Franks - The Analytics Revolution

I have known Bill for many years and I admire him for his very pragmatic and straight forward approach to operationalizing analytics. Two decades of real-life, hands-on experience set Bill apart and define him as one of the top leaders in the analytics space!

Elpida Ormanidou, Vice President, Global People
Analytics, Walmart

Franks has created another masterpiece of pragmatic insight and direction, taking the standard of practice and leaping it forward. While data scientists and data managers will appreciate the business value Franks offers, anyone who wants to advance data-driven decisioning and operational analytics needs to read this guide to reaching the next level of the analytics-based business.

Jeff Tanner, author of Analytics and Dynamic Customer Strategy
and Director, Baylor's Innovative Business Collaboratory

As recently as a few years ago, many organizations, departments, and people remained dubious about Big Data and questioned whether analytics mattered at all. Today, those who haven't crossed the chasm are squandering massive opportunities. They appear outdated and hidebound. But where to begin? While no one book can possibly answer every question about making Big Data happen, The Analytics Revolution provides an excellent framework. I heartily recommend it.

Phil Simon, keynote speaker and award-winning author of The Visual
Organization and Too Big to Ignore

This is a comprehensive and much-needed guidebook to successfully implementing operational analytics, automating decisions, and driving data analysis deep into business processes. There is no better guide than Bill Franks to this timely subject, fast becoming a critical strategic differentiator in the era of big data.

Gil Press, contributor to Forbes.com

The book offers an excellent perspective on what a business leader must do and consider to be successful with analytics. The way decisions are made at firms, by operational processes and even by customers is changing - all driven by analytics! This revolutionary change in decision-making will be a new norm in business. I highly recommend this book as a great guide on what to do and expect with operationalizing analytics!

Russell Walker, Clinical Associate Professor,
Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences,
Northwestern University Kellogg
School of Management

If you're in the thick of the Big Data movement at your organization (and who isn't?), then you must read this book. Through his unique storytelling ability, Bill Franks delivers entertaining and insightful examples of how firms around the globe capitalize on their data stores through operational analytics. In particular, there is a keen focus on how to assign value to smart use of data, something that has been missing in many conversations involving Big Data. Franks follows up his succinct analysis presented in Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave by providing a surfboard for those who want to optimize their ride on the wave, and provides his vision for the future of a data driven world.

Linda Burtch, Managing Director,
Burtch Works Executive Recruiting

One our key learnings at Kaggle is that big data is about more than building advanced algorithms. Bill has written an important book about what's involved in putting analytics into practice.

Anthony Goldbloom, Founder & CEO, Kaggle

Cover image: Wiley
Cover design: istock.com/jerry_only

Copyright 2014 by Bill Franks. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Franks, Bill, 1968
The analytics revolution : how to improve your business by making analytics operational in the big data era/Bill Franks.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-87367-0 (cloth); 978-1-118-97675-3 (ebk); 978-1-118-97676-0 (ebk)
1. Business intelligence. 2. Big data. I. Title.
HD38.7.F733 2014
658.4013dc23

2014022308

This book is dedicated to Stacie, Jesse, and Danielle.

If you have followed the topics of business intelligence, analytics, and big data over the last decade or two, you may have wondered what is coming next. After all, the initial flurry of excitement about big data is beginning to subside, and analytics of all kinds have become an important part of business, but a familiar one by now.

What's next is in this book. Bill Franks refers to it as operational analytics, but it could also be called such terms as production analytics, real-time analytics, or decision automation. As these terms suggest, the nature of how analytics are performed is changing rapidly. It's not the analytics themselves that are changing so much. As Franks notes, operational analytics are mostly the same analytics we've done for decades, even centuries. What has changed is the context in which they are carried out.

You can read the details in the book, and you should. I will say here that instead of the back-office, slow, batch analytics of the past, operational analytics are being done much more rapidly and continuously. They are being integrated with business processes and systems, rather than being done separately. I've called this trend Analytics 3.0, as you will read in his first chapter, but Bill's term operational analytics is certainly more descriptive. And he gives a lot more detail about how this world works than I ever did.