A Data Scientist's Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Business, and the Future
A Data Scientist's Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Business, and the Future
In this interview, David Cieslak, PhD, the Chief Data Scientist at Aunalytics, describes complex analytics concepts such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, and explains how they are useful for businesses today—and will continue to be in the future. David has been with Aunalytics since its inception and leads its Innovation Lab in the development and delivery of complex algorithms designed to solve business problems in the manufacturing/supply chain, financial, healthcare, and media sectors.
Do you have the tools and talent to set your organization up for analytics success?
Most business leaders would agree: data is a valuable asset. Having up-to-date, accurate data with which to make data-driven decisions currently gives organizations an edge, but eventually, this will become table stakes in most industries, simply to remain competitive. However, an up-front investment in a strong technical foundation and a shift to embrace analytics culture throughout the organization are required to achieve analytics success.
Unfortunately, there are many challenges to overcome when trying to bring siloed and dirty data from multiple sources across your business to a single place to be analyzed, including a lack of time and manpower, and the need for data points that don’t currently exist, to name a few. Using data analytics, it becomes possible to better optimize your business by discovering operational efficiencies, reducing costs, tracking customer trends across your organization, and making strategic decisions based on predictive data models. Is partnering with analytics experts the best choice for mid-sized institutions, or should you hire Full-Time Employees (FTEs) to build and manage your data?
There are multiple ways an analytics platform could be created—we’re going to look at two today.
Build it yourself
The first is choosing to create a custom data platform. While not a bad choice, it could take a FTE years to create your analytics platform—if it’s ever finished. An engineer hired to build a custom platform may leave you high and dry with no one to step in to help. Something like this could cost your business months—or even years—of lost money and productivity, leaving you with nothing to show for your platform building efforts.
Even if your data engineer remains with your business, there are other challenges you may encounter. It can be difficult for a single FTE to stay up to date on the newest technological advances and upgrades. Especially when that person is not only expected to clean and update information on thousands of data records, but also take care of system and software updates, keep up with changing trends in the analytics world, and more. A lack of manpower can also make tasks like finding trends in your data nearly impossible, as data processing may be far behind where your most recent and relevant business analytics can be found.
When it comes to advanced analytics, you would need to find and hire additional employees who are skilled in advanced data analytics, machine learning, and AI techniques, and ideally, familiar with your industry. This can be easier said than done. Data scientists, like many in the technology field, are in high demand, and may be difficult to find and hire in smaller geographical markets.
Work with a partner
A different option is working with a trusted technology partner who brings data analytics expertise straight to you. Partnering with an end-to-end provider often saves your company money while allowing someone else to take care of the nitty gritty that goes into creating reports, graphs, charts, and more. Additionally, you are guaranteed to have access to the team you need to build algorithms and find insights in your data. A partner will consistently provide you with the right tools, talent, and resources, while supporting you the entire way. But how could an Analytics as a Service partner help you find the true value of your data?
A good partner will be able to offer the required resources to achieve analytics success—a foundational data platform, automated data management, access to data experts, and data delivery methods such as relevant and actionable dashboards and reports. Imagine having a regular report, generated overnight, every night, for you to review first thing in the morning—without having to invest in many new FTEs and years of development time.
When looking for a data analytics partner, all the things above are important for creating a successful partnership that leads to analytics success. Aunalytics provides data processing and analytics help and would never expect you to go it alone. When you hire us, you hire data scientists, data engineers, and data analysts, reducing the need for multiple expensive FTEs. By having access to a team of data experts by your side, your business can find itself enabled to make better, faster, and smarter decisions based on consistent, real-time data.
How State and Local Governments Can Use Technology to Overcome Economic Challenges
How State and Local Governments Can Use Technology to Overcome Economic Challenges
At present, state and local governments are confronted with significant challenges stemming from the current state of the economy. This includes a decrease in tax revenues, sustained high inflation, and a shortage of proficient IT personnel, who are vital to their day-to-day operations. Industry experts consider technology as an effective solution to address inadequacies during challenging economic periods.
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How State and Local Governments Can Use Technology to Overcome Economic Challenges
How State and Local Governments Can Use Technology to Overcome Economic Challenges
At present, state and local governments are confronted with significant challenges stemming from the current state of the economy. This includes a decrease in tax revenues, sustained high inflation, and a shortage of proficient IT personnel, who are vital to their day-to-day operations. Industry experts consider technology as an effective solution to address inadequacies during challenging economic periods.
