The Current State of Analytics in Industry
CEOs and Data Teams have a shared responsibility to protect companies and data science jobs.
Even if the COVID19 pandemic had not hit the economy hard, we were moving towards the deleveraging state of the debt cycle. COVID19 only accelerated the process and disproportionately affected some industries. Overleveraged companies that did not act fast went under and had to file for bankruptcy.
All of these resulted in many losing their jobs or having their offers pulled back. Data Scientists were not an exception. The fact that in many companies and industries (including many of the top technology companies such as Uber and Lyft) data scientists got hit hard. More than the economy itself, this is a telling tale of the state of analytics in different companies.
The fact that data scientists got hit hard by the pandemic is a telling tale of the status of analytics across different industries.
Companies and Analytics
There are major differences between a company culture that has truly embraced analytics in their decision making, a company that relies heavily on AI in their product offerings, and the ones that are merely looking at analytics as a shinny group of Ph.D.’s or at best as R&D! The latter group slashed their R&D teams as fast as they could and pulled their offers.
The uncertain times need transformation and perhaps the time has never been riper to embrace analytics not merely as a shinny crystal ball but as a tool to guide the transformation and future of the company by discerning between quantifiable unknowns and knowns.
The role of the Data Science teams:
Data Science teams need to also need to embrace their responsibility by rolling their sleeves up and learn ins and outs of their company, their business, and their industry. By doing so, they can start improving and innovating in every aspect of the company. New business models, new offerings, improvements in the processes. cutting costs in everwhere possible to minimize companies need to cut deep, fast in the workforce.
Also, both company and analytics teams need to embrace the increased data imperfection and model drifts and quantify the risks associated with that.
CEO:
Being a CEO is never easy, and it is even more complicated when you have to navigate the ship in the midst of waves of unfortunate situations. But
CEO’s can accelerate their analytics teams to navigate COVID-19 and the next normal.
