About Data Science

An Emerging New Economy

As economies across the globe reopen and organizations learn to operate in the new normal, COVID-19 continues to subdue consumer confidence and alter buying preferences - even altering buyer segments.

Emerging themes in customer behaviors are represented by a shift to value and essentials, a flight to digital and omnichannel, shocks to prior loyalties, the health and “caring” economy, and the homebody economy.

In the U.S., visible safety practices and care for employees and customers has become even more important, with the reliance on online business now surpassing 10% in many retail categories according to Mckinsey.

Prior to the Coronovirus, a whopping 85% of purchases occurred at physical stores,, emphasizing the value that consumers found in an in-store shopping experience. Now, contactless retail is a major use case for omnichannel delivery including curbside pickup, delivery and drive through services.

Analytics has seen significant adoption and business sponsorship in the past decade. Data Scientists are being hired to build analytics models—largely machine learning and, increasingly, deep learning—capable of turning vast amounts of data into insights.

Business leaders continue to be invested in the concepts, but are not without concerns around cost and results. The need for integration of analytics solutions in business can’t be overstated as a way to drive end value.

Success with analytics requires data scientists and an upstream team of data engineers, data architects and downstream teams of software developers working in agile scrums to implement their frameworks and solutions.

As a result of this dynamic, an analytics initiative can easily take on its own life and become a significant cost center. It is therefore critical to ensure that analytics initiatives consistently show business value and business outcomes are attributed to these specific initiatives.

This is where a need for a more operational role emerges to help shepherd these initiatives to implementation -- the analytics translator and interpreter.

As the CEO of your organization, you understand the vital role analytics plays in gaining a competitive edge. You built an analytics team and invested a significant amount of time and resources building a data-driven culture.

While you understand that an analytics strategy is never a 'one-and-done' task, it is not unreasonable that you were anticipating results more quickly than you are. If you find that your data team is unable to transform your analytics and ML/AI programs into actionable insights and scalable projects on the time table you anticipated, you are not alone. McKinsey & Associates has reported that data-driven companies are slow across the board realizing the real value advanced-analytics initiatives offers. But this doesn't suggest stopping your data efforts, however. Rather, it's a necessary first step towards unlocking inefficiencies and discovering new processes that will transform your business.

With that said, there are trouble spots you can act on to improve the results of your analytics programs now.

In today’s market, customer expectations are high, and competition breathes heavy down your neck. Meeting customer expectations isn't enough. Rather, to gain a competitive edge, you have to anticipate what customers want - even before they know. The key to doing so rests with harnessing the potential of analytics.

As a CEO, you feel the pressure to enhance innovation and create a competitive advantage. Step one is to ensure that you are meeting current expectations, and step two is to use data analytics to help you predict future demand.

As a CEO, you understand the innovation that data and analytics can unleash within your company. You know of course that companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook leverage their information to beat the competition – but more importantly, there are a multitude of smaller to mid-size companies also using Big Data to create opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.

However, you have a problem. Your leadership is not getting the information and insights they need to help them stay aggressively positioned. Without insights on operations and customers, your company can not begin to utilize the power of data and could fall behind competitors in your industry.

To solve this problem, it is important to first understand the causes of your information bottleneck. After you understand the cause, then you can begin to get your leaders the information and insights they need.

Many CEOs find it difficult to initiate or sustain a culture of innovation within their organizations. Yet whether you're competing with companies like IBM, Google, and Microsoft or much smaller start-ups, to remain competitive, organizations of all sizes must maintain innovation as a way of life.

If you're struggling, consider the following five things to maintain creativity and innovation at the heart of your business' operations.