Data is your most valuable leadership asset—here's how to use it The Data Driven Leader presents a clear, accessible guide to solving important leadership challenges through human resources-focused and other data analytics. This engaging book shows you how to transform the HR function and overall organizational effectiveness by using data to make decisions grounded in facts vs. opinions, identify root causes behind your company’s thorniest problems and move toward a winning, future-focused business strategy. Realistic and actionable, this book tells the story of a successful sales executive who, after leading an analytics-driven turnaround (in Data Driven, this book’s predecessor), faces a new turnaround challenge as chief human resources officer. Each chapter features insightful commentary and practical notes on the points the story raises, guiding you to put HR analytics into action in your organization. HR and other leaders cannot afford to overlook the power and competitive advantages of data-driven decision-making and strategies. This book reflects the growing trend of CEOs choosing analytics-minded business leaders to head HR, at a time when workplaces everywhere face game-changing forces including automation, robotics and artificial intelligence. It is urgent that human resources leaders embrace analytics, not only to remain professionally relevant but also to help their organizations successfully navigate this digital transformation. HR professionals can and must: Understand essential data science principles and corporate analytics models Identify and execute effective data analytics initiatives Boost HR and company productivity and performance with metrics that matter Shape an analytics-centric culture that generates data driven leaders Most organizations capture and report data, but data is useless without analysis that leads to action. The Data Driven Leader shows you how to use this tremendous asset to lead your organization higher.

Imagine spending a day with top analytical leaders and asking any question you want. In this book, Wayne Eckerson illustrates analytical best practices by weaving his perspective with commentary from seven directors of analytics who unveil their secrets of success. With an innovative flair, Eckerson tackles a complex subject with clarity and insight. Each of the book's 20 chapters is a stand-alone essay on an analytical topic, yet collectively they form a concise methodology about how to implement a successful analytics program. From the Foreword by Michael Halbherr, Executive Vice President, Nokia We are living in a time of radical change. From my vantage point as head of Nokia's Location and Commerce business, I see many business and technical trends shaping our future--and all depend on a new commodity: data. In our mapping business, I see the need to evolve from a road-centric tool to something that allows people to truly understand and maneuver the complexities of a modern city. To accomplish this, we need a lot of data and ways to correlate disparate information into what we call "Smart Data." Analytics is core to what we do, and how we deliver value to customers today and in the future. I recently spoke to the Nokia board about our data, and some members questioned how we could monetize this asset. Since a few members are executives in the oil industry, I told them that data is the "oil of the future", and that you monetize this new resource the same way you monetize oil, by spending time and money refining it. In our case, we are refining data about people, locations, social interactions, traffic, musical preferences, and so on to bring maps to life. The analytical leaders profiled in this book demonstrate how to refine data for business gain and innovation. They play a pivotal role by bridging the worlds of business and technology. When supported by the business, they've delivered remarkable solutions that have given their organizations a competitive edge. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to monetize the most important resource of our time: data. It's written in language that both a CEO and a CIO can understand, and carries important lessons no matter what side of the business-technology aisle someone sits.

Practical introduction to a novel system of performance measurement for a variety of enterprises, written for practitioners and students alike.

Data has never been more important to your success than it is today, yet you are surrounded with data you can't trust, and the overwhelming burden of fixing it. Everyone deserves data that helps-not hurts-their organization.

With big data analytics comes big insights into profitability Big data is big business. But having the data and the computational power to process it isn't nearly enough to produce meaningful results. Big Data, Data Mining, and Machine Learning: Value Creation for Business Leaders and Practitioners is a complete resource for technology and marketing executives looking to cut through the hype and produce real results that hit the bottom line. Providing an engaging, thorough overview of the current state of big data analytics and the growing trend toward high performance computing architectures, the book is a detail-driven look into how big data analytics can be leveraged to foster positive change and drive efficiency. With continued exponential growth in data and ever more competitive markets, businesses must adapt quickly to gain every competitive advantage available. Big data analytics can serve as the linchpin for initiatives that drive business, but only if the underlying technology and analysis is fully understood and appreciated by engaged stakeholders. This book provides a view into the topic that executives, managers, and practitioners require, and includes: A complete overview of big data and its notable characteristics Details on high performance computing architectures for analytics, massively parallel processing (MPP), and in-memory databases Comprehensive coverage of data mining, text analytics, and machine learning algorithms A discussion of explanatory and predictive modeling, and how they can be applied to decision-making processes Big Data, Data Mining, and Machine Learning provides technology and marketing executives with the complete resource that has been notably absent from the veritable libraries of published books on the topic. Take control of your organization's big data analytics to produce real results with a resource that is comprehensive in scope and light on hyperbole.

