Doug Laney, of Gartner, has penned a real piece of candy humour on his blog at http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/gartner-shares-findings-from-north-pole-inc-big-data-assessment/. In this report on North Pole, Inc, he assesses their current technology environment, their leadership styles and some of their data weaknesses. I chuckled all the way through it.
Analytic Opportunities Beyond Just “Naughty or Nice”
From a business intelligence perspective, Gartner found that NPI is lagging others in the shipping and distribution industry. Its enterprise data warehouse , called “Chimneys”, is really a collection of stovepipe query and reporting systems, some still relying on first-generation BI tools like Red Brick. Gartner recommended evolving to a logical data warehouse architecture for most low-frequency queries to enable more insightful cross-functional, federated analytics.
Some predictive analytics is done to select appropriate toys based on NITS behavior modeling, demographics and prior-year presents. Gartner recommended that this system be enhanced to account for factors such as sibling response, damage/loss propensity, and social content analysis. NPI however is working on mobile-enabling Santa in the field during mall appearances so he can advise on toy availability and alternatives (as necessary) in real-time while a child is on his lap. This system is expected to be in place for the 2013 holiday season. Gartner analysts pointed out that this new capability would also require enhancing its “Tommy” toy order management system to capture full catalog and supply chain information from its suppliers. Today NPI only maintains this tracking data on actual orders.
Grab your candy cane mocha cinnamon double wet latte and read up. Your boss is online shopping for his wife on LastMinuteNotTooExpensiveGifts.com anyway. Read up.