11 years ago
A Message to Analytics Sorts: Go for It!

Anne Robinson, president of INFORMS, has a message for analytics professionals: “Go for it.”

INFORMS, formally known as the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, will be there to lend a hand, Robinson told me in a phone interview. Along with the business world as a whole, this global, professional society is intensifying its attention on analytics outreach. Among its analytics-related initiatives are the:

• Bimonthly Analytics Magazine
• Annual INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research, this year taking place in San Antonio, Texas, April 7-9
• Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) certification testing program, the first by an independent organization (to hear more about the CAP program, tune in to an All Analytics digital audio show on February 26 at 2:00 p.m. ET; register here)
• Innovation in Analytics Award, launched in 2011, to recognize enterprise excellence in analytics, among others
• Annual student competition (See: Calling All Students: Enter an Analytics Competition)
• Analytics subsection, which Robinson said has more than 900 members today — “probably the fastest-growing community in our full professional history”

“The reality is that while INFORMS has grown out of a community of operations researchers and management scientists, we’ve always been a mosaic of professionals — people focusing on decision analysis, risk analysis, financial analysis, data mining, statistics… they’ve all always found a home at INFORMS.” Admittedly, she added, most of these folks would be at the high end of the spectrum, while the thriving Analytics subsection reflects more diversity.

“We’re seeing folks who have less of an ‘analytics’ job role being at home with INFORMS as we talk about the end-to-end process, and not necessarily the toolbox of operations research and management science,” said Robinson, who is also director of supply chain strategy and analytics at Verizon Wireless.

This is not only about capturing the attention of junior analytics professionals, but also the most tenured of business executives. “For analytics to propagate, it can’t just be a bottoms-up effort. It needs to be top down, too,” noted Robinson, who pointed to the Executive Forum the organization hosts for senior executives in conjunction with the annual business analytics and operations research conference.

Analyst, executive — no matter, to everybody, Robinson has this message to carry forward throughout 2013:

Be brave enough to take the next step, whatever your maturity level. If your company has just scratched the surface, has just learned about analytics, and is looking to move up the chain, do it — there’ll be a big reward. ,that’ll seem counterintuitive, because if it was intuitive you’d be doing it already, but you have to take the leap to the next level.

By taking it to the next level, Robinson means moving from the historical look-back that comes with descriptive analytics to the looking head of predictive analytics and beyond. “Take the leap to prescriptive analytics and optimization models and how they can really help you figure out what are those best decisions you can make for your organization.”

Are you ready to make your next analytics move? Share below.

Beth Schultz, Editor in Chief
Originally published at www.allanalytics.com