A brief introduction to the benefits of data analytics, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence.

Successfully managing, transforming, or growing a business or organization is dependent on many factors. Data and its management is one of those key factors.
 
The integration of data analytics (DA), business intelligence (BI), and artificial intelligence (AI) can be positive game changers, if leveraged appropriately.
 
The fields of data analytics and business intelligence are increasingly supported by artificial intelligence, whereby machines can be trained to scour volumes of data to trend, (self) build new data models, and grow capacity for trending, predictions, tracking, and more.
 
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What do data management, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence mean?

In order to determine how to integrate data management, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence into your business or organizational modelling, it’s important to understand each one of them.

Data Analytics (DA)
Per, TechTarget.com, “Data analytics (DA) is the process of examining data sets in order to draw conclusions about the information they contain, increasingly with the aid of specialized systems and software. DA technologies and techniques are widely used in commercial industries to enable organizations to make more-informed business decisions and by scientists and researchers to verify or disprove scientific models, theories and hypotheses.” (https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/data-analytics)

Business Intelligence (BI)
Also from Techtarget.com, “Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information which helps executives, managers and other corporate  end users make informed business decisions. BI encompasses a wide variety of tools, applications and methodologies that enable organizations to collect data from internal systems and external sources, prepare it for analysis, develop and run queries against that data and create reports, dashboards and data visualizations to make the analytical results available to corporate decision-makers, as well as operational workers.” BI reporting is a “tool” in data analytics reporting. (https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/business-intelligence-BI)
 
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Even though it’s been around since the late 1950s, many don’t understand what AI is or what it can do. Simply put, it is a machine’s (computer) ability to process data and learn via inputs and outputs (not always outputs). Machines and robots can do things better and faster than humans, it’s a fact, and humans can carry out highly complex activities that machines cannot do.
Per Science Daily, “The modern definition of artificial intelligence (or AI) is "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success.” (https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/artificial_intelligence.htm)
 
How does a business or organization effectively use these “tools”?

Simply put, data analytics, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence are all powerful tools to help you better understand your organization, clients, environment, and make suitable decisions. But, you need to know why you want from this information.
 
First, data without purpose is noise.
If you don’t know why you want to collect or measure something, it’s simply noise. Take for example, key performance indicators (KPIs). If you have more than a handful, say 3 – 5, then you’re talking metrics, not KPIs. The waters can quickly get muddied if you’re throwing a bunch of competing data sets around, per department or business unit.
 
Understand what it is you want to measure, and why. Is it sales based on time of year or product promotion, or efficiency improvements (# of minutes to execute a task) translating into (potentially) increased productivity, or number of visits to a national park, per day of week and time of year? Then determine if that measurement is a KEY indicator or a METRIC.
 
Second, is your data organized?
If your company or organization has several sets of ad hoc reports and disconnected reporting systems, pulling or amalgamating data may be an issue for analytics or any sort of business intelligence reporting. How do you generate your financial reports, via what systems, and are they tied to your productivity, efficiency, and margin measurements? Do you measure your productivity? If so, how? If you’re not inputting what you want to capture into systems that can simply output data sets for analysis or comparison, consider changing that.
 
Third, do you have enough data to leverage AI?
AI seems to be the latest, greatest thing. But how to incorporate it into your business is the question. You must ask, “Do you have enough data?” In order to leverage AI, one must have adequate amounts of data (a lot), for machine learning to take place. Next, what are the relationships you want to create to answer what questions, and again, why?
 
Machines can crunch data at a rate significantly superior to humans, but do you have enough data? And what is it that you want to: extract, measure, and train a machine to do? And, again, why?
 
Fourth, what type of AI could you use?
There are different types of AI to be leveraged depending on your need to process raw data, images, or sounds (also broken down into data). To answer this, you have to ask yourself, “What do you want AI to do for you?”
 
Could your online client service portal benefit from chat-bots with simple answers to frequently asked client questions, via Natural Language Processing AI? Do you want to tell a story with your data versus simply outputting reams and reams of reports? Do you have volumes of health-related data where you want to draw simple correlations to possible hypotheses via machine learning or deep learning? Do you want to input several years of data to trend productivity (efficiency or deficiency) in a service or manufacturing process? Or, could you benefit from robotics in a manufacturing, or repetitive manual / physical process?
 
