BW数据挖掘.docx

Background
In the last 20 years, the cost of computer hardware has decreased dramatically whilst its capability to process large volumes of data has increased exponentially. This resulted in a rapid increase in master and transactional data volumes collected and stored in digital format – some claim that the quantity of data held worldwide doubles approximately once a year.
This growth does not necessarily provide companies with the information required to react dynamically in an increasingly competitive business environment. Companies are required to rapidly organise and sift through their terabytes of data to obtain insights into their customers and markets, and to guide their future marketing, investment, and management strategies. Various toolsets are deployed in this quest.

Data Warehouses are software tools designed for the collection, manipulation, display and utilization of data to support executives and managers when analysing large volumes data in order to respond faster to market changes and to improve the quality of their decisions. However, storing and reporting historical data from a data warehouse has limited value and is often dependent on the knowledge and experience applied by the data consumer. Companies therefore need more flexible and informative methods to manipulate and display their data in order to improve their working knowledge of their customers and markets – and (most importantly) to predict the future.
This has lead to a new technology called Data Mining, which is a powerful new technology that enables companies to focus on the most important aspects of the intelligence hidden within the data in their domain. Various time-tested tools, techniques and algorithms (proven in real-world applications) are deployed to generate predictive result sets that drive business strategy and decisions. This, in turn, improves business performance through allowing customers to focus on how to apply their limited resources in order to derive maximum business benefit.

SAP, through its Data Mining tool (delivered as part of the SAP Business Intelligence platform) provides a range of sophisticated data analysis tools and methods to discover patterns and relationships in large datasets. These tools include statistical modelling, mathematical algorithms and machine learning methods (algorithms which improve their performance automatically through experience). As a result, the SAP BI solution consists of much more than the simple collection, management, and display of historical data. It is also a powerful analytical and predictive modelling tool.
This whitepaper explores the following aspects related to Data Mining:
· The Evolution of Data Analysis
· How does Data Mining work?
· Components of SAP Data Mining
· Integration with SAP Data Warehousing solutions
· Consideration of Data Mining solutions and how to avoid oversights during implementation
The Evolution of Data Analysis
Traditionally, structured query and statistical analysis software have been used to describe and extract information from within a Data Warehouse. The analyst forms a theory about a relationship and verifies it or discounts it with a series of queries against the data. This method of data analysis is called the verification-based approach. For example, an analyst might think that people with low income and high debt are a high credit risk. By performing a query based on the payment history data in the Data Warehouse, he / she will confirm the validity of this theory.
The usefulness of this approach can be limited by the creativity or experience of the analyst in developing the various theories, as well as the capability of the software being used to analyse the findings. In contrast with the traditional verification-based data analysis approach, Data Mining utilises a discovery approach in which algorithms are used to examine several multidimensional data relationships simultaneously and identify those that are unique or frequently represented.
Using this type of analytical toolset, an analyst might use Data Mining to discover a pattern that he did not think to consider, and (using the example above) find that (1) parents (2) that are homeowners and (3) are over 30 years of age (4) on low incomes (5) with high debt, are actually low credit risks.
How Does Data Mining Work?
How is Data Mining able to tell you important things that you didn't know or predict the future (within a range of probabilities)?
Data Mining is performed through a process called an Analysis Process. An Analysis Process encapsulates a set of rules and mathematical relationships using historical data from situations where the answer is known; and then applies the model to other situations where the answers are unknown. Various pre-defined algorithms (see next section) and data manipulation tools (aggregations, filters, joins, sorts etc) are used to create the Analysis Process.
Information about a variety of situations where the result is known is used to train the Data Mining model (a process where the Data Mining software extrapolates the data to find the characteristics of the data that are appropriate to be fed back into the model). Once the model is trained it can then be used in similar situations where the answer is unknown.
There is nothing new about many of these modelling techniques, but it is only recently that the processing power of modern servers and PCs, together with the capacity to store huge amounts of historical data cheaply, have been available to a wide range of companies.
Data Mining models available in SAP BW allow us to create models according to our requirements and then use these models to draw information from your SAP BW data to support decision-making.
Components of SAP Data Mining Solutions
There are two main types of Data Mining models available in SAP BW: Informative Models and Predictive Models.

Informative Models
Informative models do not predict a target value, but focus on the intrinsic structure, relations, and connectivity of the data. They are also referred to as “Unsupervised Learning” models.
SAP Data Mining supports the following unsupervised functions:
Clustering
Clustering identifies clusters of data objects embedded in the transactional data. A cluster is a collection of data objects that are similar to one another.
A good clustering method produces high-quality clusters that ensure the inter-cluster similarity is low and the intra-cluster similarity is high. In other words, members of a cluster are more like each other than they are like members of another cluster.
In cases where there are no obvious natural groupings, custom Data Mining algorithms can be used to find natural groupings.
In the diagram below, we have four groups of customers based on 2 separate criteria: profit and growth potential. The group in the top-left quadrant is the so-called “cash-cows” who have no growth potential but is making a significant contribution to the profits of the company. Below the “cash-cows” are the “dogs” – those customers that are not going to generate much in terms of either profit or their growth potential. The two clusters to the right are of much more interest, and most of the marketing effort will go into retaining and developing these clients.

