Intelligence — The Ultimate Analytic Buzzword

An Honest Assessment of the ABCs

Our world, at least according to most analytic sales reps, is filled with intelligence. Your competitors are intelligent. Their solutions are intelligent. And you can be intelligent, too!

What the hell does that mean?

Most professionals think they are intelligent. Many accept that certain tools and technologies may make them more so. Others are more skeptical. But to start, how do we define intelligence?

I debated bringing in more scientific definitions. Feel free to look them up. To synthesize — they align with the first definition. To hypothesize — I believe the professionals who are most accepting are also more inclined to lean toward the second definition.

There is a big difference between these two definitions. To simplify — the latter definition really amounts to a pool of information. To analyze — most solution providers are really offering the latter as well.

The ABCs

Artificial Intelligence is all the rage. Machines can do your thinking… actually not so much. Machines can crash through big data (it is not a subtle process) and return smaller pools of collected information. Sounds a lot like the second definition, doesn’t it? Best case, they use some canned algorithms to trigger a few minor optimizations and adjustments. On the rarest occasions they properly quantify some statistically sound patterns that a human would struggle to find.

Business Intelligence has been around a good long while and suffers from definitional bleeding of it own. In its best case, it is an expert system that creates a static application of a model created by an expert analyst or two. Better, but the vast majority of BI is just reporting. Reporting falls firmly into the second definition.

Competitive Intelligence firmly falls into the second category as well. Most would agree that it is heavily analogous to both Military & Political Intelligence. Fans of CI simply wish it had anywhere near the budget. The biggest struggle here is often the collection of suitable data. There seems to be a wealth of experts waiting to add their collective insights.

Data Intelligence… alright come on! Data Intelligence is the use of data to make “intelligence”. Srsly!? This is just a sentence gone lazy. Data is a major input in the creation of Intelligence. Data exists almost exclusively for the creation of Intelligence. Putting the word Data next to the word Intelligence only serves to highlight how broken this process is — much like Military Intelligence (which gets a bum rap). I guess we needed a better oxymoron.

Enhanced Intelligence is not a term that fits. While Enhanced Reality is all about technology, Enhanced Intelligence is currently associated with supernatural powers and mind enhancing pharmaceuticals. The latter is a technology of a sort. But now that we finally find an example of the first definition, it is missing…

Fail. Intelligence Solutions are anything but…

So where is Enhanced Intelligence? Where is the AI, the BI, and the CI that actually deliver on the promise? Don’t get me wrong — machine learning, cloud reporting, and other buzzy types of technology have their place… but none are increasing my intelligence any more than a good socket set does for your mechanic.

Still not convinced? Quantify it. How much smarter did that last Business Intelligence package make you? I know you can quantify what it cost. I suspect you could quantify some efficiency saves. And if you stopped there, things would be fine.

Call it Artificial Efficiency or Business Efficiency and then measure it. This is solid analytics. Clear definitions. Clear outcomes. Clear measurements. Real science.

BUT once you label it an intelligence system, what are you measuring? What are you really learning? Oh but this is Actionable! Sorry, that is just fancy talk for — a human with real intelligence (definition #1) applied some real knowledge and skill (definition #1) based on some collected information (definition #2) and took an action. The human is intelligent (definition #1). Your solution only made them more efficient. And because you are calling it Intelligence — you probably aren’t measuring that efficiency.

Thanks for reading! Technology CAN enhance intelligence. You simply need the right definitions, the right solutions, and the right intelligence to guide you. A link to this next article is coming soon…

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