Business term of the day - Term for July 21, 2013: "Behavioral Analytics"

Keywords: behavioral analytics

Behavioral Analytics is a subset of business analytics that focuses on how and why users of eCommerce platforms, online games, & web applications behave. While business analytics has a more broad focus on the who, what, where and when of business intelligence, behavioral analytics narrows that scope, allowing one to take seemingly unrelated data points in order to extrapolate, predict and determine errors and future trends. It takes a more holistic and human view of data, connecting individual data points to tell us not only what is happening, but also how and why it is happening.

Behavioral analytics utilizes user data captured while the web application, game, or website is in use by analytic platforms like Google Analytics. Platform traffic data like navigation paths, clicks, social media interactions, purchasing decisions and marketing responsiveness is all recorded. Also, other more specific advertising metrics like click-to-conversion time, and comparisons between other metrics like the monetary value of an order and the amount of time spent on the site. These data points are then compiled and analyzed, whether by looking and the timeline progression from when a user first entered the platform until a sale was made, or what other products a user bought or looked at before this purchase. Behavioral analysis allows future actions and trends to be predicted based on all the data collected.

Business term of the day - Term for July 20, 2013: "Barter"

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Barter is a system of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is distinguishable from gift economies in that the reciprocal exchange is immediate and not delayed in time. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral (i.e., mediated through barter organizations) and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a very limited extent. Barter usually replaces money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, such as when the currency may be either unstable (e.g., hyperinflation or deflationary spiral) or simply unavailable for conducting commerce.

David Graeber argues that the inefficiency of barter in archaic society has been used by economists since Adam Smith to explain the emergence of money, the economy, and hence the discipline of economics itself. "Economists of the contemporary orthodoxy... propose an evolutionary development of economies which places barter, as a 'natural' human characteristic, at the most primitive stage, to be superseded by monetary exchange as soon as people become aware of the latter's greater efficiency." However, extensive investigation by anthropologists like Graeber has since then established that "No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing. But there are economies today which are nevertheless dominated by barter."

Since the 1830s, direct barter in western market economies has been aided by exchanges which frequently utilize alternative currencies based on the labour theory of value, and designed to prevent profit taking by intermediators. Examples include the Owenite socialists, the Cincinnati Time store, and more recently Ithaca HOURS (Time banking) and the LETS system.

Obama: Trayvon Martin ‘could have been me 35 years ago’

President Barack Obama, making his first public remarks on the George Zimmerman acquittal, said on Friday that many African-Americans believe that “both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different” if Trayvon Martin had been white.
“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” Obama said somberly during a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room. “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
In searingly personal terms, Obama described his experience with race-based prejudice. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store—that includes me,” he said.
“There are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of...Read more...

Business term of the day - Term for July 19, 2013: "Banking business process outsourcing or banking BPO"

Keywords: Banking business process outsourcing, banking BPO

Banking business process outsourcing or banking BPO is a highly specialized sourcing strategy used by banks and lending institutions to support the business acquisition and account servicing activities associated with the customer lending lifecycle. These specific BPO services are usually offered through multi-year service-level agreements for all or portions of the credit card lending, consumer lending or commercial lending segments of the financial services market. Some larger financial services organizations choose to extend their sourcing strategy to include other outsourced services such as ITO systems and software, human resources outsourcing and benefits services, finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) services, procurement or training outsourcing.

Banking BPO services are typically defined by industry analysts, advisors and leaders in the sourcing industry, such as the set of discrete processes or transactional activities that support the lending lifecycle as follows:

• New customer acquisition services include telemarketing activities, application processing, underwriting, customer or merchant credit evaluation and verification, credit approval, document processing, account opening and customer care and on-boarding.
• Account servicing processes for credit cards or consumer loans. These most commonly include payment processing systems and services, customer service or call center support operations (voice, digital, email and mail services), product renewals, and loan disbursement; document management services such as printing and mailing of statements, networked printing and storage solutions; collections, recoveries processing, default management, risk management and foreclosure.
• Consumer and commercial lending post origination transaction processing services, such as check processing, clearance and settlement services, remittance, and records management.
• Back office transaction process management for loans or credit card portfolios, including custody services, fraud mitigation and detection, regulatory and program compliance, portfolio analytics, reporting, conversions, management of technology platforms, interface for customer data and custom development.

Business term of the day - Term for July 18, 2013: "Balanced scorecard"

Keywords: balanced scorecard

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. It is perhaps the best known of several such frameworks (it was the most widely adopted performance management framework reported in the 2010 annual survey of management tools undertaken by Bain & Company.) Since its original incarnation in the early 1990s as a performance measurement tool, the BSC has evolved to become an effective strategy execution framework. The BSC concept as put forth by Drs. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton is now seen as a critical foundation in a holistic strategy execution process that, besides helping organizations articulate strategy in actionable terms, provides a road map for strategy execution, for mobilizing and aligning executives and employees, and making strategy a continual process.

Business term of the day - Term for July 17, 2013: "Backsourcing"

Backsourcing is a term that more precisely describes the process of bringing jobs previously outsourced back under the roof of the company to be performed internally.
Backsourcing has been increasingly discussed as companies decide to cease outsourcing operations, whether because of the issues outsourcing agreements encounter, because of pressure to bring jobs back to their home country, or simply because it has stopped being efficient to outsource a given task outside of a company.
Backsourcing is sometimes substituted and confused with "in-sourcing", however in-sourcing simply refers to conducting certain activities in-house (whether or not by a third party), while backsourcing refers to bringing previously outsourced activities back in-house.

Business term of the day - Term for July 16, 2013: "Back Office"

Back office - ENLARGE

A back office is a part of most corporations where tasks dedicated to running the company itself take place. The term "back office" comes from the building layout of early companies where the front office would contain the sales and other customer-facing staff and the back office would be those manufacturing or developing the products or involved in administration but without being seen by customers. Although the operations of a back office are seldom prominent, they are a major contributor to a business.
Back offices may be located somewhere other than company headquarters. Many are in areas and countries with cheaper rent and lower labor costs. Some office parks such as MetroTech Center provide back offices for tenants whose front offices are in more expensive neighborhoods. Back office functions can be outsourced to consultants and contractors, including ones in other countries.