Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Sangeeta Krishnan
Thriving in a Data World: A Guide for Leaders and Managers
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my late dad
Without whom this book would not be possible
Who would be proud to read my book
Description
Currently, every company, no matter its size, is data-driven in one way
or another; using data to improve customer experience, as a new value
stream, and to stay competitive. However, many business leaders,
professionals, and students—such as executives, business analysts,
UI/UX designers, project managers and marketing teams—are forced to
interact with data and those who generate data, without being taught
the general competencies needed to feel comfortable having these
conversations.
This book focuses on the foundations needed to be successful in
managing and engaging with data analytics initiatives, bridging the gap
between creators and users of data. As a management reference guide, it
discusses the different types of data strategy needed for succeeding with
data, covering topics such as data team composition, types of data ana-
lytics, the importance of data storytelling, and identifying data return on
investment (ROI).
Framed by the author’s personal story, the trove of information is
made tangible through the compelling narrative with its unprecedented
accessibility and readability for a nontechnical audience.
If you suffer from fear of data, anxiety around conversations with
technical teams, this practical approach book can help with actions
you can start implementing right away.
Keywords
data analytics; marketing business insights; data literacy; presentation;
visualizations; big data businesses; information management tools; data
ROI; data value stream; automation; managing data teams; data mining;
nontechnical guide, agile practices; databases; strategy
Contents
Testimonials������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi
Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii
Conclusion�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������115
Notes�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������117
References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������121
About the Author��������������������������������������������������������������������������������127
Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129
Testimonials
“Full of practical advice based on the author’s years of experience working on
and leading data teams. Sangeeta Krishnan focuses on realistic solutions to the
challenges of building effective analytics teams, particularly given today’s rap-
idly changing data landscape.”—Shannon Moore, Principal Consultant,
Daugherty Business Solutions
“Did you know how many focus areas or what different team models there
are for data teams? This book is an indispensable in-depth guide for leaders
who need to build a dream data team and a data-driven culture.”—Evelyn
Münster, Data Visualization Designer, Chart Doktor, Germany
We hear so many buzzwords every day, like big data, machine learning,
artificial intelligence, data-driven decision making, data insights, and many
more. Take the word insights. Everyone uses insights these days, but with-
out a common definition or understanding. The assumption seems to be
that if we collect and use data, this magical insight will show up. Machine
learning carries a similar mystique—people are liable to think of it as a
very advanced field only a select few can understand. In addition, there
are also so many data tools and the list keep growing, making it confusing
to understand the starting point.
Can you name something that is part of your daily life that uses
machine learning? Think supervised learning algorithms. Can you guess
what I’m talking about? If you’ve ever viewed a notification on your
smartphone like iPhone that reads, “You have a new memory,” you’ve
seen machine learning at work. A decade ago, I never would have thought
my phone would identify all my food-related photos and group them
together with a title like “Bon Appétit Over the Years.” It is refreshing
to see the chef side of me making so many mouthwatering dishes over
the years, but I did nothing to create this memory. The data side of me
knew the answer. My phone used on-device machine learning to analyze
every photo in my library in a variety of ways, including scene classifi-
cation (grouping my food pictures), people and pet identification, and
audio classification.1
Data is embedded in so many aspects of modern society, and
integrated seamlessly, that we often don’t even recognize it as artificial
intelligence. Our entertainment recommendations, modern cars—with
xiv Introduction
The Ever-Changing
Data Ecosystem
We humans constantly learn and evolve over generations to build our
modern society. However, at times, there are more sudden changes in the
state of affairs thereby breaking the regular patterns creating r evolutions.
In simple terms, when we exchange one way of doing things for some-
thing altogether different, we hope a better society at scale. Industrial
revolutions in the past have emerged in a quest to get to a better next
progressive stage. Industrial Revolution 1.0, for example, involved
coal-powered production. Industrial Revolution 2.0 entailed gas and elec-
tricity (mass production), and Industry 3.0 was electronics (automation).
