Data Mining for Flight Safety Gets Notoriety

The Washington Post published an article about how data mining has been improving airline safety titled "Avoiding Plane Crashes By Crunching Numbers, Data Mining Helps Identify Subtle Flaws". Staff writer Del Wilber's piece points out that data mining is part of the new era in the airlines industry, which has been without a major U.S. commercial aircraft crash since August 2006.

For ten years ProWorks has been helping major airlines to improve flight safety through secure safety reporting systems, performance monitoring systems and FAA approved flight operations quality assurance (FOQA) systems mentioned in the article.

These intensive large scale projects are generally unnoticed by the general public outside of the airlines industry. It is understandable, considering the nature of an effective safety system is to avoid abnormal and potentially hazardous events.

Currently, ProWorks is working on the Distributed National FOQA Archive (DNFA). The FAA managed DNFA system is designed to analyze data to identify trends from a single aggregated source of flight data and safety reports. Flight safety analysts are able to access the data while the integrity, security, and confidentiality of the original data sources is maintained.

Thank you to Del Wilber and The Washington Post for noticing how data mining is contributing to the absence airlines flight safety in the news media.

ProWorks Recieves 2007 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium

ProWorks President Gary Prothero recieved a letter of congratulations from Samuel W. Bodman, the Secretary of Energy and head of the United States Department of Energy for being named a recipient of the 2007 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. The award presented by the Federal Laboratory Consortium recognizes the outstanding accomplishment of transferring the ProWorks co-developed software named the The Morning Report to the commercial marketplace.

The Morning Report is an R&D 100 Award winning airline safety tool. The application analyzes hundreds of commercial aircraft in-flight data variables, such as speed, wing angle, equipment status, and engine temperature from thousands of flights a day. The result is a daily report that allows the rapid identification of anomalies, and the prevention of possible accidents. Delivering aviation experts with the reports generated by The Morning Report will greatly improve the safety of flight operations.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in collaboration with Battelle, NASA-Ames, ProWorks, Flight Safety Consultants and Safe Flight, developed the technology and licensed it to SAGEM Avionics, Inc. for commercial use. The technology is also being adapted to identify typical patterns and atypical events in other areas. Gary Prothero and ProWorks continues to provide the IT services behind the development of technologies related to The Morning Report.

Fuel the People Engine with Analysis

CRM Magazine recently published a great article written by Jim Dickie titled Fueling the CRM Engine. The sub-title, Sales reps are spinning their wheels waiting for sales knowledge and relevant management tools to be integrated, summarizes the artcles message.

The key reason, he explains is that many companies have installed CRM applications expecting to see improvements simply based on the technology's presence. Somehow Dickie reached back fifteen years for a great quote by Jessica Keyes: "Technology does not beget a competitive advantage, any more than paint and canvas beget a Van Gogh." Fifteen years ago the Pentium was just coming out, but this statement still really applies in today's market.

The fact that "sales people still cannot easily get access to the knowledge they need to effectively compete," is reinforced by citing a 2007 analysis performed by CSO Insights. Firms were asked what information their salespeople needed to sell effectively, and to assess how easy it was for the salespeople to access that information.

Several very basic types of sales information appear on the resulting list. Namely, simple contact information, purchasing history, case studies, executive profiles, previous sales and marketing efforts and the customer's industry. It makes sense to the canny salesperson who is used to having to "Google" the customer, look up past purchase orders or even sift through pages of web content to track down the name of a decision maker before picking up the phone. This is really some very basic but critical information. So basic that it's painful to think that salespeople have to spend any significant time and effort to get at it. Precious time and effort that could otherwise be spent selling.

The process of collecting the required sales information must become as automated as possible in order to minimize the amount of detective work done by salespeople. A great deal of this information is readily available on the web databases. Salespeople know this because they "Google" for the information. The trouble is that locating good information can be like finding a needle in the giant haystack of web content. A task that text mining is perfectly suited for. A text mining tool can meticulously comb web content and analyze the results to eliminate unneeded information and report significant customer information such as contact information, executive information, industry, customer lists, partners and recent events. Ideally all of this would be connected to a CRM system with customer reports available to salespeople at the push of a button.

With all due respect to the author Mr. Dickie, I would have titled the article "Fueling the People Engine". Simply fueling CRM still does not beget a Van Gogh. The the real engine in the sales process are the salespeople and businesses are clearly saying they need more access to higher quality food.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation

Microsoft recently released the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation, a shared-source download for Microsoft CRM customers and partners. The Analytics Foundation is available as a free of charge shared-source download at CodePlex. The current release is in beta and includes sample code, pre-built templates and components, and guidelines for building business intelligence solutions for Microsoft CRM.

I got a chance to see a demo last month in San Diego at the Convergence event for Microsoft Dynamics and speak with the Wan Li Zhu, who is the coordinator of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation project. It looked good. Wan showed us some very nice OLAP integration with Excel 2007, a service dashboard, lead qualification and sales analysis. The views were very easy to understand and it was all right inside of CRM.

Based on this release and a few of the presentation sessions at Convergence it looks like Microsoft Dynamics is definitely trying to enhance the value of their CRM solution with analytics. Wan Li Zhu spoke with us at the exposition and described the Analytics Foundation as something Microsoft would like to see partners run with. More recently on the CodePlex message board Wan stated that Microsoft is intending to make the Analytics Foundation a product but did not have a schedule to share.

