International Institute for Analytics

There is little doubt that the United States is the most active market for cognitive technologies, but it is hardly the only one. There is also considerable interest in the technology in Europe, and a number of projects are underway in relatively sophisticated organizations.

As part of an effort to increase analytics aptitude and usage across the enterprise, Steelcase is implementing an enterprise data visualization tool. Inspired by over 100 years of insight, Steelcase leverages the power of place to offer a comprehensive portfolio of workplace, healthcare, and education products, furnishings and services to serve the world’s leading organizations. Founded in 1912, Steelcase is the global leader in enhancing how people work, heal, and learn.

Inquiry:

How sophisticated should our techniques and capabilities be at the outset? Where do others like to start? From the business view (demand): How complex are the strategic problems we seek to support and enable with data science insights? From the analytic view (capability): How sophisticated should our core techniques be?

The breadth of analytics has certainly increased in recent years. So, too, has the pool of people who dip their toe into creating analytics of one sort or the other. The trends toward democratization of data and self-service analytical capabilities are powerful and both have driven a lot of value for organizations in recent years. At the same time, it is possible to go too far.

Inquiry:

We’ve invested a lot of time and money into our on-premises Microsoft products, with a core of Excel and the PowerPivot add-on for data analysis and modeling in a Windows Terminal Server environment. We’re trying to create a better user experience, especially when it comes to latency for our remote users. We’ve started to use SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) to that end. When should we look beyond the Microsoft universe to meet our data needs? Also, is there anything we can do to improve latency?

The Strata Conferences have built notoriety for sharing the latest insights on advanced analytics methods, emerging technologies, and impressive case studies on advancing analytics practices. During the Strata New York Conference, IIA’s VP David Alles attended several sessions and brought back a number of key takeaways.

Data and analytics leaders are increasingly called upon to interpret an ever-more complex competitive and global landscape for their firms. This brief introduces the VUCAST framework for addressing this complex landscape and provides an overview of ARTful leadership principles.

Thousands of people die every year from a common infection that you can get when you go to the hospital. It’s called Clostridium Difficile 101 (or CDIFF for short), and people get infected with it 500,000 times per year, and devastatingly, it kills 29,000 people per year in the U.S. How are data scientists like those on my Data and Decision Sciences team in Microsoft IT able to help?

The most prevalent impact of digitalization on the structure of markets has been to reduce the barriers to entry for a whole raft of established categories—as it has, for example in media, retail, consumer packaged goods, fast food, and transportation. A flood of small but numerous new entrants, individually nothing more than minor nuisances, become collectively a real presence. This shows up in market-share pie charts where the catch-all category Other is growing faster than the market as a whole. The result in each case is category fragmentation, and the big loser in each case is the currently reigning category king.

Inquiry:

What should we consider as we approach our Tableau Server implementation? How have others initiated the roll out, encourage user adoption, and managed permissions?