Business Analytics Conference

Set for April 10-12 in Chicago, meeting features world-class presentations, speakers and special events.

By David Leonhardi and Teresa Cryan

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences’ (INFORMS) Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research will be held April 10-12 in Chicago at the Marriott Downtown, located in the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

The practitioner-oriented conference will feature world-class organizations showcasing strategic use of business analytics and operations research to gain a competitive advantage. Attendees can pick and choose from several focused tracks, including “The Analytics Process,” “Supply Chain Management,” “Public Sector Analytics,” “Soft Skills for Analysts,” “Forecasting and Risk Analysis,” “Decision Analytics” and “Software Tutorials.”

Keynote speaker Chuck Holland, VP of Industrial Engineering at UPS, heads an impressive list of speakers that includes Jeanne G. Harris (executive research fellow, Accenture Institute for High Performance, and co-author of the best-selling book, “Competing on Analytics”) and Rainer Dronzek (director of Operations Research, McDonald’s Corporation). For the complete list of speakers, see accompanying sidebar story.

A track on forecasting, developed by Michael Gilliland of SAS and Peter Buczkowski from Disney, will feature talks by analytics professionals at McDonald’s, Bank of America, Ford, Cisco and Accenture. Frank Koch of Chevron, Stefan Karisch from Jeppesen and Paul Wicker from Decision Strategies are developing a five-session track on decision analysis featuring speakers from HP, Stanford, Kromite and others. The Analytics Process track showcases the work of companies like Walmart/Sam’s Club, Teradata, Best Buy and IBM. A track on supply chain management deals with end-to-end integration at UPS, Kroger, United-Continental, and other top companies.

	Keynote Presentations
	Chuck Holland, VP of Industrial Engineering, on “O.R.: Getting the Attention of Senior Executives” Shelley H. Metzenbaum, Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management, U.S. Office of Management and Budget, on “Analytics in Government: Essential for Understanding Problems, Setting Priorities and Spreading Success” Panel Discussion: “Growing an Analytics Capability” – Thornton May, Futurist and Executive Director, IT Leadership Academy – with panelists: Bill Hostmann, VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner; Larry Rosenberger, Analytic Research Fellow and former CEO, FICO; Kaiser Fung, author of Numbers Rule Your World; and Scott Friesen Sr., Director of Analytics, Customer Insights, Best Buy. Reprise of the 2011 Edelman Award winning presentation

Thornton May, futurist and executive director of the IT Leadership Academy, will moderate a special high-level panel on growing an internal analytics capability.

The Franz Edelman Competition and Awards Gala, honoring the best in applied high-end analytics and considered the “Super Bowl of Operations Research,” is always a highlight of the conference. The 2011 Edelman finalists include:

CSAV for “A Strategic Empty Container Logistics Optimization in a Major Shipping Company”
Fluor Corporation for “Project Management and Change - A Simulation Based System for Better Performance”
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China for “Branch Reconfiguration Practice through Operations Research in ICBC”
InterContinental Hotels Group for “Retail Price Optimization at InterContinental Hotels Group”
Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator for “Operations Research Ramps Up the Power Market in the Midwest”
The State of New York for “Tax Collection Optimization for the State of New York”

A workshop on soft skills for analysts, which has been the focus of a pre-conference workshop for the past four years and will again this year, will now also be integrated into the regular program. Freeman Marvin and Don Buckshaw of Innovative Decisions, who helped design the soft-skills workshop, will lead the track. The five sessions include talks on executive decision-makers and cognitive styles, project team building and problem framing.

The conference has built a reputation over the years for not only outstanding speakers and presentations, but also for its rewarding networking opportunities and other special events. Along those lines, this year’s conference will feature the following:

Analytics Connect Job Fair: Meet with employers from a wide variety of industries and sectors seeking new talent for their organizations. Sponsored by Analytics magazine.
Executive Forum: Provides senior executives with a bottom-line understanding of how analytics is being used to drive better business decisions.
Technology Workshops: In-depth training from leading solution providers, free to conference registrants.
Birds of a Feather: Facilitated discussion groups provide structured networking around cutting-edge topics.
INFORMS Professional Colloquium: Intensive career guidance for practice-oriented master’s and doctoral students.
Richard E. Rosenthal Young Researcher Connection: Exclusive networking program for junior faculty and young industry practitioners.

For complete conference information, go to: http://meetings2.informs.org/Analytics2011/

Preliminary Speaker List

The speakers listed here will be joined by 25 others from leading companies, government agencies and nonprofits to demonstrate how organizations are leveraging business analytics and O.R. for strategic advantage.

