Bill Franks's Blog: Analytics Matters, page 3

Continuing In 2020: The Disruption of The Analytics Space

Analytics and data science have been disrupting business processes and how companies compete for many years now. There has been a lot of focus on the challenges that business and technology organizations face when attempting to incorporate even more sophisticated and pervasive analytics processes into the mix, and all of that is true.

However, as we head toward 2020, it is becoming increasingly clear that analytics and data science organizations must recognize, acknowledge, and react to the fact...

The Achille’s Heel of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) today merely has specific intelligence as opposed to generalized intelligence. This means that an AI process can appear quite intelligent within very specific bounds yet fall apart if the context in which the process was built is changed. In this blog I will discuss why adding an awareness of context into an AI process – and dealing with that context – may prove to be the hardest part of succeeding with AI. In fact, handling context may be the Achille’s heel of AI...

Don’t Mistake a Legacy Skillset for a Legacy Mindset

It goes without saying that the analytics and data science space is undergoing change at an unprecedented pace. At the same time, many organizations have a lot of people who are still working in the same way using the same skills they have had for years. Organizations certainly need to move beyond those legacy skillsets and the need for a skills update is real. However, I see many organizations assuming that those with legacy skillsets are no longer valuable and must be replaced. This is a mi...

Cutting Through the Hype of Artificial Intelligence, Part 2

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest topics in the analytics space today. Within a two- to three-year span, AI went from relative obscurity to an extreme level of industry attention and media coverage. As a result, organizations that barely knew how to spell artificial intelligence a few years ago are now charging full steam ahead in pursuit of AI initiatives. In many ways, this is a good thing. After all, AI is quite powerful and has the ability to drive tremendous value if app...

Inconsistent Definitions Wreak Havoc on Analytics

Everyone who has lived within the world of analytics has seen cases where different parts of a business have made use of slightly differing definitions of core business metrics. Sometimes these differences lead to only minor and non-material disagreement. At other times, the differences in definition can cause massive divergence of reported results and related actions taken. Organizations must ensure that where differences exist in definitions those differences are either reconciled or clearl...

The Case for Combining Customer Analytics and Research Teams

Traditionally, large organizations have both a research organization and a customer analytics organization that are distinct from each other and often in entirely different chains of command. I have seen many organizations where there is tension between these two organizations. Neither seems willing to acknowledge the value of the other and this causes opportunities to be missed. Today, organizations need to challenge the old assumption that these groups should be separated.

Phone Briefing: AI Bracket

IIA’s CAO Bill Franks gave the audience control of this month’s Client Phone Briefing, allowing them to vote for which AI topics he would discuss. While Bill covered 8 distinct (and sometimes controversial) trends across Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, and Analytics, there were a few that didn’t make the cut. Find links to Bill’s blog posts and opinions on each subject below.

It’s Time to Require Analytics in Business Plans

Profit and Loss (P&L) statements permeate businesses due to the need to track how a business is performing at overall, business unit, and even project-by-project levels. This blog raises a question: why shouldn’t an analytics plan be expected as a part of the business plan for any major initiative just like a P&L is?

Evaluating the Risk of Analytics Partners for Your Enterprise

How do you choose the right vendor partners to move your analytics program forward? Large organizations today need to partner with vendors to successfully build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-level analytics programs. In today’s world, however, there are so many potential vendor partners that it is hard to know where to begin. An often under-addressed aspect of evaluating which partners to invest in is the need to look at the inherent risk a potential partner brings to the table along with...

Predictive Analytics World 2018

IIA attended the Predictive Analytics World (PAW) show in Las Vegas, June 6–7, 2018. This year the show had a new format called “Mega PAW” where a number of (previously individual) PAW shows were all housed together under one roof. Some of the keynotes were shared by all attendees, while the breakouts were segmented by topic. All of the sessions IIA attended were in the business track. In this event summary, the key points from each session attended will be provided, as will some commentary o...