Analytic Response - Shawn Rogers

Analytic Lessons Learned From the Big Game

Shawn Rogers — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 19:08:43 +0000

Proof that analytics is in every part of our lives, even american football. There are a few take aways from the sport that can be applied to analytics.

Get the Jump
Win on the Edge
Improve Upon What’s Already Working
Change Your Culture
Don’t Dismiss Intuition

I contribute regularly to CMSWire here is a link to the article "The Denver Broncos Analytic Game"

Opening the doors of Big Data Innovation

Shawn Rogers — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 14:57:00 +0000

When I first got into this business, it was enough to figure out how many widgets were sold in a particular region. Now, companies want to know how many widgets were sold in a particular region, in a certain color, to a specific customer, 10 minutes ago. Or, even better, they want to be able to predict the result before it happens. This takes a different approach to information—one that requires IT and business people to be in lockstep before opening the data floodgates....

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Its all about the Quants

Shawn Rogers — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 22:56:00 +0000

The term Quants has gained a lot of traction over the past couple years. Tom Davenport's book “Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics” brought the term to the mainstream and introduced us to a new breed of business expert that is driving innovation and insights with data. Quants are teaming with the business to create new opportunities to compete while driving revenue and optimizing the workflows. These math minded experts have become the rock stars of the data world and a new tool for success within progressive data centric companies. In this week’s #ThinkChat segment Tom and I discuss what quants are and where they fit in your organization, the critical role of math, statistics and how quants are working with the business.

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Demystifying the Internet of Things

Shawn Rogers — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 20:53:00 +0000

Understanding the architecture that supports Internet of Things (IoT) projects at first glance can seem overwhelming if not impossible to emulate. There is a wide array of technologies that support these projects and help customers to wrangle the data involved in these programs. Data management, integration and analytics all play a key role in delivering innovative and responsive IoT projects.

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Want analytics with your fries?

Shawn Rogers — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 03:21:00 +0000

At the risk of aging myself, I’ve probably attended 70 or so TDWI conferences and executive summits, but the recent TDWI Las Vegas was different. It marked the organization’s 20th anniversary and reinforced the importance of analytics, which was a big topic among attendees, speakers and vendors...

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Process Driven Analytics For Manufacturing

Shawn Rogers — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 01:48:00 +0000

Innovative companies are adopting advanced analytics to take action and match the speed of their business. This is especially true in the world of manufacturing where complicated process driven activities benefit greatly from smarter, faster analytic insights and actions. Collecting and analyzing process data from sophisticated manufacturing processes requires a flexible and agile infrastructure that supports a wide variety of disparate data sources often spanning sensor and machine sources that are combined with instrumentation and testing data, machinery and production data, customer and market data, supply chain information, 3rd party benchmarks and a wide assortment of system data.

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Why Do Analytically Driven Companies Adopt the Cloud?

Shawn Rogers — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 04:45:00 +0000

It seems like a pretty straight forward question and more often than not most people assume the answer is centric to the economics of cloud. From the very beginning cloud has had a reputation for being a cheaper alternative to traditional on-premises solutions. It’s not an absolute truth in every implementation but cloud can often deliver an economic upside in comparison to on-premises solutions. Cloud helps companies avoid the risky capital investment often necessary with IT projects.

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Driving Innovation with a Cloud First Culture

Shawn Rogers — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 04:38:00 +0000

Adopting new technologies that best fit your company’s business challenges can be a difficult process. Separating the marketing speak from true business value causes many firms to take a wait and see attitude towards cutting edge solutions creating innovation gaps and hindering competitive advantage...

I often blog as the Chief Research Officer for Dell Software - Read this entire post on Dell.com

Is Social a Fad? See for Yourself.

Shawn Rogers — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:25:00 +0000

A great Friday diversion. If you company is pondering how or why to use social data to enhance analytics understanding its impact is critical. This video does a nice job driving home the key points of how pervasive social is in our lives.

Don't Fence Me In!

Shawn Rogers — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 14:32:00 +0000

Power users and self service line of business (LOB) users are always asking for more data access and easier to use tools that enable them to bypass traditional IT in favor of analytic freedom. Most of these users will push back hard on an environment that restricts thier ability to wander about in enterprise data.

Providing power and freedom to these users has incridible upside.

Faster time to insight
Less work for IT
Aligning business knowledge with the analytic process
pluggin more team members into data driven insights

These are just a few of the positives that come from self service or discovery based business intelligence. So what are the pitfalls of all of this freedom? I see two major disconnects that need to be addressed as this type of BI beomed more pervasive.

Governance - Adding desktop data is a common choice for self service users. They often mash up information from a wide variety of sources many of which are not avialble to the rest of the enterprise. This can enhance or detract from the overall analysys and leave many in the dark as to how certain decisions are being made.
Enterprise Value - The insights created by LOB and power users can be extremelly valuable to the rest of a team or the company in general. Self service solutions that don't supply a common and easy path to share and leverage these insights is missing a key feature. I am partial to solutions that balance freedom and control.

So the question is where does the control belong and how tight should it be. Does some governance and control add to the value? I think it does but the challenge is finding the sweet spot between freedom and a walled garden. If you want adoption you can't fence the power users in.

For your entertainment - Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters sing Don't Fence Me In.