The boom of Internet and technology advancements led to the current
revolution: we live in Industry 4.0—the digital age and the Internet of
Things (IoT). This revolution is leading to the creation of a new raw
material—data—and like all other raw materials, data needs to be used
effectively to create something. Data is no longer seen as just something
that benefits corporations by providing competitive advantage. Data is an
economic driver: it accelerates the economic development of a country
and creates more data in the process.
In the past decade, both data collection and data usage have gone
through the roof. Everyday activities such as borrowing books from
a library, banking, fitness and exercising, smart household appliances
such as washing machine and microwave, driving cars, and even dat-
ing are all digital, and many are connected to the Internet. So they
create a lot of usage and preferences data. This data helps industries
to understand user patterns and behaviors and thus create better user
experiences—which again generate data and value. A data ecosystem
operates on a continuous cycle in which we provision with data
to create more data and value. In this ever-changing technological
2 Thriving in a Data World
Traits of Data
Although there are several traits of data, some aspects such as quality,
relevance, and completeness stand out. I like to remember it as 3 Ds of
data traits—Discover, Digest, Doable. Data is discoverable, you know it
exists and have a way to access it. Data is understandable, you can process
and digest the data as an organization. Data is doable, meaning you can
act on it in meaningful ways creating business value. If you cannot access
The Ever-Changing Data Ecosystem 3
Variety of Data
Types of Data
There are all kinds of data, including but not limited to the following:
In the past, all data was small data because there was not an enormous
variety or volume of data available. Today, there is so much hype around
“big data”—the possession of huge volumes of data—that it can be tough
to see beyond the hype. There is a perception that having more data is
better than less data and that value can be derived only when large vol-
umes of data exist. There is very little discussion about the benefits of
small data or scenarios in which small data knocks big data. Having tons
of data does not mean all of it is equally valuable. Sometimes having small
data can be advantageous.
What does big or small mean in terms of data, anyway? Size is not the
only measure of big data. Data has many facets: the three Vs (volume,
velocity, variety), as well as several others:7, 8
• Volume—size of data;
• Velocity—speed at which data is generated and processed,
even approaching real time;
• Variety—structured, unstructured, or semistructured;
• Value—data’s potential to create value;
• Exhaustiveness—scope of data, for example, from limited to
certain groups to covering an entire population;
• Resolution—coarse to as detailed as possible;
• Relationality—weak ability of data to conjoin different data
sets to strong relations;
• Flexibility—ability of data to accommodate addition of new
fields and scale quickly;
• Experimental—collected as part of research in human
manageable ways or machine generated and analyzed.
Data Facets
Data Facets
Big data does not hold the answers to all data-related problems. While
picking your approach related to data, think in terms of acquisition,
the resources you need to process the data, and storage and privacy costs.
The benefits of using the data should outweigh these associated costs. It
is not about choosing between big and small data, since use cases differ
for both of them. Both big and small data can coexist, and companies can
benefit from choosing the right volume of data for the problem at hand.
The goal is to strike a strategic balance, gaining insights while using the
fewest required resources to get there.
Since small data exists in human-manageable volumes, it translates
into something both experts and laymen can instantly understand and
actions that are easy to deploy. Small data is well suited for research
and experimentation use cases. Small data helps to augment the decision
making with minimal resources. It can be processed in-house as volume
of data is less and thus reduce negative externalities (external entangle-
ments relating to privacy and consent). Start with small data instead of
big data as it helps to develop skills and ideas with more focus.10 Starting
with big data often emphasizes learning the technical skills rather than the
understanding part that small data fosters.
Big data allows organizations to engage with their users in real time.
It also helps organizations make modifications and enhancements to their
products and services in line with their users’ sentiments, responses, and
comments. Big data helps a company personalize their product, which
can contribute to higher traffic and revenue streams. A common use case
6 Thriving in a Data World
of big data is fraud detection, for which there is a need to analyze mil-
lions of transactions to identify patterns and determine areas with the
most fraud cases. American Express analyzed large volumes of data and
found a pattern in their big data: people who acquired large bills on their
American Express card and then registered a new forwarding address in
Florida were more likely to declare bankruptcy.11 Florida state has one of
the most liberal bankruptcy laws in the United States, and people with
large debts were taking advantage of it. Identifying such correlations in the
data (customers with high credit card balance and relocation to Florida)
can help credit card companies to proactively trigger an inquiry and/or
limit future credit increases. Data correlation—pulling data from various
sources to understand the relationship between them and determine a
valuable forward path—is an important benefit derived from big data. It
is also important to look out for unrelated or misleading correlations—
where two things appear to be related to each other but are not—in big
data. If done correctly, however, correlations in big data can powerfully
predict how acting on one factor will modify or influence another.
