:

• What does the next generation sales agent desktop look like?
• Why will new technology be the difference between success and failure for customer facing teams?
• Which specific components are at the core of a dynamic sales enablement process?

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.