The Analytics Process

Accenture – Jeanne G. Harris, Director of Research, on “Will OR/MS Professionals Help Put Analytics to Work?”
Walmart/Sam’s Club – Daniel Thorpe, Sr. Director of Advanced Analytics, Global Insights; and Elpida Ormanidou, Director, HR Business Analytics & Budgeting
SAS – Radhika Kulkarni, Vice President, Advanced Analytics R&D, on “Data-Driven Decisions: The Role of Operations Research in Business Analytics”
Best Buy – Scott Friesen, Sr. Director of Analytics, Customer Insights Unit
Deloitte – John Lucker, Principal, Advanced Analytics & Modeling Practice Leader, and James Guszcza, National Predictive Analytics & Modeling Leader, on “Organizational and Social Challenges of Business Analytics from a Consultant’s Perspective”
North Carolina State Univ. – Michael Rappa, Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Advanced Analytics
Deluxe Corp. – Teri Kaslow, Executive Director, Research and Decision Science
Teradata – Bill Franks, Chief Analytics Officer, Global SAS Program, on “Optimizing Customer Analytics: How Customer Level Web Data Can Help”
Analytics Executive Network – Nathaniel Lin, Founder, on “How to Win with Analytics ...vidi, vici”
IBM Global Services – Christer Johnson, North American BAO Advanced Analytics Leader

Soft Skills for Analysts

Communication Partners – Karl P. Keller, Principal, on “Using Story Telling and Other Rhetorical Structures to Communicate Complex Information”
Emory Univ. – Patrick S. Noonan, Associate Professor, Practice of Decision & Information Analysis, Goizueta Business School, on “Solving the Right Problem: Best Practices for Framing and Scoping a Project”
Professional Training & Coaching – Robert Lapidus, Management Consultant, on “Executive Decision Makers and Core Leadership Styles”
Rosback Enterprises – Katherine Rosback, President, on “Navigating the Decision Dialogue: Putting the ‘D’ back into ‘DA’ ”
Duke University – Robert T. Clemen, Professor of Decision Sciences, The Fuqua School of Business on “Competing Biases in Probability Elicitation: Overconfidence versus Partition Dependence”

Public Sector Analytics

U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security – Stephen Bennett, Assistant Director, Risk Analytics, on “Supporting Homeland Security Decision Making”
Carnegie Mellon Univ. – Jonathan P. Caulkins, Professor of Operations Research & Public Policy, on “Providing a Scientific Basis for Managing Illegal Drug Problems”
Metron Aviation – Norm Fujisaki, Chief Strategy Officer, on “Preparing for a Tidal Wave of Air Traffic for the Soccer World Cup”
Booz Allen Hamilton – Keith Catanzano, Vice President, on “Leveraging O.R. and Analysis for Public Sector Challenges”
Naval Postgraduate School – Lt. Col. Scott T. Nestler, Assistant Professor, on “Analytics in the Fog of War”
U.S. Army – Col. Christopher Hill, Military Deputy Director, Center for Army Analysis
Wayne State Univ. – Kenneth Chelst, Professor and Director of Engineering Management Program, on “Cities in Crisis: Analytics Help Rationalize the Delivery of Police, Fire, and Emergency Medical Services”

Forecasting & Risk Analysis

McDonald’s – Rainer Dronzek, Director of Operations Research, on “Quick Service Restaurant Forecasting: Challenges, Methods and Solutions”
Bank of America – Russell Labe, Director, Decision Support Modeling, on “Developing Econometric Models to Forecast Brokerage Revenue at Bank of America Merrill Lynch”
Cisco Systems – Andrew Fisher, S&OP Manager, and Mert Sanver, Program Manager, on “Large-Scale Statistical Forecasting for Cisco’s High-Tech Demand Patterns”
Accenture – James Hoover, Director, DoD Supply Chain Solutions, on “Deciding Which SKUs to Forecast: Simulating Business Outcomes to Reduce Risk and Investment while Improving the Forecasting Process”
Ford Motor Co. – Thomas A. Montgomery, Technical Expert, Text & Data Mining, on “Prediction Markets: Practical Advice, Secondary Benefits and Some Surprising Results”
ARAMARK – John Toczek, on “Predicting the Hidden Costs of New Business Opportunities through Risk-Based Modeling”

Supply Chain Management

IBM Corp. – Patrice Knight, Vice President, Global Supply Operations, on “Business Analytics and the Supply Chain: The New Path to Value”
UPS – Jack Levis, Director of Process Management, UPS on “Delivering Sustainability at UPS”
MIT – David Simchi-Levi, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems, on “Operations Rules: Delivering Customer Value through Flexible Operations”
P&G – Kevin Norwood, on “The Journey from Single Product Sub-systems to Multi-product Integrated Systems”
United-Continental – Ebru Demirkol, Managing Director, Continuous Improvement and Enterprise Optimization, on “Business Analytics and Optimzation at United”
Kimberly Clark – Daniel Silva Izquierdo, on “Using Optimization and Stochastics to Design a Distribution Center”
IBM Research – Mark Squillante, Research Staff Member & Team Leader, Business Analytics and Mathematical Sciences, on “Integrated Stochastic Resource Planning”

Decision Analysis

Stanford University – Sam L. Savage, Consulting Professor, Management Science & Engineering, on “Decision Analytic Appliances”
Chevron – Margery Connor, Sr. Operations Research Consultant, on “Chevron: Many Tools in Our DA Toolbox”
HP Global Business Services – Rohit Tandon, Worldwide Vice President of Analytics, and Arnab Chakraborty, Director of Analytics, on “Analytics Driven Decision Making for Effective Sales Strategy and Sales Performance”
Kromite – William K. Klimack, Senior Consultant, on “Junior Achievement Uses Multiobjective Decision Analysis to Educate and Inspire More Students”

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