[Colloq] Colloquium Spkr - Wed. 14th @ Noon

[Chantal Cardona]

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*College** of **Computer** and Information Science Colloquium*

Presents:

*Dr. Rama Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.*

*Chief Scientist, Oracle Retail & V.P, Analytics *

Who will speak on:

*Math and the Merchant: The Application of Econometrics, Machine 
Learning and Optimization Technologies to Retail Decision-Making*

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*/Wednessday, /**/December 14th, 2005/**//*

*/12:00Noon/*

*/366 West Village H/*

*/Northeastern University/*

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_Abstract_:

Retailing is a global, multi-trillion dollar industry and touches just 
about every person on the planet. Yet, despite its size and complexity, 
most retail decisions are made primarily on instinct. This has started 
to change in the last decade with the availability of granular and 
timely sales data coupled with the development of sophisticated 
decision-support software that analyzes this data and recommends optimal 
decisions. Retailers are rapidly adopting this technology to help 
improve the financial consequences of the numerous decisions they make 
every day. In this talk, we focus on decisions made by retailers in the 
merchandising process, perhaps the most important business process 
within retail. We identify some of the core analytical decision problems 
in this area and describe the algorithmic/modeling techniques that have 
been developed to address these problems. We highlight the 
inter-disciplinary nature of “winning” approaches i.e., they tend to be 
hybrids that draw on ideas from disciplines such as econometrics, 
machine learning and optimization. We conclude with a summary of the 
financial impact of these techniques on retailers’ financials (and stock 
prices!) worldwide.

_Bio_:

Rama is responsible for developing analytic techniques that have a 
significant impact on retailers' businesses and incorporating them into 
Oracle’s products and services. Prior to Oracle, Rama played a similar 
role at retail profit optimization software firm ProfitLogic. 
ProfitLogic was acquired by Oracle in July 2005.

Prior to joining ProfitLogic, Rama was the founder and principal of 
Profit Sciences, an analytics consulting firm, where he advised clients 
on the design of optimization algorithms to solve complex resource 
allocation problems. Before that, Rama was co-founder and vice president 
of product development at Redwood Investment Systems, a software company 
that built one of the first web/wireless portfolio management systems 
for quantitative investment managers.