Why Grails Is Important
Reusable components are the Holy Grail of software development—pun intended. The promise of rapidly creating reliable software from shared, reusable components has been the quest of software development companies and countless open-source initiatives since the early...
Data Mining: Five Smooth Stones
The April 7, 2014 issue of the Financial Post contains an article titled “New weapon for small businesses: data mining” by David Bradbury. Bradbury leads with, “The David and Goliath story is an old one, and for small companies, it’s still relevant.” Spieker Point...
Analytics, Coffee and Browser Stats
A couple years ago, my Linux laptop wouldn't connect to a customer's projector before a sales pitch meeting we were in. Not being a Windows guy, I bought a Mac laptop, even though I was vehemently opposed to Apple and it's high priced hardware at the time. I slowly...
What is a Domain Expert?
We like to work with our customer's domain experts; they are extremely important to help us understand what our customer's data is telling us. I received a question last week: "What is a 'domain expert'?" Let me share a couple of simple examples: Let’s say a...
Fleet Tracking: Analytics In Your Engine
A number of years ago, Spieker Point did a fleet tracking project for a customer where we put a custom built computer into logging trucks, and measured all kinds of data on the truck: while in transit to pick up the load, the weight while loading, while sitting in the...
Adjusting Software Quality – Should We?
Last week a customer/partner was in town from Germany kicking off a new project. This person works in the manufacturing industry, consulting to his customers in the manufacturing space in Germany. Every time I'm with him, I'm always amazed by the German ethics in...
The Healthy, (More Complex) Barber, Part 4
The Upsell Finally - products. I use a little hair product to tame my crazy hair. If used properly, the tub of product should last about 6 months. The barber should know that if my wife is getting ahold of the "repurchase" responsibility for my product, she will...
The Healthy Barber, Part 3
Customer Return Probability Last post, I talked about customer types, buying habits/frequency and the products that they could be upsold with. We went a little bit further in the detail of how each of those aspects of the barbershop business looks, but this week, we...
The Healthy Barber, Part 2
Customer Relationship Management Last post, I talked a little about how analytics can be used to improve a barbershop's operations and business processes. The three key areas that I mentioned were: Customer Profile Buyer Behavior Cross-selling/Upselling How do these...
The Healthy Barber, Part 1: Predictive Analytics and getting what you want
Part 1 – Introduction to Barbershop Analytics I am often amazed at how enlightened a business can suddenly become by using the information that it has in their databases. Properly collecting and farming information that can allow a business to understand more about...
Weighting K-Means
Here is a brief introduction to some of the things we do with different data. Buckle up readers, this may get a little geeky! But it’s really not that bad – follow the steps and let’s work through it together! Let’s say a business has a data set (what business...
Process Discovery: Being Barbara Walters
Barbara Walters is perhaps the most notorious news interviewer in recent memory. She never shied away from asking the “tough questions”, and not letting the person she’s interviewing provide a “politician’s answer” and squirm out of the tight spot. She’s fair, and...