This Week in Data Preparation (September 28, 2020)

This weekly post with news items from the data preparation market is brought to you by The Data Value Factory, the company offering Data Preparer.

12 links in this week’s post:

• 6 articles (on building data teams, big data in HR, CDOs, feature engineering, and artificial intelligence, by HSBC, EQT Ventures, Engagedly, Insperity,Singapore University of Technology and Design, EverythingBenefits, Teradata, Columbia University, Dresner Advisory Services, Dstillery, Forrester Research, eBay, and Landing AI),
• 5 company updates (by Facebook UK, Primary Engineer, Fivetran, dbt, Fishtown Analytics, Autodesk, Altair, Ellexus, Exterro, Stout, causaLens, CLS), and
• 1 capital raise announcement (by Ahana).

The Data Value Factory — This Week in Data Preparation. September 2020 Image by Tumisu from Pixabay.

Articles

There’s no data science unicorn — building a data team at HSBC.

• Rahul Boteju, Global Head of Data Analytics at HSBC, was speaking this week at the Big Data LDN event, where he shed some light on what it takes to build an effective data science team that can scale.

The many roles of big data in HR.

• Erik van Vulpen writes for the Academy to Innovate HR that even though HR data might lack volume and be largely static, it has enough variety and value “to generate valuable insights into the workforce” through business intelligence and HR analytics.
• Big data in HR could make hiring more equitable and improve diversity by reducing bias, Zoe Jervier Hewitt of EQT Ventures tells Protocol.
• “Big data with Natural Language Processing can help analyze the feedback, project reviews and overall talent profile data to build skill profiles of employees within the organization in near-real time, which can be used as a tool for workforce planning,” Srikant Chellappa of Engagedly tells Forbes.
• “When applied to recruiting, employers can utilize big data to better predict hiring needs, while improving their quality of hire and employee retention,” John Feldmann of Insperity tells Forbes.
• Regarding retention, “[w]ith the help of big data technology, algorithms can flag employees at risk of leaving by interpreting their online activity, profile updates, employment history, job performance, and payroll data,” Vikash Kumar writes for AIIM — The Association for Intelligent Information Management.
• HR professionals have “always relied on gut instincts using very descriptive data,” but they have the potential to make more objective decisions by incorporating big data, Jaclyn Lee, chief human resources officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, tells Human Resources Director.
• Having such insights from big data analytics and artificial intelligence is even more important, since “[w]ith the unemployment rate being as low as it is, HR leadership does not have much leeway to ‘get it right,’ ” Rachel Lyubovitzky of EverythingBenefits tells Forbes.
• HR also could introduce new data-focused positions, such as data detective, Richard Binder writes in Benefits Pro.

The CDO’s Role in Leading Data-Driven Transformation.

• “Now is the time for organizations to rethink — and elevate — the role of the Chief Data Officer, providing them the authority and ability to take risks in order to embrace new opportunities that drive increased innovation. We’re at a critical stage where data must be placed at the forefront of the enterprise to create digital and data transformations, and CDOs will be crucial in making that mission of growth a reality.” writes Dr. Yasmeen Ahmad, VP of Global Enterprise Analytics at Teradata.

Key steps in the feature engineering process.

• “Really, the feature engineering process is turning the data that you have into the most effective and usable version of what’s going to get at the question you want to answer,” said Hannah Pullen-Blasnik, a graduate research fellow at Columbia University and former senior data scientist at Digitas North America, a global marketing and technology agency.
• According to Brian Lett, research director at Dresner Advisory Services, feature engineering is a balance of art and science.
• “I think [feature engineering] is important because a lot of times we can get bogged down in information that’s not helpful for the problem at hand,” said Gilad Barash, vice president of analytics at Dstillery, a custom audience marketing consultancy based in New York.
• Mike Gualtieri, an analyst at Forrester Research, said feature engineering is the most important part of the machine learning process because it can make or break an algorithm’s accuracy.

