Preparing data and building data mining models are two very well documented steps of analytics projects. However, whatever interesting your results are, they are useless if no action is taken. Thus, the step from analytics to action is a crucial one in any analytics project. Imagine you have the best data and found the best model of all time. You need to industrialize the data mining solution to make your company benefits from them. Often, you will first need to sell your project to the management.
I recently read three interesting articles on this topic. The first one, Selling Information Governance to Business Leaders, by Sunil Soares, gives four tips explaining the value of analytics to business leaders. The first tip, focusing on business outcome, is extremely important. You may have a perfect data mining application, predicting your target with 99% of accuracy. If you can’t transform this 99% accuracy into a usable and industrialized solution for the company, the project will not bring any ROI for the company.
The second paper, Selling a Data Mining Project to Management is written by Casey Klimasauskas. It proposes an approach for selling a new data mining project to management. Part of the strategy deals with developing relationships with the stakeholders from the very beginning of the project. This minimizes the risk of future objections and increase the supporters of the project.
Finally, What the C-suite should know about analytics, is an interesting article written by Kishore S. Swaminathan. Found in the sascom magazine (but originally from Accenture), the article lists five areas to focus on in order to bring analytics to the management. The advices given in this article are very relevant. I particularly liked the 10 characteristics of an analytic leader. For more information, I provided the links to these three articles below.
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Selling Information Governance to Business Leaders
Selling a Data Mining Project to Management
What the C-suite should know about analytics
