Hugh Allyn

Imagine if you had to rate your opinion of Justin Bieber on a scale of 1-10, but your knowledge of him was limited strictly to his album sales. Further, if you tried to do an online search of him, the only information returned to you would be his album sales. According to Billboard, the Biebs’ latest album, Purpose, hit #1 on the charts late last year. Not only that,…

Regardless of industry, every business has to deal with high-risk customers or employees. If you can manage them correctly, the upside is tremendous. If not, they can potentially crater your operation. As a long-suffering Charlotte Hornets basketball fan, I’m all too painfully aware of this phenomenon. Last season, we (I am one of those insufferable fans who refers t…

I wonder how many bad decisions were simply the result of a poor environment. For instance, Mars Inc. infamously turned down Universal’s offer to have M&M’s be the candy of choice for the alien in the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. As a result, Universal turned to Hershey Food Corporation, who gladly offered up their previously struggling brand, Reese’s Pieces…

Sometimes when I look around, it seems as though all I see are the charred remains of terrible choices—and that’s before I’ve even left my kitchen. In business, it’s now been 30 years, yet Coca-Cola will NEVER live down their decision to launch New Coke. (Just Google “Worst Business Decisions Ever Made” if you don’t believe me.) We don’t even need to leave the soft d…

As if financial institutions didn’t have enough to worry about besides hackers and fraudsters, a new phase of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 will soon be here to wreak havoc on your books. Called "IFRS 9 Impairment,” this phase is a new standard for how banks and lenders must model expected credit losses in their financial statements. Contrary…

Seemingly every day there are more non-banks that are willing to provide loans to consumers and businesses. This explosion in alternative lending options is the result of several converging trends, including: The millennial generation, which is a huge segment now entering their prime bank years and open to nontraditional forms of banking Digital technology and s…

At FICO, besides our popular credit scores, we also offer an array of decision-making software solutions for a wide variety of customers. These solutions have a high variance in complexity and price, and the typical sales cycle can range from a few months to a few years. As a result, we literally have hundreds of sales opportunities in-progress at any given time, and…