The Analytics Foundation data sheet presents the software as "a suite of business intelligence products that work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0." The CodePlex description of the Analytics Foundation as a "business intelligence solution accelerator" to help partners deliver analytics to customers is more accurate. Wan stated to us that support for the Analytics Foundation was still available only by blog and forum. Based on the communication thus far it does not look like Microsoft is ready to fully support the Analytics Foundation.

That does not mean that the Analytics Foundation is without value to end-users. As a Microsoft Partner and developers of analysis software, we see some great things in the Analytics Foundation to take advantage of to benefit CRM customers. Data analysis by nature is not a cookie cutter solution. Quality results require the analysis to be fitted to specific problems and business processes. When trying to extract useful information out of complex business data, CRM customers that do not have the benefit of in-house analysis experts will want the assistance of partner with experience in analysis and CRM. A good analysis partner will tailor what Microsoft has provided through the Analysis Foundation to address the unique needs and problems of individual organizations.

ProWorks is interested in working with CRM partners and customers who would like to get a head start with CRM analytics. We can help you take advantage of the Analytics Foundation or even create customized analyses designed specifically to meet a special need. ProWorks is particularly interested in the areas of predictive analysis, data mining and analyising unstructured data such as the text found in blogs. Even if you just want to chat about the future direction of CRM analytics, shoot us an email at crm@proworks.com.

Some of the customer benefits of the Analytics Foundation listed by Microsoft include:

• Executives can better track and manage business performance
  through dashboards
• Managers and employees can create reports quickly and
  make better decisions
• Sales, marketing, service employees can identify new opportunities
  to grow revenue and increase efficiency through
  predictive analytics.

Analytics Foundation Requirements:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1
• SQL Server 2005 (Standard or above)
• Internet Information Services (IIS)
• Both .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0
• Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Windows SharePoint Services with SP2
• Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (required for editing and creating new scorecards)
• Visual Studio 2005
• Excel 2007 (recommended)

ProWorks Exhibits at Convergence

Last week Jason and I attended Microsoft's annual Convergence conference and exposition showcasing the Microsoft Dynamics line of business solutions. This was my second year to the event and I was pleased that San Diego was the location. The weather was great and the city fondly reminded me of Honolulu. Reportedly over 8000 people were in attendance, evidence that the Microsoft Dynamics community is continuing to grow. Again this year I was impressed that the event planners were able to manage that many people and make there time productive. The exposition hours seemed to be extended this year. At times there is quite a bit of traffic which was great for us. Jason and I got a chance to speak with a number of CRM partners and customers. I noticed a distinct increase in the awareness around CRM analytics and predictive analysis. We have to thank Microsoft for at least some of that. They ran a CRM analysis demo in the expo hall and had a couple of educational sessions devoted specifically to CRM analytics. As partners and customers begin to complete their inital implementations of CRM they seem to be looking for ways to take advantage of their growing CRM data.

One of our biggest challenges has been to clearly present the potential benefits of CRM analytics. Good analysis has been limited to data experts and executives for so long I think everyone else naturally asks "so how does this help me?" I am really looking for forward to Microsoft contributing to the general credibility of CRM analytics and predictive analysis and helping ProWorks to focus on meeting specific analysis needs for CRM users.

I would not have complained if the exposition hours were reduced a bit. Some of times overlap with the learning sessions and the number of visitors can be pretty minimal.

The structured networking could also have been much better. I completely agree with Mike Snyder's assessment of the networking system on the Sonoma Partners Blog. Last years system was not the greatest solution. This years new solution was terrible by comparison. I hope the event coordinators notice a reduction in scheduled meetings through the networking system and give it some serious attention for next year.

It was great trip. Thank you to Microsoft for hosting a fun and productive event. The entertainment was great. Where do you find an old Asteroids arcade game? I particularly enjoyed the sushi table and the baked brie. And thank you to all the Dynamics partners and customers that visited our booth and spoke with us.

Convergence 2007

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at Microsoft Convergence 2007!

We enjoyed our time in San Diego and made some great contacts. Shortly we will be announcing the winners of the books we were giving away.

If you want to see a demo or would like to learn more about our predictive analysis and text mining for CRM, just contact us at crm@proworks.com.

Sharing the Benefits of Data Mining at the Olsen Thielen Technologies Summit

Earlier this month ProWorks was invited to attended and contribute to the 4th Annual Olsen Thielen Technologies Summit and Year End 2006 in St. Paul, Minnesota. About a hundred local area businesses attended the two-day Summit to learn how Olsen Thielen Technologies and the Microsoft Dynamics line of business solutions can help drive their success.

Olsen Thielen Technologies (OTT) is a progressive information technology consulting company that provides a wide array of products and services for small to mid-market businesses in the Upper Midwest. Their services include implementing solutions that extend from front office CRM to back office operational applications. OTT is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with competencies in Microsoft Business Solutions and Networking Infrastructure technologies.

Jason Prothero and I were pleased to present at two of the Microsoft CRM educational sessions alongside Gretchen Mann, CRM Practice Manager and Tad Thompson, Senior CRM Consultant with the OTT Microsoft Dynamics CRM team. We concentrated on educating the audience about SQL Server Analysis Services 2005, it's data mining capabilities and how data mining is able to positively impact regular business processes and daily tasks.

View ProWorks OTT Summit PowerPoint Slide Deck

A common theme throughout the CRM sessions was the importance of utilizing CRM to empower employees and drive businesses forward. ProWorks could not support this message more. As Gretchen Mann pointed out during her presentation, simply storing information within CRM can be compared to throwing the information into a waste basket. Businesses are impacted when that information is transformed into actionable insight through data mining.

Thank you to the great folks at Olsen Thielen Technologies for allowing us help spread the message of CRM and data mining.