4 Business Analytics events you should not miss

Business Analytics is the number topic for most CFOs and CIOs this year. Fall is a perfect time to catch up on the latest news in this area and to learn about the latest and greatest IBM solutions. The IBM teams across the globe (including my group) are currently busy organizing and preparing four major events and workshop series. If you are currently using business analytics or are evaluating it, you should definitely make time to attend one or more of these events. There will be a big focus on Cognos 10, Cognos Customer Insight and SPSS.

  • Business Analytics Forum: This event is big – IBM’s annual user conference for the Cognos, SPSS and other related products. The Forum is once again hosted at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas. It kicks off on October 24th and runs through the 27th. The conference offers hundreds of sessions about the technology, business best practices and customer stories. There are also certification camps, EXPOs, focus groups and much more. This year we will see a special track dedicated to social media. I personally highly value the opportunity to network at this annual event. This is always a special opportunity. If you have time and budget to attend, you should sign-up soon – early-bird registration ends on August 31st! Make sure to also check out Delaney Turner’s blog post about this event.
  • IBM Performance: If you cannot attend BA Forum, I would highly recommend to sign up for one of the Performance events. They belong to my favorite roadshows. These are 1-2 day complimentary events hosted across the globe. Sessions and solution showcases help you evaluate, use and derive more value from IBM solutions for business analytics. There will be a lot of demos and information about IBM Cognos 10, along with solutions from SPSS, Clarity and Netezza. I will deliver a bunch of keynotes and presentations across Europe.
  • Business Analytics Experience: Have you ever participated in a business simulation? This is the perfect opportunity! The Business Analytics Experience workshop allows you to run a fictitious company called Future Chips. Together with other attendees, you will analyze the business, develop plans and fine-tune specific parameters such as pricing, marketing tactics etc.. The workshop is a lot of fun and really let’s you experience what it means to fully leverage business analytics. You can find out more about this in a prior post on this blog. The complimentary workshops are run across Europe and North America.
  • Best Practices in Action: Being successful with business analytics requires more than just technology. You also need to implement business best practices such as rolling forecasts, driver-based planning and such. Over the past few years, my colleagues and I have therefore developed a bunch of workshops that focus on sharing a lot of proven practices and how to best get started with implementing them. This fall we will focus on Rolling Forecasts, Budgeting and Dashboard Design. You can find out about the upcoming schedule on the Speaking & Events page on this blog. I will update that page as soon as the schedule has been confirmed. You can also find some additional information about these type of workshops on this blog.

Hope to see you at one of these events! I

IBM Performance
Performance 2010 – Stop-over in Dubai

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