Actionable Intelligence

A Guide to Delivering Business Results with Big Data Fast!

Keith B. Carter

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118915233
• eBook ISBN: 9781118920657
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

Building an analysis ecosystem for a smarter approach to intelligence

Keith Carter's Actionable Intelligence: A Guide to Delivering Business Results with Big Data Fast! is the comprehensive guide to achieving the dream that business intelligence practitioners have been chasing since the concept itself came into being. Written by an IT visionary with extensive global supply chain experience and insight, this book describes what happens when team members have accurate, reliable, usable, and timely information at their fingertips. With a focus on leveraging big data, the book provides expert guidance on developing an analytical ecosystem to effectively manage, use the internal and external information to deliver business results.

This book is written by an author who's been in the trenches for people who are in the trenches. It's for practitioners in the real world, who know delivering results is easier said than done – fraught with failure, and difficult politics. A landscape where reason and passion are needed to make a real difference.

This book lays out the appropriate way to establish a culture of fact-based decision making, innovation, forward looking measurements, and appropriate high-speed governance. Readers will enable their organization to:

• Answer strategic questions faster
• Reduce data acquisition time and increase analysis time to improve outcomes
• Shift the focus to positive results rather than past failures
• Expand opportunities by more effectively and thoughtfully leveraging information

Big data makes big promises, but it cannot deliver without the right recipe of people, processes and technology in place. It's about choosing the right people, giving them the right tools, and taking a thoughtful—rather than formulaic--approach. Actionable Intelligence provides expert guidance toward envisioning, budgeting, implementing, and delivering real benefits.

Chapter 1
Vision of Actionable Intelligence

Key Points and Questions

• For intelligence to have value it must deliver answers in time to make a difference to business outcomes.
• The availability of big data is not an immediate way to improve your business.
• Before jumping to statistical packages and hiring data scientists, make sure business leaders have visibility into the intelligence you already have in hand.
• Statistical models that are missing large sets of data and don't include influencing data never predict the future; they can be used only to neatly outline past mistakes.

According to Chinese folklore, around 170 A.D., China's Han Dynasty was very weak. As a result, lawlessness and corruption were rampant throughout the land. One man, Liu Bei, and his friends swore to bring peace to the land by unifying the country and reestablishing the emperor. This task proved to be difficult, so they turned to an adviser renowned for his wisdom, Zhuge Liang. Together, they set out on an expedition to create an alliance with a general named Zhou Yu, who controlled one-third of China. But Zhou Yu, knowing that Zhuge Liang was critical to the success of his enemies, sought to trick him into taking on an impossible task as a way to prove loyalty to the proposed alliance. The true purpose was to trick Zhuge Liang into unwillingly signing up for his own death.

The task was to create 100,000 arrows in 10 days or face execution by General Zhou Yu. One hundred thousand arrows in 10 days sounds like an absolutely impossible task for any ordinary man. Zhuge Liang would surely face death, right?

But he was a resourceful and wise hero. Here's what he did: He pre­pared 20 boats with straw puppets and straw bales on the sides, and a few men inside. He knew the night he sailed his ships into battle would be particularly foggy. Zhuge Liang made his men sail just close enough to be heard but remain unseen. Then he had his men light some torches, beat the drums, and shout orders to the few men actually on board the 20 ships to sound like a large force coming for attack.

Zhuge Liang foresaw the warlord Cao Cao's response: Cao Cao quickly ordered his archers to move out and start shooting toward the drum sounds and torches. Volley upon volley, he and his men fired away. The arrows from the archers got stuck in the straw figures on the boat and the straw bales on the sides. When Zhuge Liang's boats were loaded on one side with arrows and threatened to tilt under the weight, he ordered the ships turned 180 degrees to catch arrows with the straw bales on the other side of the boat.

With more than enough arrows and dawn beginning to break, he ordered the ships to sail back to Zhou Yu.

So what did Zhuge Liang end up with? One hundred thousand arrows and his life, and all the while he sat drinking wine in his cabin on the ship. And Cao Cao? He hadn't really been attacked, but he was outsmarted nonetheless.

Zhou Yu's plan to kill Zhuge Liang through trickery had failed, and this later resulted in his own downfall.

The difference among the three men was their use of information—intelligence, to be more precise.

Zhuge Liang knew what was going on. He knew it was going to be foggy. He knew what his task was, and knew what Cao Cao's reaction would be when he was confronted with Zhuge Liang's trap. He combined this knowledge and performed extraordinarily, against all odds. Zhuge Liang had a 360-degree view of both the internal and external environment. And he acted accordingly. By contrast, Cao Cao was literally left in the dark throughout the supposed attack, and Zhou Yu had taken a gamble on Zhuge Liang's knowledge without knowing the facts about Zhuge Liang's capabilities.

Most businesses nowadays are in the position of Cao Cao: They lack visibility into what is truly happening in the business environment and make quick, snap reactions to what is happening around them. They are not at all proactive; they are not leveraging the environment. Instead, they are manipulated by the environment.

The Challenge at Hand

Today, more than ever, information is everywhere around us. Indeed, we are bombarded with information. We all know, for example, that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are sources of information about our social lives. Though the different apps and sites in this field all offer different forms of social media, they have one thing in common: They let people create information and allow them to read everyone else's information.

For example, by participating on Facebook, you always know what is happening in your social circle via posts on your Facebook wall and updates from others. Some information is useful; some is useless. However, in the end, you always know what is going on because everything is conveniently posted in a single spot: the Facebook wall.

Businesses operate by receiving a tremendous amount of information but usually lack the central, company-wide “Facebook wall” to see it all at any one time.

The process of gathering information from others is often long and painstaking instead of instant and easy. Where businesses would benefit significantly from having all the information they need at their fingertips to provide answers, most are still struggling to pull together the most basic data. Some even lack common definitions and use data sets requiring cumbersome translations to see a global result.

However, if employees know all the latest social updates, why can the same employees not know all the latest information about their own companies?

There is a similar disconnect with mobile.

What data do you need to respond quickly to your customers or leaders? How quickly can you access it? Is it accessible on a secure mobile device?

When customers walk into retail stores they have a wealth of knowledge about the products they are considering purchasing. In Figure 1.1, 63 percent of smartphone owners are checking the pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Vision of Actionable Intelligence
• Chapter 2: Discovery of the Business Situation (Business Discovery)
• Chapter 3: Creating a Foundation of Data
• Chapter 4: Visualization
• Chapter 5: The Initial Answers
• Chapter 6: Time for Change
• Chapter 7: Governance: Funding Intelligence, Protecting the Results
• Chapter 8: Sustaining Delivery of Actionable Intelligence
• Chapter 9: Tying It All Together
• Chapter 10: Next Frontiers
• Chapter 11: Epilogue
• Four Steps of Actionable Intelligence
• About the Author
• About the Contributors
• Index
• End User License Agreement