the big wide world of data and analytics
As a female and a feminist who has worked in male-dominated fields for most of my career, what immediately caught my eye when reading the most recent TDWI Salary Survey report was the on-going pay disparity between women and men in BI. According to TDWI research, men continue to out-earn women in the BI field,… Continue reading Does Gender Matter in BI Salaries?
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
I recently completed TDWI’s latest Best Practices Report: Next Generation Analytics and Platforms for Business Success. Although the phrase "next-generation analytics and platforms" can evoke images of machine learning, big data, Hadoop, and the Internet of things (IoT), most organizations are somewhere in between the technology vision and today’s reality of BI and dashboards. For… Continue reading Next-Generation Analytics: Four Findings from TDWI’s Latest Best Practices Report
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
My new (and first!) TDWI Best Practices Report was published a few weeks ago. It is called Predictive Analytics for Business Advantage. In it, I use the results from an online survey together with some qualitative interviews to discuss the state of predictive analytics, where it is going, and some best practices to get there. You… Continue reading Four ways to illustrate the value of predictive analytics
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
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
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
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
Last week I had the unfortunate experience of trying to deal with American Airlines regarding some travel arrangements via its Advantage help desk. I literally spent hours on the phone trying to get to the right person. I won’t bore you with the details of my experience, however I did want to talk about how… Continue reading Closing the loop in customer experience management: When it doesn’t work
Fern Halper's data makes the world go 'round 