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The Logical Step Past Analytics Is Cognitive
Many people and companies seem to think of “cognitive computing” as a separate area from analytics. Most large organizations today have significant analytical initiatives underway, but they think of the cognitive space as being an exotic science project. One executive told me, “We have no desire to win Jeopardy,” an
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Business First, Analytics Second?
I recently participated in a Dell Digital Business Services and IIA-sponsored tweetchat on a “Business-First Approach to Analytics.” I will describe the topic and what it means to me first, and then describe some of the more interesting tweets during the chat. If you’d rather review the chat itself instead
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What Does It Mean To Be A Chief Analytics Officer?
I named this post, “What Does It Mean to Be a Chief Analytics Officer,” because the CAO role has a certain titular appeal. However, it’s sometimes the case that those who lead analytics functions for their organizations don’t have that exact title. And whether you’re a CAO, a “Director of
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Analytics 4.0: The Scary Age Of Automated Networks
I have written here here and there about “Analytics 3.0,” an environment in which companies combine big and small data at significantly greater scope and scale of analytics. And even more recently I’ve been working on a book about the third era of automation, in which smart machines take over
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Augmenting Jobs With Intelligence At Schneider
For about a decade now I have been observing – as a researcher, not a consultant – the analytics and automation efforts at Schneider, where these fields have been at the forefront of operational improvements. Schneider is one of North America’s largest truckload, logistics and intermodal services providers. It’s a
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Cognitive Computing In Healthcare: Early Adopters Of IBM's Watson
IBM’s Watson is one of the most appealing new technologies of the 21st century, and the most prominent example of the new category of “cognitive computing.” It burst upon the scene with a dramatic Jeopardy! win in 2011, and has now been adopted by a variety of business and health
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Meet Your Next Lawyer, The Algorithm
Shakespeare once wrote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” But a more likely future is automation. The legal profession has been one of the least aggressive adopters of technology in the past, and in many ways the field resembles the law as practiced a hundred years
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What Automation Will Do To Marketing And Marketers
Previously I wrote about the fact that digital marketing activities are increasingly automated. Now I’d like to speculate a bit on what other marketing activities might be automated as well, and what this will all mean for the function.Some traditional, non-digital marketing activities are being chipped away by automation. Television
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Is Software Eating The World's People Too?
If software is eating the world, as Marc Andreesen famously noted in 2011, what does that mean for the world’s people? With companies from AstraZeneca (A to Z in one organization) to Ford to Santander declaring that they are technology companies, what are the implications for their nontechnical employees? Does
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Two Cheers For Situational Intelligence
A few months ago I heard and got excited about WindyGrid, a “situational awareness” system for the city of Chicago. According to this description, it’s a geographic information system that “presents a unified view of city operations—past and present—across a map of Chicago, giving key personnel access to all of