WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: a good checklist when thinking about how to setup a data-driven organizations. But don't go there to look for how to do it.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting stats and useful information for all companies as they make their plans for return to the office. In particular this stat which indicates that 1 in 3 may look elsewhere if return to the old way is projected.

WHY IT MATTERS: mary meeker internet trend report is an annual must see report to gage the state of the Internet - and digital transformation. Here she applies the same rigour to analyze the impact of coronavirus. #mustread

WHY IT MATTERS: this report from Gartner surprisingly is very useful as it provides a framework and target reference architecture for machine learning and AI. Very well done and useful. The link is for 2018 update but the original 2017 report is available for free here: https://www.gartner.com/binaries/content/assets/events/keywords/catalyst/catus8/preparing_and_architecting_for_machine_learning.pdf

WNHY IT MATTERS: everyone's wondering how to use AI within their organization. This paper suggests a 4-step approach to make this a reality, focussing on processes rather than technology.

WHY IT MATTERS: this is the annual presentation to level-set everyone on the Internet, mobile, ecommerce, cybersecurity, epayment, personalization, etc. She covers everything and shows that digital transformation is in full swing. Just WOW. Again.

WHY IT MATTERS: many retailers say "AI is not for us, all we have to do is offer great customer service in store and all will be good". This study shows that the impact of AI and analytics will be material for those that adopt it. And may mark the beginning of the end for those that do not embrace this digital transformation.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

We say one company in a thousand makes it. This study provides hard facts that the numbers are more like 16%.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

For a while the saying was that "If You're Not Paying for It; You're the Product" but it looks like today "If You're Not Paying for It; You're the Data". data is in fact so important today because it is essential to program the new algorithms of deep learning. Those that have plenty of Data - Facebook, Google, Apple, UBER, Tesla - will be able to have better software and thus hopefully better products.

Thus, you are the data. Think about it next time you use a computer or mobile phone...

I wrote about this in the past numerous times and it is great to see HBR and others recognize this important trend: companies are sitting on huge amounts of information they can use to extract meaningful information and share it with their clients and employees to attract and retain them.

For example, look at jawbone and how they do it

• http://fmcs.digital/blog/what-one-million-people-sleep-patterns-tell-us/ 
• http://fmcs.digital/blog/proof-sleep-happiness-jawbone-analyzes-56m/
• http://fmcs.digital/blog/bedtime-stories-learning-from-sleep-data-from/ 
• http://fmcs.digital/blog/how-did-the-napa-earthquake-affect-sleep/ 

Very useful stats and data.

An interactive chart that graphs 800 different jobs along with their automation potential - as estimated by McKinsey.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

If you are in school or just out of school, this chart should be of particular interest. For all the others, this is essential must read tooling when preparing strategy and planning for the future of your business unit, organization - large or startup.

Jobs with highest potential for automation represent opportunities for cost reduction, process improvements to reduce lead times, or creation of the automated tools and software that will replace them. For example:

• medical appliance technicians: 100% automation potential. If you are in this field your business plan should include major shift from human workers to robots. If employees are unionized, look at contract negotiation and employee retraining. If you build medical appliance, ensure your hard-software appliance includes the necessary components to make this automation simple and effective.
• sewing machine operators: 100% automation potential, 143K workers in the US. Replacing human by robot sewing machine is efficient but will require capital expenditures: has it been forecasted in your budgets? If that throws your business model out of whack, you have to think like a startup and "pivot" your company to a different yet adjacent space such as custom apparel design and fabrication.

And 798 other sources of inspiration. 

A 60 slide powerpoint presentation on Internet of Things, its current and future usage and penetration, possible uses, etc.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

IoT is a major trend which should impact all businesses in the near future. This is a well researched document that provides very useful charts for anyone putting together strategic plans and roadmaps. It covers a wide variety of industries and applications, which shows how wide and deep the IoT revolution could be. Must read.

US bureau of labour statistics releases historical data that shows the decline of the newspaper industry in favour of the internet publishing.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Less dramatic than previous charts that show the digital cliff that newspaper advertisement business fell in recently, this chart highlights the decline of physical delivery of news in favour of the digital delivery. Right inline with a post I wrote regarding the Digital Cliff in various posts http://bit.ly/1g5adjK (in french), http://sco.lt/5nD06r , http://sco.lt/6gOeWn , http://sco.lt/5Hfzlp 

Moreover, the bureau of labour statistics presents a large number of data and charts to help document the digital transformation. See http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/subject.htm 

Just one example of the huge rise in mobile phones. Given recent State of the Internet report that indicates Internet growth is slowing down, and that mobile phone sales have levelled off as well, this chart reminds us all that people are starting to use their phones in many different context. So even if growth stalls, the usage and data consumption will continue to grow for a while.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

If you propose interesting uses for mobile phones, your clients and employees will use them. And they expect to use more and more in the future. So waht have you planned in your digital strategy to leverage, extend, grow the usage of mobile phones for clients and employees?

I found this book reference on GitBook. It is the textbook for the class at UC Berkeley and provides not only great content for anyone interested in Data Science (visualization, prediction, etc.) but also for anyone interested in self publication. 

GitBook is similar to GitHub, the open source software code repository that pretty much everyone in the industry is using. It provides not only the technology to create and publish a book online or as an ebook but also the social network and collaboration features you'd expect in today's world. Book content can be consolidated from multiple authors, versioned and commented by a network of colleagues or clients.

A presentation of case studies in data analysis for Marketing, it also presents some very useful enterprise data science insights that can be leveraged when preparing a corporate data strategy. Also presents some interesting data points and use case priorization.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

All corporations dream of leveraging data in real-time but the reality of legacy computer systems, lack of expertise with new tools and technologies, and a considerable amount of hype very often makes data strategies overblown and unrealistic. At this point in time it appears that the best course of action is to capture a target vision and identify numerous small initiatives to get your feet wet and run up the maturity scale. Stay away from large all-encompassing plans that require boiling the ocean (of data)!