INDUSTRY NEWS
Analytics: The New Path to Value
The IBM Institute for Business Value, in collaboration with MIT Sloan Management Review, surveyed nearly 3,000 executive managers and analysts from around the world to understand the real value they were getting from descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics.
The report, “Analytics: The New Path to Value,” outlines three levels of analytics capabilities and features the single biggest obstacle to adopting analytics (surprisingly, it’s not about data). The report also includes six abbreviated case studies that illustrate how a variety of companies are using analytics – including real-time predictive analytics – to separate themselves from their competitors by understanding what’s happening now, what’s likely to happen next and what action to take to the drive optimal outcome.
To download the report, visit: http://cde.cerosmedia.com/IBM-Institute-for-Business-Value-Analytics/1Y4d396ece0b087012.cde.
Handbook of News Analytics in Finance
OptiRisk, an optimization and financial analytics provider, recently announced the publication of “The Handbook of News Analytics in Finance,” the first compilation of the research from leading industry experts on the impact of news in moving the financial markets. Bringing together recent work from principal researchers, practitioners and suppliers in the field of “news analytics,” the handbook seeks to define the four corners of this increasingly influential discipline.
The use of news analytics tools is now becoming mainstream in financial markets with institutions using such tools to feed high-frequency, sub-second trading engines as well as to aggregate weekly and monthly news data to analyze trends, improve their risk models and hedge against market movements. More recently, trading firms have also looked to interpret the sentiment found in new forms of communication such as Twitter and blogs to generate alpha.
The content is presented in four parts: the first deals with the measurement of sentiment, the second with the relationship between news and abnormal returns, the third with enhancing risk control using news and the concluding section features an industry focus from experts in the vendor community and a concise summary of the main providers of content and technology in this space.
The handbook is published by John Wiley and Sons.
LINDO releases offer greater speed, broader capabilities
LINDO Systems announced new releases for its entire family of optimization software. The LINGO 13, What’sBest 11 and LINDO API 7 include a number of improvements to the solvers to boost performance as well as new and enhanced features.
Solver enhancements common to all three products include:
Stochastic Solver improvements: Improved methods to induce correlations among stochastic parameters.
Linear Programming Solver improvements: Sprint option to efficiently solve “skinny” LPs having millions of variables.
Integer Programming Solver improvements: Significant improvements in heuristics for quickly finding good integer solutions; improved identification of special structures, as in multi-period models, and exploit to achieve significant reductions in solve times.
Global Solver improvements: Improved heuristics for finding a good feasible solution quickly; user can identify a constraint as being convex, if the global solver might not otherwise be able to identify it as convex; improved ability to identify constraints that can reformulated as second order cone (SOC) constraints and thus be solved by fast SOC solver.
VSS acquires Strata Decision Technology
Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a leading global private investment firm focused on the information, education, media, communications and business services industries, recently announced that an affiliate has acquired financial software company Strata Decision Technology, LLC (SDT).
Founded in 1996 by the husband-and-wife team of Don and Catherine Kleinmuntz (Don Kleinmuntz is a former president of INFORMS), Strata Decision Technology develops, markets and implements Web-based financial analytics and performance management software tools used primarily by U.S. hospitals and healthcare systems to enhance their financial planning, budgeting and reporting processes. The company has provided services to more than 800 hospitals and thousands of hospital-affiliated healthcare provider organizations, including Allina Hospitals and Clinics, Catholic Healthcare West, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Providence Health and Services, Trinity Health, and Yale New Haven Health System.
Chicago-based Strata Decision Technology’s products serve the needs of C-level and senior financial and operational decision-makers who use SDT tools to drive collaboration, facilitate the coordination of plans and strategies and communicate with non-financial audiences. SDT’s signature StrataJazz platform offers a fully integrated SaaS (Software as a Service) suite of corporate financial analytic solutions designed to help organizations improve their financial and operational performance. The company’s blend of products and services provide a comprehensive solution for planning and reporting, combined with outstanding implementation and support services to reduce the customer’s total cost of ownership.
“Veronis Suhler Stevenson has a deep understanding of healthcare finance and technology, and can provide invaluable support and guidance as we execute our growth plan,” says Don Kleinmuntz, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Strata Decision Technology, who will remain with the company in the role of president and also hold a seat on its Board of Directors. “We look forward to working with VSS as we introduce additional products to meet the emerging needs of healthcare providers and pursue sensible add-on acquisitions.”
“It was important for Strata Decision Technology to find the right business partner. Veronis Suhler Stevenson stood out as a firm with the right mix of resources and experience to help our team develop the company,” says Catherine Kleinmuntz, who, as president, led SDT from its inception. She will transition from president to the role of senior advisor.