Artificial Intelligence Is Ready For Prime Time, But Needs Full Executive Support.

• As part of a massive operation with so much experience with AI, Mazen Rawashdeh, CTO of eBay, has plenty to say about the current state of enterprise AI.

Artificial Intelligence Advances Food Safety.

• “Similar to a human, AI is very good at dealing with a lot of variations in whatever’s being looked at,” says Quinn Killough, senior business development manager for Landing AI, a company that provides end-to-end AI platforms for manufacturing.

Company updates

Facebook UK and Primary Engineer focus on data to tackle climate change.

• Eoghan Griffin, EMEA sustainability manager for Facebook, said: “Facebook understands the urgency of climate change and is determined to be part of the solution.”
• Dr Susan Scurlock MBE, CEO and Founder of Primary Engineer explains, “STATWARS is a programme designed to help young people make decisions based on data and using the data to make changes in their daily lives to have a positive impact on Climate Change.
• Chris Rochester, UK Director of Primary Engineer adds, “The opportunity for schools and the relationship with Facebook is hugely exciting.

Fivetran Integrates With dbt for Automatic Data Transformations.

• “The importance of data analytics continues to be paramount for growing companies, and the exponential growth in data at our fingertips only means there is more to harness, store, and analyze to make revenue-impacting business decisions,” said Martin Casado, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, an investor in both companies.
• “By integrating dbt with Fivetran, we are giving customers the ability to manage all their data pipelines within the Fivetran toolset,” said George Fraser, CEO and co-founder of Fivetran.
• This integration will make it easier for more data analysts to start using dbt, adopt the dbt viewpoint, and join the vibrant dbt community,” said Tristan Handy, CEO of Fishtown Analytics.
• “dbt allows us to set up repeatable data transformations. We can schedule jobs to create data tables for us that surface in downstream tables,” said Evin Anderson, data engineering manager at Autodesk.

Why Altair Acquired Analytics Firm Ellexus.

• “Altair proceeds to extend its reach and capacities for HPC environments to support critical modern workloads including for data analytics, AI and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS),” said James Scapa, Altair’s chief executive officer and founder.
• Altair will also deepen its technical skillset as Dr Rosemary Francis, Ellexus founder and the chief executive officer will join its team to help Altair best utilise the technology.

Exterro Announces Launch of Groundbreaking Data Source Discovery.

• “For many years we’ve heard our clients describe the countless hours it takes between in-house professionals, outside counsel, and IT to scope discovery,” said Chief Marketing Officer Bill Piwonka.
• “The burden on Legal and IT teams to effectively identify and preserve new sources of information within their organization has increased tremendously over the past few years, with the current work-from-home environment only exacerbating the issue,” says Ross Dubinsky, Director, Legal Management Consulting for global advisory firm Stout.

causaLens Launches Causal AI Platform.

• “Businesses investing in the current form of machine learning (ML), including AutoML, have just been paying to automate a process that fits curves to data without an understanding of the real world. They are effectively driving forward by looking in the rear-view mirror,” explains causaLens CEO Darko Matovski.
• “The causaLens platform has enabled us to discover additional value in our data,” said Masami Johnstone, Head of Information Services at CLS, whose products help clients navigate the changing Foreign Exchange marketplace.

Capital raise announcements

Ahana Expands Seed Funding to $4.8 Million with Additional Funding Led by Lux Capital.

• Joining Cofounder and CEO Steven Mih; Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Dipti Borkar; and Cofounder and CTO David Simmen, the Ahana team now includes: Vivek Bharathan, Cofounder, Principal Software Engineer and Presto Contributor, Ashish Tadose, Cofounder, Principal Software Engineer and Presto Contributor, George Wang, Cofounder, Principal Software Engineer and Presto Contributor.
• “With data spread across many sources, particularly data lakes, a federated SQL approach is replacing the traditional data warehouse model and Presto is poised to become the new SQL query engine of choice for running across data stores,” said Brandon Reeves, Principal, Lux Capital.

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