ABC Classification
Prioritization based on the Pareto principle states that (for example) 80% of profits are generally generated by 20% of your customers (this principle also applies to other master data objects such as employees, suppliers in different contexts). As a result, 20% of your customers should receive 80% of your attention – thereby changing your business priorities.

The ABC-classification model is a frequently used type of classification of a range of items, such as finished products or customers into three categories:
· A = Outstanding importance;
· B = Average importance; and
· C = Relatively unimportant.
Each category can, and sometimes should, be handled in a different way, with more attention being devoted to category A, and less to B and C.

Based on Pareto’s law, the ABC-classification drives us to manage “A” items more carefully. This means that these item should be ordered more often, counted more often, located closer to the door, and be forecasted more carefully. Conversely, “C” items are not very important from an investment point of view, and therefore should be ordered rarely and not counted often. Some companies use other methods for defining the ABC classification - such as the stock-out cost or the production criticality of the item.
Association Analysis
Association Analysis is a modelling technique based upon the theory that if you buy a certain group of items, you are more (or less) likely to buy another group of items. For example, if you are in an English pub and you buy a pint of beer, but you do not buy a bar meal, then you are more likely to buy crisps at the same time than somebody who bought wine (who is more likely to buy olives or pistachios) etc.
In retailing, most purchases are made on impulse. Association Analysis gives clues as to what a customer might have bought if the idea had occurred to them and drives companies to stimulate these thoughts (trays with sweets at till-points that drive many parents to distraction).
The probability that a customer will buy beer without a bar meal (i.e. that the precursor is true) is referred to as the SUPPORT for the rule. The conditional probability that a customer will purchase crisps is referred to as the CONFIDENCE.

Association Analysis can be used in deciding the location and promotion of goods inside a store. But in a different scenario, we can compare results between different stores, between customers in different demographic groups, between different days of the week, different seasons of the year, etc.
If we observe that a rule holds in one store, but not in any other (or does not hold in one store, but holds in all others), then we know that there is something interesting about that particular store. Perhaps the customers are different, or perhaps it has organized its displays in a different and more lucrative way. Investigating such differences may yield useful insights which will improve company sales.
Although this type of Market Basket Analysis conjures up pictures of shopping carts and shoppers, it is important to realise that there are many other areas in which it can be applied. These include:
· Analysis of credit card purchases;
· Analysis of telephone calling patterns;
· Identification of fraudulent medical insurance claims (cases where common rules are broken); or
· Analysis of telecom service purchases.
Weighted Score Tables
Scoring based on Weighted Tables (also known as Grid Analysis or Pugh Matrix Analysis) is a useful decision making technique. Decision matrices are most effective in situations where there are a number of alternatives and many factors to take into account. It is a methodology frequently used in engineering for example to make design decisions. However, it can also be used to rank investment, vendor, product options, or any other set of multidimensional entities.
Scoring Tables involves establishing a set of weighted criteria upon which the potential options can be decomposed, scored, and summed to gain a total score which can then be ranked. The advantage of this approach to decision making is that subjective opinions about one alternative versus another can be evaluated in a more objective manner.

Another advantage of this method is that sensitivity studies can be performed. An example of this might be to see how much opinion would have to change in order for a lower ranked alternative to outrank a competing alternative.
You can use the Scoring Weighted Tables to rate proposed product design changes or suggested improvements against a baseline, using customer requirements or organizational goals as the criteria for comparison.
The Scoring Weighted Tables method could help you to determine:
· Which product design proposal best matches customer requirements and other organizational goals;
· How alternative design proposals compare to the current (or preferred) design;
· Which improvement strategy best matches organizational goals; or
· How alternative improvement proposals compare to the suggested improvement.
Predictive Models
Predictive modelling in contrast is similar to the human learning experience in using observations to form a model of the relevant rules. This approach uses generalisations of the ‘real world’ and the ability to fit new data into a general framework. Predictive modelling can be used to analyse existing data in a Data Warehouse to determine some essential dependencies within the data set.

Predictive Models are developed using a supervised learning approach which has two distinct phases:
· Training builds a model using a large sample of historical data called a training set; and
· Testing involves trying out the model on new, previously unseen data – called a test set. This determines the accuracy of the model and physical performance characteristics.
SAP Data Mining supports the following predictive models:
Decision Trees
Decision trees are one of the most popular methods of predictive modelling since it provides interpretable rules and logic statements that enable more intelligent decision making. The predictive model is represented as a flow diagram. 
Decision Trees represent combinations of simple rules. By following the Tree, the rules can be interpreted to understand why a record is classified in a certain way. These rules can then be used to retrieve records falling into a certain category. These records give rise to a known behaviour for that category, which can subsequently be used to predict behaviour of a new data record.
Decision Trees can be used to classify existing customer records into customer segments that behave in a particular manner. The process starts with data related to customers whose behaviour is already known (for example, customers who have responded to a promotional campaign and those who have not). The Decision Tree developed from this data gives us the splitting attributes and criteria that divide customers into two categories – those that will buy our products and those that will not.
Once the rules (that determine the classes to which different customers belong) are known, they can be used to classify existing customers and predict behaviour in the future. For example, if we know from historical analysis that one particular product is of interest to young customers or customers who work as an Engineer with annual salary above £50,000 (see diagram), then a customer whose record shows attributes similar to these is more likely to buy this product. This then becomes a powerful predictive tool that marketers can use to plan campaign activities.

Regression Analysis