Something struck me last week at a gathering of analytics leaders representing a broad
range of companies and organizations: the first generation of such leaders has gotten
pretty darn good at selling themselves and their mission to transform business decision making. The conversations were impressively business-like!

In fact, trade a few telltale phrases like “big data platform” and “machine learning” with
typical business speak, and one could mistake the event for a CEO Roundtable.

This is quite a stunning achievement for the youthful discipline of business analytics.
Given the incredibly diverse origins of today’s analytics leaders, ranging from science
and statistics to economics and engineering, the business acumen on display at the
Chief Analytics Officer Forum in New York was something to behold. The stimulating
event brought together 200 or so analytics leaders from all corners of industry (and
some government- and nonprofit orgs) for two days of networking and best-practice
sharing.

But with the pubescent nature of many analytics leadership roles, one repeated aspect
stood out: most attendees are so accustomed to evangelizing the value of analytics to
their internal business leaders that many of the insights shared at the CAO Forum were
more akin to preaching to a knowledgeable, agreeable choir.

Given the incredibly diverse origins of today’s analytics leaders, ranging from science and statistics to economics and engineering, the business acumen on display at the Chief Analytics Officer Forum in New York was something to behold.

The confirming nature of the sessions was best evidenced by the common themes that
kept emerging: smart talent management is vital, the value of analytics must be
prioritized, and organizing analytics teams is not a one-size-fits-all exercise. Most of
what I heard could be boiled down to these three takeaways, and my sense is that this
wasn’t news for most attendees. (The chair of one panel discussion even prefaced his
session with, “Hopefully we can keep this from becoming another discussion about
talent.”)

At the International Institute for Analytics, we work with enterprises at various stages
of establishing both their analytics programs and the leaders of those programs. Often
the leader in waiting is also the primary driver of the overall analytics strategy, and we
help them succeed more efficiently and effectively across all aspects, now and in the
future.

So now that today’s analytics leaders have mastered the key messages of their mission,
where does the peer discussion go? How does the discipline of business analytics
mature further? (My feeling is that it’s not just a matter of more sophisticated
algorithms.) And what happens to these trailblazing leaders as big data and analytics
become firmly-entrenched capabilities? Three possibilities come to mind.

First, the dialogue among analytics leaders needs to evolve beyond the key messages
and high-level tenets about the value of big data. The details matter more than ever:
which projects and why, which tools and why, when models failed and why. The CAO
Forum featured attendees well-versed in their mission, but likely with many devils in the
details.

One topic that warrants discussion is the risk inherent in analytics work, where
predictive models bear risks that previously were either borne by gut-driven decision
makers or simply didn’t exist (because the decisions didn’t exist). The financial services
industry has some crisis-causing lessons to share here, and I guarantee it’s relevant for
other industries.

Second, the potent combination of business acumen and business positioning for many
analytics leaders may lead to a shift in responsibilities for other executives, particularly
technology leaders whose complementary responsibilities might be reduced a bit.

In one extreme example of the trend toward analytics’ leadership in technology, at IIA
we’ve observed enterprises that have brazenly eliminated the chief information officer
role in favor of a CAO (and perhaps a chief technology officer that reports to the CAO).
Information, after all, is at the heart of analytics. This possibility was echoed a couple
times at the CAO Forum.

Finally, I believe that the increased acceptance and strength of analytics within
companies, often thanks to this first generation of evangelists, will lead to two
interesting organizational trends: leadership movement between analytics and other
functions, as the cryptic nature of analytics fades; and the eventual reduction of chief
analytics officer roles as analytics becomes second nature for traditional functions.

The latter idea of the CAO as a temporary strategy for companies is an exciting
possibility that might be the ultimate achievement of analytics. Is the CAO needed when
a company’s DNA has been wholly reengineered to data-informed decisions? A CAO
who drives such widespread practice of analytics to the point of self-irrelevance is
analogous to the faith missionary who attracts followers that subsequently build
churches and congregations long after the missionary has moved on.

Either way, I’m interested to see how the agenda and participants of the Chief Analytics
Officer Forum series evolves, and where the current generation of analytics leaders
takes their organizations. Most of all, I’m excited to be a part of both.

By: Daniel Magestro

Daniel Magestro, Ph.D., is the Vice President, Research Director at the International Institute for Analytics. An accomplished analytics executive with experience in healthcare, banking and insurance, Dan manages IIA’s robust research agenda and leads IIA’s international network of faculty experts and interface with IIA’s global community of analytics practitioners.

Prior to joining IIA, Dan managed multiple analytics teams at Cardinal Health in Columbus, Ohio, where he built an analytics center of excellence to serve the company’s large Pharmaceutical Division. He has also held analytics roles at JP Morgan Chase, Nationwide Insurance, and Investor Analytics. Since 2010, he has served as an Adjunct Professor at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, where he teaches courses on data analysis and advises the university on analytics initiatives. Dan came to business from science; he holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics and authored several research publications.