Ammunition for the CFO: How to Be (or Satisfy) a Hardnosed

Customer for Analytics

JC Herz

Jnhq@yahoo.com

February 28, 2012

When You’re at Third Base…Get Tested!

• DATA AUDIT is a gating condition– Quantity

• Sometimes it’s not as big as you think it is• Speed• Number of sources

– Quality– Who “owns”

Resources

• $$: None, Some, Lots, Obscene Amounts

• People: How many, how good, who owns

• Bandwidth: Organizational attention

• Transition points

• Time: have to show results when?– A week? A month? Next quarter?

OODA Loop and its Pitfalls

• Observe, Orient, Decide, Act - where does this project play?

• Observe: – Outward-facing lamp post problem (social media)– Internal: lift the rug: system is being

• a) Measured• b) Managed• c) Gamed• d) Gamed with the complicity of managers

OODA Pitfalls: Orientation

• Misunderstanding of: resources, identity, mission, market position

OODA Pitfalls

• Decide: Is leadership undertaking a Big Data analytics effort as a way to avoid making decisions?

• Act: cultural and political fallout, internally and externally: data driven decisions have consequences

Locus of Effort

• Internal team - dedicated• Croudsourced inside organization

– IT + subject matter experts: the odd couple

• Consultants • Vendor• “How does this engagement build capacity

within my organization”– Pretend you’re the benign dictator of a developing

country, across the table from an oil company

Vendors

• What does the vendor really sell?– Consulting services?

• Bodies, Expertise, Coming up with a better algorithm

– Software licenses?– Infrastructure: bandwidth, storage, CPUs– Everything looks like a nail

• The iron triangle– In construction: time, cost, quality– In analytics: storage, cycles, performance– Demand three cost scenarios that minimize each