Secrets of Analytical Leaders

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.

Wayne Eckerson has created a unique - and uniquely valuable - book in "The Secrets of Analytical Leaders." He's pulled together the insights of seven leading analytics practitioners, and combined them with his own considerable experience. The result is an interesting dialogue among some really smart and distinguished people. I'm not sure which is more interesting - the format or the content!

Thomas H. Davenport

Visiting Professor, Harvard Business School

Co-Founder and Director of Research

International Institute for Analytics

Professors are hard at work molding the world's future analytical leaders - but the chasm between theoretical textbook learning and the real world is considerable. Wayne, with his customary clarity and insight, helps professors cross the chasm by delivering frameworks, commentary, and scenarios that are real, interesting, and important.

Hugh Watson

Professor of MIS and a C. Herman and Mary Virginia Chair of Business Administration

Terry College of Business, University of Georgia

and

Barbara Wixom

Associate Professor at the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia

Research Affiliate, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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 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 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.