Jim Miller

Solve, then Evolve All Cognos TM1 implementations require a strategy to deliver an appropriate reporting solution. This is the plan that will ensure that each business user will have access to all the TM1 data that they need, in the most usable format and in a timely manner. This plan must be based upon environmental […]

I was recently asked by a former colleague of mine to help conduct an appraisal of a large scale Cognos TM1 development project that is planning on sourcing all kinds of data from a large Oracle RDMS. In addition to the “normal” review objectives (is the design appropriate? are best practices being followed? will the […]

Recently, I attended the IBM Vision conference in Orlando. At the conference, I watched a presentation on what our friends at IBM are calling one of their “signature solutions”: CFO Performance Insight. This reminded me of various blog posts of mine, such as: Reengineering the Forecasting Process with Predictive Models (Nov 2nd 2012) and Forecasting […]

CRISP stands for Cross Industry Standard Process. It is a process model that describes commonly used approaches that experts use to tackle problems. Typically, you’ll hear of CRISP in the context of CRISP-DM, defining a process or methodology that breaks the process of data mining into six major phases. A little more about the CRISP […]

  Establishing an organizations center of excellence (COE) takes vision and a strong commitment to overcoming obstacles.  Three common obstacles often encountered on the journey towards excellence are: Complacency, Complexity and Conservatism. Complacency Complacency is the notion that “this works, it’s manageable, so why change it?” This attitude comes from the old saying, “if it’s […]

As promised, today I am sharing the fundamentals of using the LOOP and VECTOR in a SPSS Syntax script. LOOP LOOP is a common programming concept – it simply allows you to apply or execute the same script commands for an identified number of times without having to recode them.   VECTOR A VECTOR is […]

I recently finished another productive mentoring session exploring Data Transformations using SPSS Syntax. We had so much fun using some basic SPSS, I just had to share, so: Getting back to my Predictive startup example, we now have a new version of the quarterly hours file. This one includes a few new columns (“variables” to […]

Continuing my discussion on the use of SPSS Syntax scripting to perform file operations, today I’ve investigated how to use SPSS to perform some very general physical file restructuring. Why is this important? It’s important because it again shows how SPSS can be used to arrange the data pool into the most effective format based […]

My start-up predictive analytics organization “Predictive Performers” wants to do some internal planning. We receive extract files from an an accounting service each month that provide the total hours billed per each of our consultants, along with each consultants hourly rate. The files are saved to a folder on our network: The files also breakout […]

I just returned from the IBM Vision Conference in Orlando, Florida. I attended a session in every available timeslot from Monday morning to Wednesday afternoon and it was worth every single minute of my time! Although there were too many sessions and presenters to mention, here are my “top picks”: Designing Solutions with IBM Cognos […]

The SPSS Syntax Editor (by default, the name of the new syntax window is SPSS Statistics Syntax Editor). Is divided into 4 areas (or “panes”):   Editor Pane The editor pane is the main part of the syntax editor and it is here where you perform your scripting. Gutter Pane The gutter pane is adjacent […]

I recently audited the IBM course IBM SPSS Statistics Syntax I – ILO 0L406. In that course, you are introduced to the scripting language that IBM SPSS Statistics offers. It’s well worth your time. SPSS Syntax is a scripting language composed of a library of functions that can be used to modify, manage and analyze […]