European Directions 2008 – a rewarding experience for everyone

Athens – one of the cradles of civilisation, birthplace of the Olympic Games and, in May 2008, the venue for SPSS's European Directions conference as some 400 SPSS customers and partners gathered for two days of networking, presentations and keynote addresses.

Presiding over the event was Jack Noonan, SPSS Inc. Chairman, President and CEO who, it was pointed out, is now the longest-serving, non-founding CEO of a software firm.

In the opening session, Jack threw himself open to questions during an on-stage interview. When asked what the highlight had been during his 15 years at the helm, he replied: “The most exciting time has to be now. Predictive analytics has come into vogue, and whereas at our last conference we focused on competing on analytics, this year, we're talking about predictive analytics in the enterprise.

“It's been an evolutionary process, and every year there are more exciting new tools that improve your effectiveness. The most rewarding experience for me has been listening to and working with customers on this predictive analytics journey,” he said.

“We have been involved with the market research community, and now we are seeing enterprise feedback management technology evolving so that you can use it in scoring environments to get just-in-time feedback and once you can get feedback in real time, then you can dramatically improve interactions with people.”

“Over the next five years, I can see significant adoption by more and more people,” he predicted. “We're already seeing competency centres being built within organisations just to focus on this technology.”

As evidence, Jack cited the book Super Crunchers: why thinking by numbers is the new way to be smart. So who better to deliver the first keynote of the conference than the author, Ian Ayres, professor at Yale School of Management and an expert on new methods of prediction and decision-making.

Ayres calls these ‘Super Crunching’ – analysing massive databases to influence real-world decisions – and he produced some fascinating examples, including one featuring the actress Nicole Kidman’s performance in the film The Interpreter. Risk management firm Epagogix made a series of predictions about the film’s financial performance before the script was even written.

 “They used neural networks,” Ayres explained. “They coded 200 variables about past movies and developed a predictive model into which they put information about scripts, actors, directors and so on. They found some interesting things. The identity of the actors didn't actually matter that much, but the location did, for example.

“They were also able to make predictions about alternative scenarios. If there had been a young sidekick for Nicole Kidman then the movie would have made $12.3 million more. If they had emphasised New York and the United Nations more, then they would have made $4.9 million more. If they done both, then they would have made $20 million more, not $17 million. Now, if Epagogix can succeed with predictive analytics in a difficult context, then the same techniques can be used elsewhere.”

It wasn't all work, of course. One evening, delegates headed off to Akrotiri, one of the most glamorous venues on the Apollo Coast. The delegates had exclusive use of the club for the entire evening and had a great time meeting, mingling and socialising over drinks and a light supper.

Back at the conference on Day Two, the keynote session was a panel debate which set out to explore the experiences of some of the pioneers in business intelligence and analytics. It was led by Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, research, of analyst firm Nucleus Research, who challenged the panel members to describe their roles in terms that their mothers could understand.

Rising to the occasion were Alex Kormushoff, senior vice president of worldwide field operations at SPSS; Hanno Lorenzl, principal, Waterstone Analytics LLC; Alastair White, customer strategy director, Royal & SunAlliance; and Federico Cesconi, head of analytical CRM, Cablecom GmbH. Between them, they highlighted the challenges and opportunities presented the Predictive Enterprise. 

As Day Two drew to a close, delegates headed home – all richly rewarded with the added insights into Predictive Analytics that they had gained from SPSS and from networking with their peers.