Overcome Hiring and Talent Challenges to Get Ahead of the Competition in 2023
Overcome Hiring and Talent Challenges to Get Ahead of the Competition in 2023
Hiring and retaining staff is going to be the most difficult task facing CFOs for much of 2023. This is particularly true for IT departments. In today’s economy, highly skilled IT and data experts are a scarce and expensive resource. The mid-market organization requires another option that provides access to the right tools, resources, and support.
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Overcome Hiring and Talent Challenges to Get Ahead of the Competition in 2023
Overcome Hiring and Talent Challenges to Get Ahead of the Competition in 2023
Hiring and retaining staff is going to be the most difficult task facing CFOs for much of 2023. This is particularly true for IT departments. In today’s economy, highly skilled IT and data experts are a scarce and expensive resource. The mid-market organization requires another option that provides access to the right tools, resources, and support.
Customer Intelligence Insights are Reliant on Accurate Data
It’s 10pm, do you know where your customer data is?
Jokes aside, is your data organized in a form that you can easily use, review, and make critical business decisions from? Or is disorganized data slowing down your decision-making and preventing your organization from utilizing customer intelligence to enhance the customer experience and grow your business?
Improved Enterprise Data Management Enables Customer Intelligence Analytics
In many organizations, heaps of data are coming in from multiple sources, into and out of multiple clouds and departments, with varying degrees of accuracy. This makes decision-making based on customer intelligence difficult. When your data is not cleansed, you may have multiple records for the same person, spread across your databases. It is essential for your digital maturity process to include optimizing enterprise data management—finding all disparate data, cleansing, and aggregating it, and creating a single, correct client record—your single source of truth.
With enterprise data management and a robust data analytics platform working together, your customer data and prospect lists become more reliable, you save money on marketing materials, and, with the right analytics platform, can more easily implement AI solutions to send the right offer to the right customer at the right time. An analytics platform can mean taking your client records and improving them, their data, and your ability to make data-driven decisions about your prospects’ and customers’ needs.
A Customer Intelligence Analytics Database, like Aunalytics’ Daybreak Analytics Database, not only provides daily insights, compiled overnight and ready for you first thing in the morning, but also gives you access to a robust data platform and actionable industry-relevant smart features to enable various analytics solutions, helping you create a strategy that will lead to positive outcomes for your customers. With a streamlined system for your organization to find, access, store, and manage your data, along with an analytics platform bringing data to your fingertips, you don’t have to worry about which version of a client record you will find today, which version of the client’s name is what she prefers to go by, or what the correct version of her address is.
A side-by-side approach with a technology partner is the best way to access tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), predictive analytics, and a team of experts by your side to provide support and assist you every step of the way. Look for a provider who supports an end-to-end process, making sure you don’t get stuck in the middle and left hung out to dry when making your journey to better enterprise data management, analytics, and, ultimately, digital maturity.
Catalyst University 2023
Catalyst University 2023
Radisson Plaza Hotel, Kalamazoo, MI
Aunalytics to Attend 2023 Catalyst University
Aunalytics is excited attend Southwest Michigan First’s Catalyst University 2022 in Kalamazoo, MI. Aunalytics is participating as a speaker sponsor and is pleased to present Mitch Albom, who is a best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster, and musician.
The Role of a Data Scientist
The Role of a Data Scientist
In this interview, David Cieslak, PhD, talks about the role of a data scientist—from what a typical workday looks like, to tips for budding data scientists.
David Cieslak, PhD, is the Chief Data Scientist at Aunalytics since its inception and leads its Innovation Lab in the development and delivery of complex algorithms designed to solve business problems in the manufacturing/supply chain, financial, healthcare, and media sectors. Prior to Aunalytics, Cieslak was on staff at the University of Notre Dame as part of the research faculty where he contributed on high value grants with both the federal government and Fortune 500 companies. He has published numerous articles in highly regarded journals, conferences, and workshops on the topics of Machine Learning, Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery, Artificial Intelligence, and Grid Computing.
Banking Institutions Are Behind in AI Maturity—Catch Up or Others Will Eat Your Lunch
Banking Institutions Are Behind in AI Maturity—Catch Up or Others Will Eat Your Lunch
Financial institutions must embrace the use of data analytics powered by artificial intelligence for operational efficiency, risk reduction, revenue growth, and improved customer experience. Yet, it’s clear that financial companies that fail to pick up the pace, moving ahead to the next phase of AI deployment, are in danger of falling far behind. Luckily, there is a clear-cut solution to reaching AI maturity and achieving sustained, long-term success.
