The optimism of #Purpose & science of #design in forging #digital customer experiences! Opinions my own!

Analytics, your plumbing. Over the last 10+ years we’ve seen boom bust / hype cycles, and we’ve heard it all – the latest brouhaha on #BigData #Digital #Cloud #SaaS and now #BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). Analytics is plumbing, like the pipes that supply you water and the cables that give you electricity.

Recently the old sly fox and his pet egghead spoke about how “..analytics is about revenue gain and / or cost take out”.
Imagine how passe that sounds to the rest of us – yet the gusto the both of them spoke with, they genuinely believed it to be a revelation 🙂

Like Fergie said, that’s oh-so-2000-and-late.

Analytics, like the rest of the commoditised technology stack, will be…plumbing. So, focus on problem solving instead. Being analytical is not the same as rambling on about #Predictive #Forecasting #Optimise #mdm #DQ #DataLakes etc. Leave that to the software peddlers. But worse – software peddlers thinking they’re delivery / Management Consultants. Choose a side – any side. But never be confused. Stay true to yourself. If you need to sell more software – there’s no wrong in that. But if you’re in a Firm, please rewire yourself to think about client issues, situations / complications and recommendations.

Fall back on your issue trees, go back to framing and making sure your problem statements are MECE, go back to your 2×2 matrices, tabulate your hypotheses and support your recommendations with irrefutable facts and back of the envelope calculations whenever possible.

Then, and only then, if we need to, call in that egg head and give him specific tasks to execute. In the last few years, the data scientists (cue: oohs and aahs) had it good – they wanted to be proactive, germinate business ideas, lead solution design, answer (preempt..) the big questions etc. I say it’s unnatural. In a steady state, we will as business call the shots (again). How far upstream decisions get made – that’s a little blurry now. But I prophecise that it will move further upstream – like back in the 70s and 80s.

Think about it. Social media is often labeled new media – is it still? – bcos it’s still a fad. Ok maybe not a fad, but still not denting the bottom line enough. When it transitions to becoming mainstream  media, we know it has come of age – but how come we won’t be calling it old media The same goes with Data Science and Analytics. All those articles out there about how to make sense of data, how to comprehend data, monetise data, store data in clouds and wait for it to rain; that’s just bcos it’s still voodoo-ish to the rest of us. When it too becomes mainstream – it has! – and a commodity, we can flick the switches on / off, turn the water tap on / off and expect predictability – as we would with any utility.

Sounds crude, but if you think about it, it’s actually natural. How would you treat your IT department? Well they deliver / promise a service level don’t they? If your laptop needs replacing they will replace it. How would you want your analyst to operate? If you need analysis they would analyse! Same same! But like how you tell your IT department your laptop needs fixing, you need to point the analyst in the right direction. In other words, take charge. Analytics is plumbing. Treat it as such. Start showing it. Start acting it. There’s the shortage of eggheads you say? Well it’s more acute bcos we allow it to be! Ever wondered why Management Consultancies and Investment Banks admit good students from good schools with good grades possessing good problem solving skills? Doesn’t matter that they read something obscure like Theology in Uni, but are now putting together M&A clauses for multi billion dollar mergers. Matters even less they don’t have specific data mining, analytics, big data or data science degrees! If you’re good at problem solving, it will come to you, and analytics is but one tool – a means to an end. Ever wondered those doing “strategy work” are generally paid higher than those doing “analytics” and IT related work? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for data driven decision making – I’m just quick to add that it’s not to be confused with the end game.

Stop seeing nails with the perennial Analytics hammer.