Interview Series — Gregory Corrigan
Hosted by Career in Analytics
Welcome to the final installment of Career in Analytics’ interview series. This forum is designed for decision science professionals — both beginners and veterans — to meet one of our members and engage in a conversation with them. We want our group to be a place for great conversation and debate.
CiA: Welcome, Greg. Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Greg: I have spent the better part of 22 years of my career in the BI and Analytics space, in every area of businesses including Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance and IT. I have worked largely on the Business side, but also have over 6 years on the IT side, so I have worked both sides of the Analytics fence, so to speak. I have also worked in multiple industries, however most of my career has bene in the B2B space, I only have four years of B2C experience. For the last nine months I have worked at Ciena Corporation, a leading global provider of Optical Networking hardware and software solutions.
CiA: What does analytics mean to you/your company?
Greg: At Ciena, we use analytics in multiple areas of our business ranging from network operations to Sales and Marketing. It has become a core part of our service offering to our customers, and continues to grow.
CiA: Can you provide our forum with an analytics challenges that you’ve come across?
Greg: Regardless of the industry, there are a few themes that are always prevalent as challenges related to analytics: Data Quality and Availability; Availability of and experience with the right tools to conduct analytics; and the combination of business knowledge and expertise needed in order to create meaningful analytics and decision support tools for the business.
CiA: What are the biggest analytics mistake you’ve seen people making?
Greg: Allowing IT to lead business analytics and BI projects. These projects by their very nature must be led by the business, but unfortunately most are not and that, in my opinion, is why most of those projects fail. There are others, but this one is the most prevalent, the most costly, and the most visible.
CiA: Do you have any career advice for aspiring data scientists?
Greg: Learn the business. Know where the data comes from, how it came into being and what it represents. Without deep business knowledge, any recommendation you make based on your analytics is unlikely to have a business impact, unless it can be placed into context. You will also be unable to determine when you have a data quality issue, and could end up reaching the wrong conclusion.
CiA: Thank you, Greg. As always, we will now turn things over to our members and see what questions they have. This is the final interview in this series, but check back soon. We will be launching a new series in the near future.
Career in Analytics is a forum dedicated to connecting beginning analysts with experienced and veteran mentors. Our topics cover a variety of interests in the area of analytics and professional career development.
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