Ashton Media
Marketing & Customer Experience Hub

The Future: Customer Analytics, Business and the Executive Function

Dr Eugene Dubossarsky - Presciient

Data Strategy Symposium 2014

The Data Strategy Symposium 2014 run by Ashton Media will be held in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia, on the 17-19 November, where the leading minds in online and offline marketing and advertising will converge to share best practices and insights.

Keynote speaker

Dr Eugene Dubossarsky, Managing Director of Presciient, is one of the keynote speakers at the Data Strategy Symposium and will present ‘The Future: Customer Analytics, Business and the Executive Function‘.

Dr Eugene Dubossarsky - Presciient

About the presentation

The presentation will examine what the future looks like:

–  when data and analytics are no longer a curiosity, but a minimal requirement for competitive participation,

–  where analytical literacy is as vital as computer literacy for any modern professional, and

–  where competitive edge is determined daily by unique and innovative new applications of analytics, created by a tireless team of experts, with an eye on competitors doing the very same.

Dr Dubossarsky is a leader in the data analytics industry with 18 years of commercial analytics experience. He has 20 years’ experience programming in R and its parent language, S.

Dr Dubossarsky is also the founder and head of the Sydney Users of R Forum, a group with over 750 members, as well as a leader and sponsor of the Melbourne, Canberra, and Brisbane user groups, and founder of the Sydney Data Science group.

In today’s post, Mark Abay of Ashton Media asks Dr Dubossarsky 3 questions about data analytics and the key learnings that attendees to his presentation will walk away with.

Mark:

Data analytics is currently high on the corporate agenda for most forward thinking organisations. Is data analytics overhyped?

Eugene:

Yes, massively, but in exactly the same way that the Internet was in 1996 or the personal computer in was in 1983.

Overhyped, because just about everything we hear is wrong, but very much here to change the world profoundly and already doing so.

It does not help that organisations doing real things with data tend to be quiet about them – who brags about real intelligence?

Industry noise is actually a counter signal as to value. Organisations are achieving massive and real value – but doing so in-house and most are keeping real quiet…

Mark:

In your opinion, what are the key challenges faced by organisations when approaching data analytics?

Eugene:

The biggest challenge to realising value from analytics is having an executive that actually wants to realise that value, and understands that this means being an actual recipient of analytics. Too many C-suite executives are right on the analytics bandwagon, but fall short in actually using data analytics themselves.

The reason the challenge exists is that analytics is there to help make better decisions. It is NOT there to make decision making easier: it helps smart, information-hungry people get smarter but can be quite challenging to executives who don’t rate highly as information-synthesisers.

Mark:

What key learnings will attendees to your presentation at the Data Strategy Symposium walk away with?

Eugene:

1. The real challenges, impediments and drivers of analytics – cultural, political, organisational.
2. What the future holds for analytics, organisations, jobs and lives, and what skills, management styles and attitudes matter.

Don’t miss Dr Eugene Dubossarsky at the Data Strategy Symposium 2014 on the 17th-19th   November at Cypress Lakes Resort, Hunter Valley. His presentation titled ‘The Future: Customer Analytics, Business and the Executive Function‘ will take place at 13:40 hrs on Tuesday 18th November, 2014.

Mark Abay - Content Director, Ashton Media About Mark Abay - Content Director, Ashton Media
Mark is Content Director at Ashton Media. It's his job to create interesting and engaging conference programs that stretch the thinking of our attendees. Mark works closely with our industry advisors to ensure the conference content is aligned with the needs and interests of our audiences.