There are so many opportunities to apply analytics today- it’s like being a mosquito in a nudist colony. I routinely see opportunities for analysis in my daily life. Perhaps I was born with the DNA to constantly collect data and evaluate for better outcomes. For example, which check-out line should I enter at the store? [...]
IIA Faculty Member Bill Franks, recently led an outstanding discussion titled, “What Makes a Great Analytic Professional”? Judging by the attendance and lively discussion, this was an important and timely discussion. Analytics Professionals Struggle to Hire Just Like Non-Analytics Professionals What struck me about this discussion is that analytics professionals (with the world of analytics [...]
2011 was a year of great change—a move back to the south for my husband’s new job, new school for our daughter, a transition to a new position in the JMP division of SAS (which I love), and several other changes requiring us to adapt. Change is one thing we can count on. When we [...]
It is always difficult to predict the external factors that impact your business – especially during a difficult economic cycle. IT can be significantly easier to leverage internal factors that affect business performance, and I am encouraged to see that businesses are paying more attention to one factor supremely under their control – their own [...]
Many businesses are entering new and exotic areas of analytics, with initiatives to capture social media data, job market information, and the like. These are exciting efforts, no doubt. But often the best sources can be found more easily if business intelligence groups first focus on data sources closer to home and easier to control. [...]
Privacy is always a flash point. With the advent of big data, privacy is only going to be even more of a concern. The fact is that many sources of big data contain highly detailed information on what people are doing. While there are many very valid uses for most of these big data sources, [...]
What a change a few decades makes! When first starting my career as an analyst, I had no illusions about what I was getting into. I was choosing a field that most people didn’t enjoy or even understand. I knew I would get to work on neat analytical projects, but realized my role (and those [...]
As a result of the attention business analytics has received in recent years, we’re seeing a proliferation of conferences tied to analytics. It seems like everywhere one turns, one finds another analytics conference. In addition to totally new shows, there are also some conferences that weren’t historically focused on business analytics that are now shifting [...]
How Can You Help “Bob The Marketing Guy” Succeed With Analytics? In my last blog, I wrote about the pitfalls of allowing “Bob The Marketing Guy” to build complex analytics or models using a user friendly tool, when he doesn’t really know what he is doing. Well, we cannot just tell Bob he can’t do [...]
There is a certain topic that comes up a lot. In fact, I responded to a LinkedIn discussion on the topic just a few days ago. While there are many variations, the core of the question always gets back to this concept: “Is it a good idea to let non-analysts utilize friendly user interfaces to [...]
