3 Best Practices for Becoming More Self-Sufficient with Self-Service Analytics

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My colleague Dave Stodder and I recently lead a Webinar in conjunction with our best practices report about becoming a data-driven organization.  Audience questions included several about self-service. In particular, attendees were interested in how to make self-service more accessible to managers and leaders in their organization. Let me set the stage for self-service analytics … Continue reading 3 Best Practices for Becoming More Self-Sufficient with Self-Service Analytics

Achieving Analytics Maturity: 3 Tips from the experts

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What does it take to achieve analytics maturity?  Earlier this week, Dave Stodder and I hosted a webcast with a panel of vendor experts from Cloudera, Microstrategy, and Tableau.  These three companies are all sponsors of the Analytics Maturity Model; an analytics assessment tool that measures where your organization stands relative to its peers in … Continue reading Achieving Analytics Maturity: 3 Tips from the experts

Six skills for predictive analytics

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Today, I participated in a webinar with Actuate on the skills needed for business analysts to perform predictive modeling.  This is a hot topic and there were hundreds of participants on the call.  In my part of the presentation, I outlined some major trends in predictive analytics (including the fact that the tools are much easier … Continue reading Six skills for predictive analytics

Three entry points for big data initiatives

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The TDWI Big Data Maturity Model and Assessment is set to launch November 20th.  Krish Krishnan and I have been working on this for a while, and we’re very excited about it.  There are two parts to the Big Data Maturity Model and Assessment tool. The first is the actual TDWI Big Data Maturity Model … Continue reading Three entry points for big data initiatives

Deathtrap: Overlearning in Predictive Analytics

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I am in the process of gathering survey data for the TDWI Predictive Analytics Best Practices Report.  Right now, I’m in the data analysis phase.  It turns out (not surprisingly) that one of the biggest barriers to adoption of predictive analytics is understanding how the technology works.  Education is definitely needed as more advanced forms … Continue reading Deathtrap: Overlearning in Predictive Analytics

Big Data’s Future/Big Data’s Past

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I just listened to an interesting IBM Google hangout about big data called Visions of Big Data’s future.  You can watch  it here.  There were some great experts on the line including James Kobelius (IBM), Thomas Deutsch (IBM), and Ed Dumbill (Silicon Valley Data Science). The moderator, David Pittman, asked a fantastic question, “What’s taking … Continue reading Big Data’s Future/Big Data’s Past

Five Trends in Predictive Analytics

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Predictive analytics, a technology that has been around for decades has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years, and for good reason.  Companies understand that looking in the rear-view mirror is not enough to remain competitive in the current economy.  Today, adoption of predictive analytics is increasing for a number of reasons … Continue reading Five Trends in Predictive Analytics

Two Big Data Resources Worth Exploring

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It’s a good day.  Our new book, Big Data for Dummies, is being released today and I’m busy working on a Big Data Analytics maturity model at TDWI with Krish Krishnan.  Krish, a faculty member at TDWI, is actually presenting some of the model at the TDWI World Conference:  Big Data Tipping Point taking place … Continue reading Two Big Data Resources Worth Exploring

Two Weeks and Counting to Big Data for Dummies

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I am excited to announce I’m a co-author of Big Data for Dummies which will be released in mid-April 2013.  Here’s the synopsis from Wiley: Find the right big data solution for your business or organization Big data management is one of the major challenges facing business, industry, and not-for-profit organizations. Data sets such as … Continue reading Two Weeks and Counting to Big Data for Dummies

Are you ready for IBM Watson?

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This week marks the one year anniversary of the IBM Watson computer system succeeding at Jeopardy!. Since then, IBM has gotten a lot of interest in Watson.  Companies want one of those. But what exactly is Watson and what makes it unique?  What does it mean to have a Watson?  And, how is commercial Watson … Continue reading Are you ready for IBM Watson?