Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    image fx (60)
    Data Analytics Driving the Modern E-commerce Warehouse
    13 Min Read
    big data analytics in transporation
    Turning Data Into Decisions: How Analytics Improves Transportation Strategy
    3 Min Read
    sales and data analytics
    How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
    9 Min Read
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: First Look – Opera Solutions
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Big Data > Data Mining > First Look – Opera Solutions
AnalyticsBusiness IntelligenceData MiningData Quality

First Look – Opera Solutions

JamesTaylor
JamesTaylor
6 Min Read
SHARE

I got a chance to catch up with Opera Solutions recently. A company that aims to improve “machine intelligence” and couple it with human insight to help companies with sustained profit growth, Opera has 400 staff worldwide with over 125 analytic scientists. This makes it a very large analytic solutions provider in a market dominated by small specialty firms.

I got a chance to catch up with Opera Solutions recently. A company that aims to improve “machine intelligence” and couple it with human insight to help companies with sustained profit growth, Opera has 400 staff worldwide with over 125 analytic scientists. This makes it a very large analytic solutions provider in a market dominated by small specialty firms. Like me, Opera sees a compelling case for applying “machine intelligence” – to develop smart (enough) systems I guess. And like other companies who have studied results, they see analytics improving results significantly. For instance, an assessment of technology companies found that those using these analytic techniques had better sales and EPS growth by a significant margin.

Opera sees a growing opportunity for analytics. With “big data” and with continually changing or flowing data, they feel the traditional approach to mining data has to change. They argue that it must be possible to extract more meaning or signal from an environment with more noise, it must be possible to bring human insight and analytic insight into the same environment and all of this must be delivered through a widespread environment that permeates all channels. They really focus on combining human intelligence with machine intelligence and take a lesson from chess where machines have beaten human experts in specific instances but the combination of an OK player with a machine creates an unbeatable combination.

Opera has built a global team of 120+ scientists, libraries of techniques, user interface technology, simulation/simulation tools, technology for finding signal in noise and various specific platforms. Companies work with Opera by buying Insight Bureau Services (recurring insights delivered as a service) or through various consulting, partnership or licensing deals. Opera has six areas of focus:

More Read

You Don’t Need a Golden Ticket to Win With Analytics
The Perils of Marketing Attribution
The Trouble with Data
Beware the ‘Facebook Effect’ when service orienting information technology.
Using Deep Learning For Nuanced Marketing Strategies After COVID-19
  • Marketing services
  • Credit and risk services
  • Supply chain services
  • Global markets analytics
  • Data transformation services
  • Custom applications.

In these different areas they often develop platforms to solve specific challenges- how to combine human intelligence with machine intelligence to solve a particular problem. For instance, Mobiuss is a platform for portfolio risk and valuation initially focused on Residential Mortgage Backed Securities. The platform takes a bond which may have 4,000 to 5,000 individual mortgages.  It then applies advanced likelihood/willingness to pay models determine the default and prepayment risk of  each individual borrower.  It allows a user to vary scenario variables like employment and interest rates, then model the cash flow for different scenarios.

This allows pricing and analysis so that buy / keep / sell / hedge decisions can be made. As I like to say a platform like this lets you use an aggregate of granular simulations rather than trying to simulate against an aggregate. The platform actually runs various decisions (will this person pay off, default etc) using very granular data then aggregates these to provide an overall risk.

Companies in this space are only making hundreds of decisions a day – not normally enough to justify a decision management platform like this – but these decisions are being made based on millions of elements so this volume is more than enough to require a degree of automation like this.

Another example was a used car auction pricing optimization solution. This company had 250,000 cars come back off lease each year and wanted to optimize the floor price for auctions. The system uses auctions of other similar cars from other vendors and previous sales to predict the best floor prices for the cars coming up tomorrow (this is location specific). It also makes recommendations as to where to send cars to be auctioned to maximize the value of the auction.

I liked the way this solution exposed the analytic models to the user and made it clear what was making a difference so that the person can change elements that drive the price and then get a new floor price. Rather than allowing a simple override, the people using the system change the quality of the inputs using their visual and business skills and this better data drives a new (analytic) decision. A nice example of how to bring human decision makers into the loop without losing the analytic edge.

Opera is a company with big ambitions and some interesting solutions. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Copyright © 2011 http://jtonedm.com James Taylor

Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

image fx (60)
How Finance & BI Teams Choose Accounting Software
Big Data Business Intelligence Exclusive
Why the AI Race Is Being Decided at the Dataset Level
Why the AI Race Is Being Decided at the Dataset Level
Artificial Intelligence Big Data Exclusive
image fx (60)
Data Analytics Driving the Modern E-commerce Warehouse
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
ai for building crypto banks
Building Your Own Crypto Bank with AI
Blockchain Exclusive

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

What topics would you like to see covered at a KDD conference?

1 Min Read
AnalyticsMarketing

Savvy Brands in Developing Economies Merge Analytics and Influencer Marketing

5 Min Read
business intelligence benefits for companies trying to get through the pandemic
Analytics

Use a Data Strategy to Make Your Startup Profitable

7 Min Read

Eli Goldratt and Tom H. C. Anderson Discuss Sales Forecasting

11 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

AI and chatbots
Chatbots and SEO: How Can Chatbots Improve Your SEO Ranking?
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Exclusive
ai chatbot
The Art of Conversation: Enhancing Chatbots with Advanced AI Prompts
Chatbots

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?