The ELECTE Review
AI strategy and data intelligence for European SMEs. Each episode distills key insights from ELECTE's research and analysis — covering market shifts, AI adoption, regulatory developments, and the business decisions that matter. Published by ELECTE.
Episodes
98 episodes
Autocorrelation Analysis: A Practical Guide
Time series data rarely behaves independently — autocorrelation reveals how past values shape the present. This episode breaks down ACF and PACF, the two diagnostic tools for spotting hidden dependencies, choosing between autoregressive and mov...
Sanctions Screening Guide: How Compliance Really Works
Sanctions screening isn't broken because it misses names — it's broken because it drowns real hits in false positives. This episode unpacks matching logic, why volume-based "rigor" is a vanity metric, and what risk-based, defensible calibration ac...
Missing Data Imputation: A Business Analytics Guide
Missing data imputation doesn't recover lost information — it manufactures plausible substitutes. This episode breaks down the core methods (mean substitution, regression, multiple imputation) from ELECTE's 2026 business analytics guide, and why t...
Customer Lifetime Value: The Complete Guide for SMBs
Acquiring a new customer can cost 5 to 25 times more than keeping one you already have, yet most SMBs still measure success by counting new signups. This episode breaks down a guide to customer lifetime value: the core formula, why margin and chur...
Behavioral Segmentation: What It Is and How to Apply It
Behavioral segmentation groups customers by what they actually do — purchases, browsing, engagement — rather than who they are demographically, and the article argues this produces sharper targeting and higher conversions. Examples from retail, fi...
Mandatory Energy Audit: 2026 Guide
Italy's mandatory energy audit under Legislative Decree 102/2014 hits large companies and energy-intensive businesses, with a new 10 TJ/year threshold and an October 11, 2026 deadline. Thresholds: 250+ employees with 50 million euro revenue or 43 ...
What does follow-up mean: effective strategies for 2026
Follow-up isn't a courtesy — it's the mechanism that decides whether sales leads and projects actually finish. Electe's 2026 guide defines the term and lays out strategies across sales and project management, framing follow-up as a discipline t...
Corporate Data Security: A Practical Guide for SMBs in 2026
SMBs are targeted precisely because they're under-defended, not overlooked. Electe's 2026 guide pairs technical basics — MFA, encrypted backups, patching — with AI-assisted threat detection and staff training into one actionable checklist. The rea...
Sales Data Analysis: The 2026 Profit Guide
A "2026 Profit Guide" claims sales data analysis will sharpen decisions and boost profit, but offers no methodology, metrics, or evidence beyond the pitch. The ELECTE Review examines what's actually being promised versus what's proven, and why a g...
Business intelligence dashboard: the complete guide to 2026
A vendor's "complete guide" to 2026 business intelligence dashboards promises to turn data into decisions — but a dashboard only displays information, it doesn't make choices for you. This episode examines ELECTE's guide to building a BI dashboard...
Artificial Intelligence Video Analytics: A 2026 Guide
AI video analytics promises business efficiency, but every system runs on constant recording and retention of footage from people who never agreed to it. A 2026 guide walks through retail and security use cases while skipping ownership, retention,...
Latin Hypercube Sampling: A Complete Guide for SMBs
Latin Hypercube Sampling beats random Monte Carlo sampling for SMB forecasting by guaranteeing even coverage of outcomes with far fewer samples — but only if your input assumptions are right. This episode breaks down Electe's guide: the method, th...
Microsoft SmartArt: Building Smarter Visuals
SmartArt works — until it doesn't. This episode examines where Microsoft's built-in diagram tool hits its limits and why most teams use it past the point of usefulness. Core argument: ease of use is not the same as effectiveness. Practical guideli...
How to easily create post-it notes on your desktop
Desktop sticky notes work — but only with discipline. Windows Sticky Notes and Mac Stickies are already installed, sync via Microsoft or iCloud accounts, and survive reinstallation. The real risk: treating them as archives instead of temporary, ac...
Sensitivity Analysis: A Guide to Business Decisions 2026
Most forecasts fail not because the math is wrong, but because no one tested the assumptions. Sensitivity analysis tells you which inputs actually drive your outcome and at what point a good decision turns bad. This episode covers OAT, Monte Carlo...
Voice Commands on Android: A Complete Guide (2026)
Android voice commands are three separate tools — Assistant, Voice Access, and dictation — and mixing them up is why most users give up. This episode covers correct setup, practical routines that chain multiple actions, and the privacy trade-off o...
Business Improvement Plan: A Practical Guide for SMEs
Most SME improvement plans fail not from bad strategy but from no system to sustain them. This episode covers the core argument: a plan must function as a decision-making system, not a document. Key points include capping initiatives at three, ass...
What-If Analysis Tool: A Practical Guide for Business Decisions
What-if analysis does not eliminate risk — it makes risk visible before you act. This episode breaks down how what-if tools work, why SMEs confuse simulation with forecasting, and when manual spreadsheets become the bottleneck. From Excel's Scenar...
Support Vector Machines: A Guide to Business Decisions
SVMs are not the trendiest AI model, but they may be the most practical for SMEs. Only 7% of small businesses have adopted AI despite generating the bulk of economic value. Support Vector Machines work by finding the widest decision boundary in st...
Operational Risk Management: A Complete Guide for SMEs 2026
Most SMEs discover operational risk after the damage is done. This episode breaks down a structured approach: map processes, people, systems, and external factors; use frequency and severity distributions to estimate tail risk; apply the three lin...
Time Series Forecasting: A Complete Guide for Businesses
Most business forecasts fail because they treat history as a flat average. Time series forecasting reads trend, seasonality, and noise separately — giving SMEs a reliable basis for inventory, cash flow, staffing, and sales decisions. This episode ...
Artificial Intelligence Sustainability: A Practical Guide 2026
AI's carbon cost is real and growing — but the bigger risk is companies defaulting to maximum compute for every task. Training one model can emit 284 tonnes of CO2. Goldman Sachs projects data center demand up 160% by 2030. The fix isn't less AI: ...
The GDPR Compliance Checklist for SMEs: 5 Essential Checks
GDPR compliance for SMEs breaks down not during cyberattacks but in routine moments: a CRM lookup, a newsletter export, a shared cloud folder. This episode covers the five checks every small business needs — data inventory, legal basis documentati...
Data Portability: A Practical GDPR Guide for Your SMB in 2026
Data portability is a mirror: how you handle it reveals the real state of your data infrastructure. GDPR Article 20 gives customers one month to receive their data in a machine-readable format. Most SMBs are unprepared. This episode covers what qu...
Artificial Intelligence Data Analytics: A 2026 Guide
Most SMEs don't lack data — they lack the process to act on it fast enough. AI analytics closes the gap between scattered signals and decisions, but only when data quality and governance are already solid. This episode breaks down predictive vs. g...