Bias is all around us in our daily lives. The human brain as a whole can
process 11 million bits of information every second although our con-
scious minds only handle 40 to 50 bits of information per second.12 Our
brain takes shortcuts, leading to both unconscious and conscious bias by
grouping people and things into known types based, for example, on bias
like gender, economic background, or sexuality. It is important to look
back and analyze to understand how our actions are reflective of our bias
and how to break free of them. Data is no different when it comes to bias.
Like small data, big data is prone to bias, but due to its huge volumes, bias
in big data is less obvious. This does not mean that it doesn’t exist. So it
is important to prioritize high-quality, accurate, authentic, and bias-free
data with clear understanding of data lineage elements in big data.
can be easy to forget that in the beginning, Netflix was mail-order DVD
disc delivery business in which subscribers could add and maintain a list
of movies they wanted to rent. The list was ordered, and when a DVD
was returned, Netflix would mail out the next DVD in the list. Although
there was a limit to how many DVDs one customer could borrow at a
time, the list could be as long as they wanted. It was a customer-driven
process: the customer initiated the creation of the list and also managed it
by adding and deleting movies they wished to watch.
This model has changed—it’s become smarter. Its proactive recom-
mendations algorithm removes Netflix’s dependence on the customer to
add movies they want to watch. Of course, Netflix has entered new mar-
kets and countries since its mail-in DVD days, but it has also used its
big data analytics capabilities to better understand content abandonment
(the point at which the customer turned off a show), preferred devices for
viewing, and many other metrics.
Netflix created value through datafication:
Big data creates a lot of data but big does not always mean better or
improved. Big data presents an ocean filled equally with opportunities
and challenges, and it is up to the organization to sink or swim. Big data
requires advanced tools and techniques, which makes it difficult to under-
stand, organize, and process. In addition, some organizations lack the
financial funding or infrastructure to embark on such a resource-intensive
journey—not to mention limited or nonexistent visualization tools or
technical experts. The recent explosion of data volume amplifies this
issue, but it should not discourage organizations from starting their data
endeavor. One way of coping with this data boom is to start with small
data, processing a manageable volume of information through simple
and widely available open-source tools and gradually progressing toward
large-scale big data initiatives.
10 Thriving in a Data World
laws related to their data handling. Also, some privacy laws are industry
specific—the HIPAA is health care–related and the PCI governs financial
data. Navigating different privacy laws is not easy, and ongoing changes
to various laws makes it trickier. And there are sometimes fundamental
differences between these laws. For example, GDPR requires entities to
gain user consent via opt-in, while the CCPA requires entities to provide
only an opt-out option. Organizations with global locations, handling
transborder flows of data, need to understand and comply with even more
of these regulations.
Data solutioning efforts should place utmost importance on issues of
privacy. And since privacy is an evolving area undergoing constant change,
companies should have mechanisms in place to run data audits and
identify problems proactively. Based on the type(s) of data the company
holds, requirements of de-identification changes need to be considered.
For example, health care protects patient health identifiable (also known
as Protected Health Information—PHI) data, and so organizations need
to implement a de-identification process to protect patients’ personal
information like name, date of birth, and so on. Additional m easures
should also be in place to scan for stray PHI information, train staff, and
encrypt databases.
Details matter when protecting data systems against breaches of
privacy. For example, age by itself is not considered PHI. A report on
someone aged 25 cannot by itself be used to identify a person. But in
a less-populated zip code, it would be much easier to identify a patient
cited as a 98-year-old. As a result, PHI requires any age over 89 years to
be aggregated within a single 90-plus age group instead of exact years.
These are the kind of things to be considered when protecting the privacy
of users.