By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data science anayst
    Growing Demand for Data Science & Data Analyst Roles
    6 Min Read
    predictive analytics in dropshipping
    Predictive Analytics Helps New Dropshipping Businesses Thrive
    12 Min Read
    data-driven approach in healthcare
    The Importance of Data-Driven Approaches to Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas
    6 Min Read
    analytics for tax compliance
    Analytics Changes the Calculus of Business Tax Compliance
    8 Min Read
    big data analytics in gaming
    The Role of Big Data Analytics in Gaming
    10 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Miss the Right Connections at Your Own Peril
Share
Notification Show More
Latest News
SMEs Use AI-Driven Financial Software for Greater Efficiency
Artificial Intelligence
data security in big data age
6 Reasons to Boost Data Security Plan in the Age of Big Data
Big Data
data science anayst
Growing Demand for Data Science & Data Analyst Roles
Data Science
ai software development
Key Strategies to Develop AI Software Cost-Effectively
Artificial Intelligence
ai in omnichannel marketing
AI is Driving Huge Changes in Omnichannel Marketing
Artificial Intelligence
Aa
SmartData Collective
Aa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Analytics > Predictive Analytics > Miss the Right Connections at Your Own Peril
AnalyticsPredictive AnalyticsSocial DataSocial Media Analytics

Miss the Right Connections at Your Own Peril

BillFranks
Last updated: 2014/11/14 at 9:00 AM
BillFranks
5 Min Read
SHARE

connection analytics

connection analytics

Historically, most analytics have had laser focus on specific entities like a customer, a product, a vendor, or a variety of others. When performing analysis, the focus is usually purely based upon facts about each entity. For example, each customer’s individual spend, frequency, and demographics. While such analytics have proven quite valuable, they usually don’t account for the relationships between entities and the nature of those relationships.

This is where connection analytics (often called graph analysis) comes into play. Connection analytics is best known for its use in social network analysis, which is commonly used to explore the relationships between people within social media environments. However, connection analytics can be used for a much broader range of purposes that aren’t often given the credit deserved. After all, there are myriad situations where understanding relationships can provide meaningful insights. A few include:

More Read

data science anayst

Growing Demand for Data Science & Data Analyst Roles

Predictive Analytics Helps New Dropshipping Businesses Thrive
The Importance of Data-Driven Approaches to Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas
Analytics Changes the Calculus of Business Tax Compliance
The Role of Big Data Analytics in Gaming
  • The famous approach of taking into account the fact that members of a calling circle have a greatly increased risk of churn as other members of the circle defect to a different telecom service provider.
  • A variation on that example is for human resources to study the relationships between employees as evidenced by email communications to enable appropriate retention actions when an associate resigns.
  • Compliance officers and law enforcement can explore the patterns of communications and transactions to uncover fraudulent or otherwise suspicious activity between people or organizations.
  • Network engineers can explore the communications between various sensors to determine when network traffic is taking unexpected routes that may be caused by trouble with certain pieces of equipment.
  • Marketers can dive more deeply into the indirect linkages between products or product groups to come up with better cross- and up-sell opportunities.

As the examples illustrate, there is broad applicability of connection analytics. However, most organizations have not yet added it to their analytics arsenal.

This is a mistake.

Part of what makes the analysis of connections so powerful is that while virtually every metric typically used for analysis focuses only on facts about each individual entity, the analysis of connections makes it possible to also understand each entity’s relationships to others. The analysis of connections provides distinctive information that has very little overlap with other information typically available.

Of course, analyzing connections on a large scale is a computationally intensive process. To be effective, it is necessary to implement a graph analysis engine. One recent and strong entrant into this area is the Teradata Aster SQL-GR graph engine. This engine allows not just scalable graph analytics to be generated, but also makes it easy to combine graph analytics with a broad range of other analytics. This is important because analyzing connections is rarely all that is needed. Usually multiple types of analysis combined will yield the best results.

The concept of combining multiple types of analysis is very important. In the telecom churn example, service providers don’t react based only upon who is connected to a defecting customer. They also take into account the other factors they know about each customer to determine the risk of churn. For example, customers with longer tenure, multiple services, and multiple sub-accounts will be less likely to churn than newer     customers with only a single, basic service. This will still hold as a customer’s connections defect. The power is in the cumulative effect of all of the information being combined together.

While connection analytics won’t solve all of your organization’s problems, it can probably help solve some of them better. Given that it isn’t widely adopted yet, there is a chance to get a competitive advantage by putting it to use first. Ignore connection analytics at your own peril!

BillFranks November 14, 2014
Share this Article
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn
Share
By BillFranks
Follow:
Bill Franks is Chief Analytics Officer for The International Institute For Analytics (IIA). Franks is also the author of Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave and The Analytics Revolution. His work has spanned clients in a variety of industries for companies ranging in size from Fortune 100 companies to small non-profit organizations. You can learn more at http://www.bill-franks.com.

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

SMEs Use AI-Driven Financial Software for Greater Efficiency
Artificial Intelligence
data security in big data age
6 Reasons to Boost Data Security Plan in the Age of Big Data
Big Data
data science anayst
Growing Demand for Data Science & Data Analyst Roles
Data Science
ai software development
Key Strategies to Develop AI Software Cost-Effectively
Artificial Intelligence

Stay Connected

1.2k Followers Like
33.7k Followers Follow
222 Followers Pin

You Might also Like

data science anayst
Data Science

Growing Demand for Data Science & Data Analyst Roles

6 Min Read
predictive analytics in dropshipping
Predictive Analytics

Predictive Analytics Helps New Dropshipping Businesses Thrive

12 Min Read
data-driven approach in healthcare
Analytics

The Importance of Data-Driven Approaches to Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas

6 Min Read
analytics for tax compliance
Analytics

Analytics Changes the Calculus of Business Tax Compliance

8 Min Read

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

giveaway chatbots
How To Get An Award Winning Giveaway Bot
Big Data Chatbots Exclusive
AI chatbots
AI Chatbots Can Help Retailers Convert Live Broadcast Viewers into Sales!
Chatbots

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US

© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.

Removed from reading list

Undo
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?