{"id":11005,"date":"2014-08-17T17:17:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T17:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/index.php\/post\/got-analytics-who-will-promote-industry\/"},"modified":"2014-08-17T17:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T17:17:21","slug":"got-analytics-who-will-promote-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/got-analytics-who-will-promote-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Got Analytics? Who Will Promote the Industry?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image\"Business people have everything. They\u2019ve got data, and often it\u2019s clean. They\u2019ve got tools, and many are easy to use. They\u2019ve got visualizations, many of which help. They\u2019ve got domain knowledge, at least most do. What some front line observers find they lack is analytical thinking.<\/p>\n

\"Image\"Business people have everything. They\u2019ve got data, and often it\u2019s clean. They\u2019ve got tools, and many are easy to use. They\u2019ve got visualizations, many of which help. They\u2019ve got domain knowledge, at least most do. What some front line observers find they lack is analytical thinking.<\/p>\n

\n

Given descriptive data, few business users that BI icon Claudia Imhoff sees ask even the simplest followup questions, like \u201cwhy?\u201d Is what the data shows good for the business or not? If not, what can be done?<\/p>\n

Claudia, along with IBM marketing director Harriet Fryman, raised the question this summer at the Pacific Northwest BI Summit<\/a>. This week I caught up with Claudia on the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big elephant in the room is that they [business people] don\u2019t know what analytics is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What will it take to solve that? Education, of course. But by whom?, I asked. Some education takes place within some organizations, but the quality and reach varies. Isn\u2019t a broad, industry-wide program necessary? Doesn\u2019t the industry need the equivalent of a \u201cGot milk?\u201d campaign?<\/a><\/p>\n

You may remember the ads. To a variety of problems, milk was always the answer. The \u201cGot data?\u201d campaign would promote analytical thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that idea!\u201d she joked. But really, perhaps analytics itself could use a boost.<\/p>\n

The big question is who can do it? As Claudia pointed out, we should count on no help from tool makers. The only answer they know is that you\u2019re not trained on their interface.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a technical problem,\u201d Claudia said, \u201cIt\u2019s a business problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assuming her premise of analytical disinclination is valid \u2014 I can think of one BI anti-icon who would disagree \u2014 the ideal organization to lead such education and advocacy would have several characteristics: First, it would be well known already within the industry for training. Second, it would have relationships with vendors eager to support research. Third, it would have relationships with industry experts, both technical and business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business people have everything. They\u2019ve got data, and often it\u2019s clean. They\u2019ve got tools, and many are easy to use. They\u2019ve got visualizations, many of which help. They\u2019ve got domain knowledge, at least most do. What some front line observers find they lack is analytical thinking. Business people have everything. They\u2019ve got data, and often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":11002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-analytics"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartdatacollective.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}