Data Science Strategy For Dummies

Foreword

We’re living in a make-or-break era; the ability to generate business value from enterprise data will either make or break your organization. We didn’t get here overnight. For years, experts have been professing how vital it is that business reframe itself to become more data-driven.

Some listened, some did not.

Organizations that took their business by its big data helm (like Netflix, Facebook, and Walmart) set the precedent. You better believe they have extremely robust data strategies in place governing those operations. The ones that did not? This book was written for you.

Sadly, over the last decade, some organizations got caught up in the media buzz. They’ve spent a huge amount of time and money working to hire data scientists, but haven’t seen the ROI they’d expected.

Part of the problem is that it’s both expensive and difficult to hire data scientists. In 2018, the median salaries for data scientists in USA ranged between $95,000 and $165,000 (see the 2018 Burtch Works’ Data Science Strategy Report). Making matters worse, the demand for analytics-savvy workers is twice the supply (see The Quant Crunch, prepared for IBM by Burning Glass Technologies). No surprise that it’s exceedingly difficult to recruit and retain these type of professionals.

But a bigger part of the problem is just this — contrary to what most advocates will tell you, just sourcing and hiring a team of “Data Scientists” isn’t going to get your organization where it needs to be. You’ll also ...