Friday, July 29, 2016

The Sharing Economy Grows

In May, Pew Research released a report on its surveys about various key aspects of the sharing economy. They covered ride sharing, home sharing and crowdfunding.  The results are interesting. they show that a large proportion of adults have used ride sharing (like Uber) and find it a satisfactory (or better) experience. Most are young urban adults. Fewer use home sharing and there is a common concern expressed among users or potential users about safety. Even fewer have used crowdfunding, but its use is growing.  For the reports, follow this link.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

How to Make your Company Data-driven

Optimum use of data in management is rapidly shifting from competitive advantage to competitive necessity. But implementing an effective data use policy can result in spending massive amounts of money with poor results if it is not done well.

Serious planning is a necessity. As with any planning activity, definition of objectives is crucial, including specific definition of strategic and operational business objectives, and identification of data that will meet these objectives.

There are massive amounts of data on the internet, but not all are readily available for consumption. This is a significant consideration. Also, if you are planing to use internet based data, don't even think about developing your own systems to handle it. It should be capable of being analyzed without downloading. There are numerous tools available in the cloud where online cloud-based analysis can be carried out.

Ensure the results of the analysis are placed in the right hands. This would have been planned in the objectives identification phase. But you need to make sure that the results are configured and visualized in ways that make good use of graphs and other visuals or pictorials. Often the recipients are busy and won't take the time to spend a additional time on the analysis unless there is a rapid gratification.

This leads to another point about presenting the results. It must be done with a minimum of disruption to the recipients normal routines.  Again, this approach will lead to better use of the analysis.

For additional thoughts on this, and a source for this posting, click this link.


Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Job Automation - The big Trend of the 21st Century

People who do physical jobs have been faced with job losses because of automation for several decades now. The trend has been accelerating with the automation of entire factories and the need of retrain millions of workers.

Now the automation trend is spreading into the professions, even though their jobs are often not physical. At risk are accountants, lawyers, architects, to name a few. The automation of these fields does not mean that all will lose their jobs, but it does mean that large parts of their jobs can be automated, leading to a lower demand for them. For example a recent major report for the Canadian Bar Association called "Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada that outlined a strategy to deal with transformative change in the delivery of legal services. One of the driving forces for the change was technological innovation.

Last year, CPA Canada released a report setting out Drivers of Change in the accounting profession, with a strong emphasis on technological change. Other writers have written about how mobile devices, social media and data analytics will change the profession.

Behind the rapid spread of automation into the professions is the growing power of artificial intelligence. This enables technology to replace or significantly modify jobs with more and more intellectual content.

The Pew Research Center recently did a major survey into the views of a wide spectrum of professions on this issue. The results are quite revealing.

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Mobile Brings Data to Real Time Decision Making

The increasing us of mobile smartphones and tablets is making it possible to generate data in the field and transmit it directly for analysis. In one example recently cited where such an approach was used for helping refugees,  mobile data, including GPS data and the results of interviews were collected and sent directly to a center using ESRI analytics tools.

There, the data could be immediately visualized, analyzed and used for ongoing decisions.

"With ESRI software, we were able to visualize what was going on,'' said Andrew Schroeder, director of research and analysis at Direct Relief, a Santa Barbara, Calif., nonprofit organization that coordinates humanitarian aid and care for people in poverty or emergencies, noting that ArcGIS's mapping capabilities "allowed us to understand some of the dynamics around issues such as who seeks care, where they are from and what their neighborhood conditions are."

For more on this experience with real time data analytics, check out this article.