Big Idea: Competing With Data & Analytics

The Big Deal About a Big Data Culture (and Innovation)

Companies are realizing that data analytics are now at the center of their organization, rather than the edge. That’s having an impact, according to Bruno Aziza of SiSense.

Bruno Aziza (SiSense), interviewed by Renee Boucher Ferguson Reading Time: 11 min 

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Competing With Data & Analytics

How does data inform business processes, offerings, and engagement with customers? This research looks at trends in the use of analytics, the evolution of analytics strategy, optimal team composition, and new opportunities for data-driven innovation.
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Bruno Aziza, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing & Data Geek, SiSense

Bruno Aziza is a self-professed big data nerd.

His title at data analytics company SiSense: Vice President of Worldwide Marketing & Data Geek. His LinkedIn profile photo is of a guy displaying a t-shirt hidden under his dress shirt, Superman style, emblazoned with the words (you guessed it) Big Data Nerd.

Aziza?s credentials, both as a nerd and a thought leader, are robust. Prior to SiSense, he ran data analytics programs at Microsoft, Apple and Business Objects (now a SAP company). He is the co-author of two books in the business analytics space, one of them the best-selling tome, Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution (Wiley, 2008). He is a fellow at the Advanced Performance Institute, an independent advisory group specializing in organizational performance, and he has over 12,800 Twitter followers at @brunoaziza.

In a conversation with Renee Boucher Ferguson, Data & Analytics contributing editor at MIT Sloan Management Review, Aziza talks about the burgeoning role of data analytics in today?s organizations, what it takes to be successful in utilizing data and analytics effectively (in a word: culture) and the role of innovation in a data-driven organizations.

What do you think has changed in the last two or three years since you wrote Drive Business Performance, in terms of how companies are developing an analytic culture?

Joey Fitts and I worked with Tom Davenport, Robert Kaplan and David Norton on the book. We gathered insights through interviews of organizations to determine what it takes to develop an analytical culture. We developed a methodology called the Six Stages of Performance that you go through as an organization to develop an analytical culture. That hasn?t changed.

But there are quite a few things that have changed. The first thing, the motivation for why we wrote this book, is that we saw that there is a divide in the industry. The first divide was, there are lots of books out there that talk about the technical capabilities required in order to be more analytical. And while they were good, they focused so much on the dashboards and the bells and whistles that people kind of forgot why they were doing it.

Topics

Competing With Data & Analytics

How does data inform business processes, offerings, and engagement with customers? This research looks at trends in the use of analytics, the evolution of analytics strategy, optimal team composition, and new opportunities for data-driven innovation.
More in this series

About the Author

Renee Boucher Ferguson is a researcher and editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

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Comments (3)
PolySpot Enables Efficient Information Dissemination and Analysis in the Enterprise : Stephen E. Arnold @ Beyond Search
[...] Bruno Aziza has two titles for his position at data analytics company SiSense. One is the Vice President of Worldwide Marketing…and the other: Data Geek. He comes out as such in a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article called, ”The Big Deal About a Big Data Culture (and Innovation).” [...]
bruno
Thanks for the comment Seth and I hope you are having a great holiday!

I can't really talk to the survey you are pointing to. Our research didn't benchmark banks' performance again reputation but rather we looked at how these companies equipped their employees to perform.  

Wells Fargo is a very reputable firm and its established practices have earned the bank top ratings in many places already.  For instance, if you look at the bank's customer service ratings (published this month), you'll see that Wells Fargo is one of the top banks in the list and that, in 2011, Wells Fargo had held the top spot among big banks for 11 years, counting eight years for Wachovia, which Wells bought in 2008.

I hope this helps!

Analytically Yours,
Bruno
grimes
I'm all for empowerment and the tools that enable it, that help a company's team increase performance, per your Wells Fargo example, citing VP Walter McFarland and his talk of the culture of “run it like you own it.” Yet American Banker's annual survey, in 2012, rated Wells Fargo 28th of 30 banks in reputation. See the Ranking the Banks sidebar chart at http://www.americanbanker.com/magazine/122_7/annual-consumer-survey-bank-reputations-gained-ground-1050345-1.html . Comment?

Seth, http://twitter.com/sethgrimes