In conclusion, data and tools to manage it can be ultra beneficial for your organization or business, be it in understanding your audience, analyzing user behaviour, measuring productivity and efficiency, or more. There are a vast number of companies, large and small that offer services and products in this space.
 
Once you’ve decided what you want to measure and record, and why, the world is your oyster with respect to whom you partner with and what you can accomplish.
 
I’d love to hear your thought around data management and what you’ve encountered as organizational successes and challenges, as well as the tools and processes used to get there.
 
Thank you so very much for your time and input.

The world’s political scene is aflame with a growing intolerance to those labeled as “not the same as us.” There is an unfounded license for hatred, violence, and racism being unleashed at an alarming pace.
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Collectively, we need to counter this movement, maintain our humanity, and celebrate the fact that people from many religions and cultures around the world have contributed to Humankind’s incredible progress over thousands of years. Algebra came from Persia and the Mid-East in the 9th century and now we have super-advanced mathematics. The telephone came from Canadians in 1849, and look at where we are today with smart phones. German Melitta Bentz invented the coffee filtration system in 1908. Then there’s fusion cuisine, which is simply amazing, and the list goes on.

This article is meant to offer perspective on cultural uniqueness, and the handshake and other forms of greeting is a good place to start. By no means is this a full cultural thesis, nor is it meant to be. It is simply meant to celebrate cultural diversity and help “us” understand why sometimes “we” do and sometimes “we” don’t.

Five Different Cultural Greetings

If all of us could increase our awareness of how greetings are exchanged in different countries, cultures, and religions it could help turn suspiciousness and awkwardness into harmony and acceptance. Here are a mere five different greetings from around the world.

1)   The Handshake. A handshake is intended to express friendliness on greeting and to show friendship. In medieval times, the alternative was a hand with a dagger or a sword coming out at you. Recently the handshake that has received a lot of attention and press coverage over U.S. President Donald Trump’s “long, shake, and tug” handshake, coined as the “Trump Tug.” He pulls the other person’s hand in towards his body, and sometimes shakes and holds for a prolonged period of time. This YouTube video from Expound Now offers a great snippet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGjUJedh0lA

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who keeps fit by boxing and other activities) seemingly anticipated the “Trump Tug,” while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seemed uncomfortable after the handshake. The question, is it a “power play” handshake, bringing you into their space and literally destabilizing you or could it be seen as really wanting to be friends with you?

All in all, a friendly handshake is a gesture and extension of friendliness. A firm grip while shaking hands in countries like the U.S. and Brazil may be seen as rude. A “weak” handshake that is polite in a particular country such as Turkey may be seen as in-genuine in another country such as Canada. A long handshake is acceptable in some countries, but awkward in others. In Russia, you typically don’t shake hands with the opposite sex, unless it’s a business setting. There’s more, and the Business Insider Infographic is a great starting point:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-properly-shake-hands-around-the-world-2015-3

Other Physical Greeting Gestures

Many cultures do not shake hands at all, people perform other greeting gestures. Some don’t shake hands with the opposite sex because of piety and religious beliefs. Others simply don’t want to shake hands because it’s a sure fire way to exchange germs!

2)   The Bow. In Asia, physical contact is generally kept to a minimum when greeting. It is not to be confused with clasping the hands together at the chest – a gesture which is used to express gratitude. A polite greeting in Japan involves no handshake, rather a gentle bow. This form of greeting respects one’s personal space. More detail is provided on the Japan National Tourism Organization website:

http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/indepth/exotic/lifestyle/bow.html

3)   The Fist in Palm. In China, typically there is no handshake either, although 100 years ago, it was introduced. There is a fist in palm salute, “Bao Quan” coming from Chinese martial arts and steeped in history, over 3,000 years for that matter (source: Top China Travel website page):

http://www.topchinatravel.com/china-guide/chinese-etiquette-fist-and-palm-salute.htm

4)   The Head Bow (no eye contact). Out of respect for the opposite sex, individuals of certain religious faiths may touch (shake hands, hug, kiss on cheeks) the same sex to greet, but will acknowledge the opposite sex their head lowered and a gentle head bow. This is the case with observant Muslims and Jews. Don't take it the wrong way if you’re a woman and a man is shaking men’s hands and they don’t shake yours. Acknowledge with a friendly nod. Contact, both physical and eye is avoided out of respect for the opposite sex. Here’s some insight on the observant Muslim perspective (source: Talk to Islam website):
http://talktoislam.com/14/why-dont-muslim-men-shake-hands-with-women

And here’s some perspective on the observant Jewish greeting practices (source: Frum Satire web page):
http://www.frumsatire.net/2012/02/13/why-i-dont-shake-hands-with-the-opposite-sex/

5)   Cheek or Air Kisses. This is my favourite type of greeting usually done in social environments. I do, however, get confused with the number of kisses and on which side to start! Close calls of ‘almost in the middle’ can happen, just follow your host’s lead and you should be good. If it’s a cheek kiss, no saliva, and if it’s supposed to be an air kiss, keep it that way.