Tips, techniques, and trends on how to use dashboard technology to optimize business performance Business performance management is a hot new management discipline that delivers tremendous value when supported by information technology. Through case studies and industry research, this book shows how leading companies are using performance dashboards to execute strategy, optimize business processes, and improve performance. Wayne W. Eckerson (Hingham, MA) is the Director of Research for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), the leading association of business intelligence and data warehousing professionals worldwide that provide high-quality, in-depth education, training, and research. He is a columnist for SearchCIO.com, DM Review, Application Development Trends, the Business Intelligence Journal, and TDWI Case Studies & Solution.

"While business analytics sounds like a complex subject, this book provides a clear and non-intimidating overview of the topic. Following its advice will ensure that your organization knows the analytics it needs to succeed, and uses them in the service of key strategies and business processes. You too can go beyond reporting!"—Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson College; coauthor, Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results Deliver the right decision support to the right people at the right time Filled with examples and forward-thinking guidance from renowned BA leaders Gert Laursen and Jesper Thorlund, Business Analytics for Managers offers powerful techniques for making increasingly advanced use of information in order to survive any market conditions. Take a look inside and find: Proven guidance on developing an information strategy Tips for supporting your company's ability to innovate in the future by using analytics Practical insights for planning and implementing BA How to use information as a strategic asset Why BA is the next stepping-stone for companies in the information age today Discussion on BA's ever-increasing role Improve your business's decision making. Align your business processes with your business's objectives. Drive your company into a prosperous future. Taking BA from buzzword to enormous value-maker, Business Analytics for Managers helps you do it all with workable solutions that will add tremendous value to your business.

As a follow-up to the successful Competing on Analytics, authors Tom Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Robert Morison provide practical frameworks and tools for all companies that want to use analytics as a basis for more effective and more profitable decision making. Regardless of your company's strategy, and whether or not analytics are your company's primary source of competitive differentiation, this book is designed to help you assess your organization's analytical capabilities, provide the tools to build these capabilities, and put analytics to work. The book helps you answer these pressing questions: What assets do I need in place in my organization in order to use analytics to run my business? Once I have these assets, how do I deploy them to get the most from an analytic approach? How do I get an analytic initiative off the ground in the first place, and then how do I sustain analytics in my organization over time? Packed with tools, frameworks, and all new examples, Analytics at Work makes analytics understandable and accessible and teaches you how to make your company more analytical.

Explore four key analytic processes that will help you make choices, implement changes or plans, fgure out why something went wrong, and resolve a complex or confusing issue. Numerous examples of typical school and classroom problems make the processes clear, understandable, and easy to use.

Today, an effective marketing analytics executive is even more important than a brilliant data scientist. That's because successful analytics investments now require managerial orchestration of many elements that go far beyond conventional definitions of analytics. Marketing and Sales Analytics examines the experiences of sales and marketing leaders and practitioners who have successfully built high value analytics capabilities in multiple industries. Then, drawing on their experiences, top analytics consultant Cesar Brea introduces overarching frameworks and specific tools that can help you achieve the same levels of success in your own organization. Brea shows how to: Establish the "ecosystemic" conditions for analytic success Reconcile the diverse perspectives that impact analytics initiatives ("Business v. IT," "Sales v. Marketing," "Analysts v. Creatives v. Managers," and "Everyone v. Finance") Decide what success will "look like" Agree on the questions to ask Organize both internal and external data Establish operational flexibility, and balance flexibility with efficiency Recruit the right people and organize them optimally Intelligently decide what to do yourself, and what to hire vendors for Balance research, analytics, and testing Implement proven research, analytics, and testing strategies Deliver results through storytelling (and recognize its limitations) Control the biases that creep into analytics research Maintain momentum, implement governance, and "keep score"