Are yesterday’s successes a road map for tomorrow’s data driven world?
We all marvel at the technological
innovations that have changed the world at an astounding pace. From Silicon
Valley California to Silicon Docks Dublin, the rate of innovation and value
adding contributions to tomorrow’s world is truly a sight to behold!
What we often overlook is the human
behaviours that lie beneath the surface in tech savvy business that could
reasonably give cause for alarm, yet are handled daily by human beings getting
on with their lives and progressing their business interests. When we humans
have to make big decisions against an unreasonably tight time frame, we fall
instinctively on our intuition to fill the time deficit and come out with an
answer that makes sense.
After all, if it worked for our parents,
our mentors and seniors in the workplace, then why cant we sit “in the big
chair” and be equally if not more successful? Its noteworthy that our success
using our intuition is not a matter of skill… it’s really a matter of luck when
overusing our intuition in big decisions. Over 80% of senior US Executives
reportedly did so in a McKinsey & Co survey I read some years ago! In doing
so, we trade expediency of decision making for factual understanding of the
topic and it’s context.
When working through the world of our
fathers and evaluating the need for data driven strategic decision making in
the world of our sons, the following is something I have reflected upon in such
an evaluation:
Hyper
connectivity – We have a distributed technological
infrastructure that allows us to access more and more information in a more and
more sophisticated manner and on a global scale. We can communicate instantly
at a very low cost on a global scale and unsurprisingly we do just that!
Complexity
Explosion – With dramatic increases in access to
data, it’s becoming more and more clear that data driven decisions make for
better outcomes. However, opportunities to adopt are still abound. On modern
oil platforms, approximately **40,000 sensor tags could be deployed with
currently installed systems but only a minority are actually used mainly for
safety and regulatory tasks. What data could be garnered from using 100%
deployment of the sensors and what could be done with it??
Faster
World - We need to refine our thinking down to
logic derived from data sets, as solely using a summation of our past
experiences is no longer a luxury we can afford! Data driven decisions are now
possible to do at scale and soon will be a requirement for maintaining a competitive
edge! In short, we have less time to react when we get it wrong, so intending
to be right first time needs to become policy! Intuition needs to become a
minority contribution to any strategic decision-making process. It needs to
surrender dominance to data driven insights, deductive reasoning and the
resulting picture it presents to the executive or executive team engaged in the
decision making process. If done right, executives can then use their intuition
in the context of a data driven fact-based environment reducing the propensity
to make wild card comparisons between the current scenario and aggregate
insights from former, often unrelated experiences.
So, big data may have being ignored but we now
need to tap into it to make better strategic decisions! Where do we start, how
do we do it??
A difficult question, which requires
customised knowledge of your business and situation. However, I submit the
following is a great place to start:
Understand
your problem. Define it in terms of where did it
come from, what it impacts and what elements impacted have dependencies on
seemingly unrelated elements inside or outside your company (e.g. regulatory,
customers, etc)??? It’s always good to map them out.
Risk
Assessment. If you have a risk assessment of the
problem, review it for any red flags that relate to your defined problem and
insights gained by the solutions proposed therein.
Data
Interoperability. Are your in-house databases
structured well by design? Are they SQL/RDBMS, NoSQL and/or Cloud? Is your
network distributed and if so, are external vendor nodes present from the cloud?
Is your data normalised (maintaining normal forms through data table
parent/child relationships on RDBMS) or de-normalised (large record by row
tables)? Are you set up for semi-structured data (JSON file readability)?
Data
Integrity. Is the data housed in your data
warehouse meaningful to your business and is it maintained properly with
duplicates removed accurately and data maintained in a timely fashion? Do you attach meaningful keys to records for
RDBMS and/or keys to key value pairs outside of RDBMS?
Data
context. Is your current data collection program
covering data sets that are key to the problem and/or assist in the analysis of
big data that will yield valuable insights for the senior team? Is 3rd
party data required and if so, are you set up for this??
These are some points I think you should
look at before engaging in big data analysis. Even if you feel you should
proceed, the value you get from a consultant if you have already made a start
will be much higher for this prior effort!
Sustainable is a relative word but
adaptability is universal! In this information age, our ability to adapt to the
changing environment will ultimately determine our fate, which is why big data
usage is too important to not understand first and use second! Data driven
processes leading to data driven decisions at the top will not only alter the
success rate of the decision for the better, it will also change the culture
and practice of the business to a more sustainable footing, which is the space
between people, process and technology; securing a path ahead to a better
tomorrow! All this in mind, why not start looking at your big data options
today? You may be pleasantly surprised!
Sources/Credits:
Pics;
Credits;
*Professor
Roberto Cabeza, from Duke University, North Carolina, United States, said:
"Older people have learned to be less affected by negative information in
order to maintain their well being and emotional state.”
**McKinsey & Co article on big data digitizing
oil and gas at http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/energy_resources_materials/digitizing_oil_and_gas_production
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