The Sentient Enterprise

Mohan and Oliver have been very fortunate to have intimate views into the data challenges that face the largest organizations and institutions across every possible industry—and what they have been hearing about for some time is how the business needs to use data and analytics to their advantage. They continually hear the same issues, such as: We're spending valuable meeting time wondering why everyone's data doesn't match up. We can't leverage our economies of scale while remaining agile with data. We need self-serve apps that let the enterprise experiment with data and accelerate the development process. We need to get on a more predictive curve to ensure long-term success. To really address the data concerns of today's enterprise, they wanted to find a way to help enterprises achieve the success they seek. Not as a prescriptive process—but a methodology to become agile and leverage data and analytics to drive a competitive advantage. You know, it's amazing what can happen when two people with very different perspectives get together to solve a big problem. This evolutionary guide resulted from the a-ha moment between these two influencers at the top of their fields—one, an academic researcher and consultant, and the other, a longtime analytics practitioner and chief product officer at Teradata. Together, they created a powerful framework every type of business can use to connect analytic power, business practices, and human dynamics in ways that can transform what is currently possible.

Foreword ix Introduction xiii Chapter 1 Reimagining the Enterprise 1 Disruption and Decision Making 3 Self-Disruption at Cisco: On Purpose and at Scale 4 Self-Disrupt in Sustainable Ways 5 Analytic Pain Points and a Self-Service Revolution 6 Access and Control 8 A Necessary Evolution 11 Putting It All Together 12 Chapter 2 Leveraging an Expanding Universe of Data 15 A Universe of Data: Expanding Exponentially with New Sources 17 Game-Changing Capabilities 20 Well-Intentioned Anarchy 22 Data Marts and Their Discontents 23 A Solution? “LinkedIn for Analytics” 25 Getting Back to eBay: Fulfilling the Analytics Mandate 27 Chapter 3 The Agile Data Platform 31 Retaining Agility at Scale 32 Rethinking Waterfall Methodologies 34 Agile Analytics 35 Spreading Agility Company-Wide with the Virtual Data Mart 36 A Virtual Data Mart (by Any Other Name) in Action 38 Time Boxing 39 Fewer Requirements, More Prototypes 40 Analytics on Analytics 41 Making It Real with the Layered Data Architecture 42 Driving Change in the Auto Industry 45 Remembering the Big Picture 46 Chapter 4 The Behavioral Data Platform 49 Personalized—If Not Personal—Interaction 52 New Measures for Success, Built on Behavioral Data 53 Leveraging Behavioral Data for Real-World Business Challenges 55 Behavioral Data Is Everywhere 58 Agile Systems for Behavioral Data 59 Back Inside the Layered Data Architecture 62 Reaping Value and Insight 64 Proactive Data Standards and Designing for the Unknown 65 Chapter 5 The Collaborative Ideation Platform 67 Avoiding “Anti-Social” Analytics 68 The Problem of Metadata at Scale 70 Collaboration and Context at Scale 72 Merchandising Analytic Insights 73 Staying on the Path to Value through Analytics on Analytics 75 Adoption Takes Time 77 Operationalizing Insights 78 Chapter 6 The Analytical Application Platform 81 Turning Analytic Insight into Action Across the Organization 83 Lessons from the Cloud 85 Creating an App Economy for the Enterprise 86 DevOps to Make It Real 88 Less ETL . . . 91 . . . More “Data Listening” 92 Setup for Sentience 94 Chapter 7 The Autonomous Decisioning Platform 97 Fast-Changing Capabilities 99 Self-Driving Cars … and Companies 100 “System of Systems” Building Blocks for Sentience 101 Algorithms: A Must-Have for Autonomous Decisioning 102 Strategically Applying Algorithmic Intelligence in the Enterprise 105 Algorithmic “Magic” 106 Analytics on Algorithms to Improve Decision Making 107 Combining Algorithms on the Home Stretch to Sentience 109 Agility as the Ultimate Litmus Test 111 Chapter 8 Implementing Your Course to Sentience 113 Ask the Right Questions, Warts and All 115 Agile Strategic Planning Is Not an Oxymoron 116 Adopt a Start-Up Mind-Set and Don’t Boil the Ocean 118 Pick the Right Internal Partners to Demonstrate Value 119 Embrace Agile Project Management Strategies 120 Embrace Concurrency, Ensure Scalability 120 Design in Governance That’s Seamless and Repeatable 121 Optimize a Workforce to Act Fast, Fail Fast, and Scale Fast 122 “It’s the Culture, Stupid” 123 Conclusion 125 Acknowledgments 137 About the Authors 139 Index 141