Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

DATA PRIVACY BACKLASH

Data privacy will be a hot topic in the future of analytics, as consumers continue to grapple with the notion that many of their activities are being tracked by multiple organizations around the world and by many popular sites such as Facebook and AOL. Also, as analytics become more sophisticated and human-like, consumers may get an uncomfortable feeling when they are given insights they didn’t even know were possible. Recall the case we reviewed in Chapter 1, of the father who learned his daughter was pregnant from Target when he didn’t even know himself.

We expect that as the future progresses, as data and analytics become more important in our daily lives, there will be a data privacy backlash where consumers will demand more aggressive governmental involvement in consumer data privacy standards and protection. We do not know what form this will take: whether it will be a credit agency model, whereby all information is centralized in a few organizations, or whether it will be distributed across each data provider, whereby users have the ability to decide which information about them is shared, hidden, or permanently deleted. Either way, the field of analytics must take note and engage in the conversation, because our field will be directly affected by any changes in data privacy policies and standards.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The future of analytics is bright, with opportunities increasing in many areas.
• Certain trends will dramatically shape the field of analytics ...