A year ago, I highlighted the importance of analytical skills, not just technology skills to drive value from investments in business intelligence.  Getting the technology right is only half the challenge.  The other aspect is interpreting and acting on the information provided.

Looks like I am not alone in that opinion.

See below for articles from Bloomberg and from the MIT Sloan Management Review on exactly this topic.





The World Needs Data-Savvy Managers
By Paul C. Mugge June 11, 2014
You’ve been reading and hearing a lot about how companies that analyze oceans and rivers of information can change the course of their business—both for the better and for the worse, depending on your source material. Big Data, like a lot of tech buzzwords that promise to “transform” business, has its hype and its reality.
The ability to comb through vast amounts of data is an important new business tool, and it will touch some aspect of your career, no matter what field you pursue. But the Big Data movement is not itself a panacea. It does not magically eliminate the need for human expertise and judgment nor make decisions for you.

Click here to read more of the Bloomberg article

New MIT Sloan Management Review study: An advanced analytics culture outweighs all other factors
David Kiron  July 7, 2014 – 11:00 am
What distinguishes the winners from the losers among companies converting data and analytics into a positive force in their strategies and operations? And what practices are keeping the winners ahead?
The Analytics Mandate, a new research report from MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS Institute, takes several steps toward answering these questions.
Our most significant finding? Our study shows that an advanced analytics culture outweighs other analytics-related factors -including data management technologies and skills-among companies that strongly agree they are gaining a competitive advantage from analytics. Essentially, a strong analytics culture is the lynchpin in moving from competitive parity to competitive advantage.

Click here to read more of MIT SMR article

Recently get a degree in history, anthropology, or literature?  Worried about future job prospects?  Well, there is hope and surprisingly it is driven not by a new Luddite movement back to simpler times, but instead by the new opportunities being created by the explosion of “big data”.

Increasingly, a wealth of information about our interests, our habits and our lives are being captured in ever expanding information stores.  New technology is providing the ability to catalog, process and search this data faster and faster.  As information gets cheaper and more plentiful, the value driver becomes the ability to understand and analyze this information, to see patterns and connections, and fundamentally to recognize and capitalize on opportunities.

Here is where the experience gained from a liberal arts degree is valuable.  Whether pondering the meaning of the writings of Albert Camus, determining the sophistication of a civilization from pottery shards, or understanding the impact of the words of John Locke on the American Revolution, liberal arts students have had to learn to analyze and make sense of information. 

OK, as a history major, I may be a little biased.  But I am not the only one who thinks this.
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 Big Data Gets the Algorithms Right but the People Wrong 
By Mikkel B. Rasmussen and Christian Madsbjerg Bloomberg Business July 16, 2013

It’s hard not to feel a sense of reverence at the scale of all the information we generate. We create so much data every day that 90 percent of the information in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, according to IBM(IBM). To handle all that data, McKinsey estimates that by 2018, U.S. businesses will need 1.5 million new data managers and analysts.

Read full article here