What Every Data-Driven Company Needs
A Corsair’s Dream… of SALT WATER
I have a simple dream. It starts with a flexible tool and includes a straight-forward plan for using it. The two offer any company an avenue to escape the frantic and stressful world that so many reside in. It is a uniquely analytic dream (at least my version). See if you agree?
Simple. Nothing is anymore. We are inundated with meaningless complexity. Analytics may be worse than most. Everyone is so gung-ho for big data and machine learning. But it is the synthesis of the analytic process, not the analysis that truly delivers on what your company needs. Keep it simple.
Adaptive. The world is changing, so goes the excuse for why models have to be rebuilt, reports need to be replaced, analysis needs to be redone. But most companies don’t change, they adapt. It is a much more subtle and determined process. So you should be able to build systems capable of adapting, too. Adapt or die… or so it goes.
Learning. It should be driving your company, more than data. Data is an input into the learning process. Your systems need to be providing fundamental feedback on changing customer needs and expectations, evolving markets, and adaptive processes. Learning is a score keeping process. If you are not learning, you are falling behind.
Tools. They are the real product of the analyst or as I prefer, the Information Engineer. Today everyone is trying to ‘productize’ everything. Too clever by half. Tools are products and more simple to consider. Tools are used in a ‘working process’, products are ‘shipped in a box’. If you don’t have the tools of the trade, you aren’t really in it.
Where. This is your business. These tools need to work for you. They need to integrate into your process, into your platforms, and with your people. Somehow, so many “as a Service” providers miss this crucial detail. Clever ‘products’, lower prices, but result in horrible integration. And horrible integration means broken, don’t settle for broken.
Application. In the business world, analytics is an applied science. There is no time for exercises in theoretical nonsense, leave that to academia. Great science arrives when its application is meaningful and repeatable. Once again the ‘analytic tool’ seems more practical than the ‘data product’. Call it semantics but always know “How are we going to use it?”
Transparency. Analytics in a black box is voodoo. A concept that is more myth than reality, the stuff of nightmares, but oddly infatuating to a select few eccentric practitioners. Don’t buy into voodoo. Certainly never pay for it. If it can’t be explained, if it can’t be seen, history tells us… it is not likely to be applicable any time soon.
Efficiency. Every business needs to judge costs relative to rewards. Analytics often both addresses and challenges this fact. Much analysis is the modeling and calculation of ROI, opportunity costs, and efficiency. Often however, it is not easily self-applied. It is a game of probabilities or an investment to be developed as a transactional expense.
Reward. Or should we end with, aRe Rewarded? You must complete the feedback loop. Good tools, good process, good outcomes must be rewarded. It is not enough to only punish those that are poor. In fact, poor outcome can lead to good learning. You need to work the stick and the carrot.
As I said, it is a simple dream. You can almost smell it if you try. It is a dream that is sadly another location entirely than the one in which most companies live today. It is a place of more smiles, less work, and a sense of relaxation. A place where every company has: simple adaptive learning tools where application, transparency, and efficiency are rewarded.
Breath deep. Now go make that dream a reality. And thanks for reading!
