Dispatches from the world of Big Data – the Strata conference 2011

Last week I had an opportunity to attend the Strata conference in Santa Clara. This was a technology conference to bring together data scientists and others who work with “big” data. But my reasons for attending were to see how different types of organizations are staffing and managing their use of information.

At Perkins Consulting we are constantly working to help our clients make their information powerful. The technology aspect of this has always been easier than the people and process aspects. Over the last few years new popular books such as The Fourth Paradigm, Moneyball and Supercrunchers have made the world aware of the opportunities in data. A new breed of data-centric startup company has sprung to life. Is there anything in this new literature or in these new companies that might help our clients? I went to Strata to find out.

Some interesting tidbits that I picked up include:

• Data by itself is meaningless. It is not just turning data into Information that adds power but also providing a contextual frame. Telling stories with the data is one way to add this frame.
• We need to understand clearly that we are providing information to assist decisions – not make them. Sometimes we try too hard to frame information in such a way that the decision is completely obvious. This doesn’t take advantage of the capabilities of our people and it is too rigid for an ever changing business environment.
• To be successful with information you need a quantitative culture.
• It is really important to have a culture that encourages exploration and testing if you want to build an analytical community. A culture that focuses on pinning blame for bad decisions can’t be analytical.
• 70% of the work is data preparation
• The metrics that you don’t have are expensive but have a high Return on Investment. We see this a lot. Simple metrics like total sales are not highly valued but cross-process metrics like customer profitability are.
• I saw an interesting Barnes and Noble presentation on how they use information. They are moving from product-centric analysis to customer-centric. Focusing on customer profitability rather than product profitability.
• Good process is better than great technology. How true!

There was a lot of good details that I’ll be adding into our data mart and business intelligence reference project plans, deployment questionnaires and staffing plan documents. But the overall message I took away was a simple confirmation of my existing understanding:

It’s all about how people are prepared to use information. It’s not about the technology.