There are so many differences here too. A few countries are listed below:
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a.   In Ecuador, it’s one kiss amongst women, on the right cheek
b.   In Spain, it’s two kisses, starting with the right cheek
c.    In France, “la bise” is also two kisses, but starting with the left cheek, except in Provence where it’s three, and Nante, four
d.   In Italy and Hungary, it’s two, on which side to start, not sure!
e.   In the Netherlands, Belgium, Egypt, Slovenia, and Switzerland, it’s three, really not sure on which side to start! In Lebanon, it’s also three, starting on the left cheek, but in Syria it’s also three starting with the right cheek
f.     In (French) Canada, it’s two, as it is in Turkey, which side, your guess

The important thing in all of these greetings is the warm intention to connect. Cultures are so rich and understanding more of them enriches us.
I hope you enjoyed this light-hearted article. I would love to hear your thoughts or more about greeting types and etiquette from around the world.

Thank you. Merci.

When working with technology-related replacement initiatives (which is almost everything these days), if your organization is only using part of the Integrated Project Management Approach, it may be a step in the right direction, but, they have to do all of it to enable the success of their organization and employees affected by such a significant change.

Change Management is an early and critical success factor when planning and implementing a project, and it’s part of an ensemble in Integrated Project Management, which involves three key elements. After having successfully completed a very fast-paced project, the value of the combination of the three has been cemented in my mind.

As the expression goes, “There is no ‘i’ in team, but there is an ‘m’ and an ‘e.’ ” We must focus on the team, and the team that is impacted is made up of a whole lot of ‘me-s.’ Success is best achieved by enabling the ‘me-s’ on your team adapt to existing and adopt new tools. It starts with the Management Team driving the change: The Sponsor, Project Management, Technology Management, and Change Management.

Thank you for reading my blog. Your feedback and input is welcome, as we can all learn from the best practices of others.

- Suzie

Today is my very first day of blogging. It’s a fantastic spring day, and I’m working on some interesting projects that impact employees and citizens alike.

I help guide change, and to do so, use some key guiding Change Management principles.  Currently, I am working on Business Analysis, ICT Functional Requirements, and Roadmap projects for clients. They all involve a “team.”

Here are some key approaches for various projects in roles of Change Management, Business Analysis, Project Design, and Project Management that I’ve used. They seem to work well:

1)    Listen to your client’s needs or what they think they need. Sometimes the latter does not equal the former. Listening is where it all begins.

2)    Ask them key questions around their needs (or perceived needs). If it’s not clear to them, then it won’t be clear to you or to the team. By asking the following questions, you will help your client(s) refine and clearly define their requirements for a successful project implementation and rollout:

a.    What it is they want to achieve?
b.    Why they want to do the project?
c.     Who is involved? Core team members (including Sponsor)?
d.    Do they have the budget?
e.    Who will be impacted?
f.     How will they be impacted?
g.    What tools will they provide to those who are impacted to manage the change and adapt?
h.    Do they have enough time to successfully implement the project and accompanying changes?
i.     What are the desired outcome(s), and how they can be measured?
j.     What is the expected Return on Investment (ROI), and is it reasonable (timeframe and expected savings in efficiency improvements)?
k.    What is the benefit for the organization, staff and clients alike? Short term, medium-term, and long term.
l.     Do you have the authority and support to do your work?

3)    Engage key team members early and often. This will make them part of the process, giving them a sense of ownership: they will be influencing outcomes, and will have an increased desire to succeed.

4)    Ensure rolls and responsibilities are clearly defined.

5)    Manage the project: timelines, budget, and deliverables.

6)    Be humble, yet firm. Your work is to help your client succeed. If they succeed, you succeed.

I’d love to hear what core approaches you have to help your clients succeed.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my first blog post.

- Suzie