Bill Franks Cuts Through the Hype

Bill Franks (@billfranksga) knew what he was talking about at last December’s Data Skeptic’s Meetup. I recommend him as a speaker. In his job at Teradata, I can easily see him successfully introducing robust new analytic projects to Teradata’s legacy data warehouse clients.

While Franks had to cover many topics I was already familiar with, upon review these tidbits are worth remembering and sharing:

  • A 10% increase in data accessibility can result in a $65m revenue increase for an average F1000 company.
  • Labor cost is often underestimated when building a business case for analytic infrastructure
  • Think of analytics projects like R&D. If you invest in portfolios of analytic projects, if a couple work, that is great.
  • When hiring for analytics or data science, focus on the skills sets of the entire team. One person doesn’t have to know all analytics methods.