A presentation made by Minerra's founder and principal consultant, Steve Remington, at Big Data World Asia 2019 in Singapore Title: Moving From Insight Creation to Decision Support: How to Break the Insights Obsession Summary: The analytics profession has a problem: It is obsessed with insight creation. In the past, the obsession was not a major problem because manually finding and communicating insights was a core task for analytics professionals. The analytics technology landscape is, however, rapidly changing with new technologies like Auto ML, Augmented Analytics and Signal Detection automating ever-increasing parts of the insight creation process. In this presentation, I will explain why the obsession with insight creation as an objective is a problem and show you how organisations can realign their analytics and data science functions to focus on the true, value-creating purpose of analytics: supporting decision-makers.

1. Moving from insight
creation to decision
support: How to break
the insights obsession
Steve Remington
Principal Consultant
Minerra

2. What happens when an industry becomes
obsessed with the wrong thing?
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 2

3. “People don’t want
to buy a quarter-
inch drill. They
want a quarter-inch
hole!”
Theodore Levitt, Marketing Professor, Harvard Business School
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 3

4. Managers don’t
want insights. They
want to make
informed
decisions.
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 4

5. The analytics profession has
an insights problem obsession

6. Why is a focus on insight creation such a
problem?
Insights ≠ Decisions
and
Insight creation is becoming
automated...
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 6

7. …thanks to Augmented Analytics
“[Augmented analytics automates] data
preparation, insight discovery and sharing. It
also automates…ML model development,
management and deployment.”
Gartner, 2017
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8. …and Augmented analytics is coming
fast already here
“Augmented Analytics will become more
relevant than reports and dashboards for
human analysis over the next three years.”
Gartner, 2017
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 8

9. How does analytics remain relevant to
business?
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 9

10. Here are three ways to help analytics
remain relevant to business
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People & Skills Team Structure Technology

11. People & Skills
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 11

12. Know how people make decisions
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 12

13. Know how analytics helps people make
better decisions
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14. Master these essential business skills
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Influencing Without
Power
Data
Storytelling
Business Problem
Solver

15. Team Structure
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 15

16. Create a diverse analytics team with a
range of technical and business skills
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 16

17. Choose team members with the right
mix of skills
T or Pishaped skills profiles
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 17

18. Structure your analytics team to focus on
decision support
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 18
Business
Manager
Data
Delivery
Decision
Analyst
Research &
Development
Leader
Decision
Support
Partner

19. Technology
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 19

20. Choose an analytics platform that
facilitates decision making
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 20

22. Choose an analytics platform that
facilitates decision making
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 22

24. Choose an analytics platform that
facilitates decision making
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 24

26. Want to learn more about the impact of
augmented analytics?
Attend the following presentation:
The impact of AI on the Data Analyst
Who: Rob Aldridge, Solutions Consultant, Yellowfin
When: Thursday 11 October at 10:00 am
Where: Big Data and Analytics Keynote Theatre
BDWA 2019 Moving from insight creation to decision support 26

27. steve.remington@minerra.net
linkedin.com/in/stevenremington
www.minerra.net
Thanks for your time.
Contact. Connect. Follow.
Visit me at the Yellowfin Booth (R35)