International Institute for Analytics

There is a tendency to jump into something called a “data strategy” without understanding what it is at its core. In IIA’s view, at the center of a data strategy is a schematic of an entity’s information economy1 with in-depth awareness of the constituent needs on the demand side of the economy — the data consumers. Because ultimately the primary purpose of a data strategy is to solve questions about how to improve the availability, timeliness and quality of data, in that order of priority, for the constituencies demanding it.

Inquiry:

We build models in-house to determine lending for people who buy our products. We rely on these algorithms for auto-approvals, and we’re concerned about model bias. How can we address this issue?

Inquiry:

We have a customer loyalty program, and we want to improve our customer lifetime value (CLV) and retention, and also move more customers toward using loyalty cards. What are some interesting techniques and frameworks that could aid our efforts?

Inquiry:

I’m new to the analytics R&D space, and I’m not sure how to manage my new team and the work to ensure that the leadership sees us as valuable. Do you have any suggestions?

Join Christopher Bergh as he presents the seven steps to get these groups of people working together. These seven steps contain practical, doable steps that can help you achieve data agility through DataOps. This presentation will illustrate how to make changes to big data, models, and visualizations quickly, with high quality, using the tools teams love. We synthesize techniques from DevOps, Deming, and direct experience.

Big Data and analytics are going to change in this COVID-19 era. In this Webinar, Jesse Anderson, leading expert in big data and related technologies and techniques, shares what he’s been telling his clients who call and ask, ‘Jesse, with all that’s going on what should we do now?’

Jesse explores a number of topics ranging from the implications of working from home to the tweaks that may be necessary to your current organizational models in the current economic climate.

My Immediate Response:

1. ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR OPERATIONAL REPORTING
   There will be new reporting needs and the frequency of information will need to speed up. Look for options and data that will be impacted by the current crisis. You will need to figure out how to quickly deliver information even if not perfect. Do the best you can, provide any glaring risks. Executives are starving for information. Make sure to provide the information to the most senior people first. Analytics teams can assist operations teams, data science people should even jump in as they have some of the best skills even if they are not using their modeling skills. Work with IT to pull information more quickly. Accept that you will be reporting off of sandboxes that are not production quality, get the exceptions from Risk and IT. You may need to time shift your team to earlier in the day as the executives will want things first thing when they come in if possible. Blend new data sets together to provide insights. Make sure to grab the customer feedback as even simple things like a word cloud may help.

Most analytics organizations at large companies do not own the entire lifecycle of their analytics applications. Instead, often-distributed analytical applications teams have to work with their partners in IT/IS organizations, as well as seek requirements, advice and consent from legal, compliance and governance functions within their organization. The essentially distributed nature of these work streams frequently results in inefficiencies or even full-on breakdowns in progressing an analytics application from proof of concept (PoC) to production. Success in distributed environments requires an overt, agreed-upon, stepwise plan along with the emotional intelligence to navigate the necessary conversations with your colleagues to build that plan.

Inquiry:

I’m rebuilding my analytics teams after layoffs. Going forward, I would like a documentation process in place to retain knowledge in case of future resource talent loss. What should my priorities be?

We co-founded the International Institute for Analytics in 2010. Since it’s now 2020, our sophisticated math skills tell us that IIA has been around for about a decade—although our first full year of operation was in 2011. We thought it might be interesting to reflect on the state of the field that IIA addresses and how it has changed over time.