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Mapping the many faces of “retention”

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Everybody knows what “retention” means until they have to design a metric. Ken Rudin, once of LucidEra and now general manager of analytics at the games site Zynga, thought that he and his team could “put something together” quickly — but it actually took “four solid weeks of discussion and debate.”

About 50 million people play Zynga games every day. It’s the leading online social gaming platform, according to Ken, and it’s grown from zero in 2007 to revenues of “a few” hundred million dollars annual revenue. Every day, the company captures 20 to 30 billion records of data, and Ken and his team use that data to improve revenue, viral marketing — and customer retention.… Read the rest “Mapping the many faces of “retention””

SAS finance architect is out to overhaul credit-scoring metrics

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Some loan officers used to go by rules of thumb. There were “The Three B’s: never lend to beauticians, bartenders or barbers” and “The Three P’s: never lend to preachers, plumbers or prostitutes.” Now we have an automated system, but it can’t tell an upstanding banker from a down-on-his-luck bartender.

Imagine a high-level banker who leaves his job for a promotion in another state. He’s trusted and respected for the job he did as senior risk manager, reporting to the board of directors, at a 19-branch bank in Atlanta. But for moving and taking that new job, his credit score declines.… Read the rest “SAS finance architect is out to overhaul credit-scoring metrics”

The nose still knows better than Web 2.0

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Several hundred practioners of the many aspects of business intelligence are gathering here in San Diego for this week’s TDWI conference. They know how to clean data, enable fast searches, design insight-accelerating tools and other wonders—and yet no one yet has a reliable metric to score restaurants. We still have to go out and sniff.

You’re now screaming at me: ask your concierge! I did. She sent me to Oceanaire, the Blue Point and several others. But all looked too slick and none smelled good.

Other readers are screaming different advice: look at Zagat, at TripAdvisor, at Google Earth! I did.… Read the rest “The nose still knows better than Web 2.0”