Transforming Your Company’s Data Analytics: Championing the Digital Enterprise

Every modern organization is a digital organization or will rapidly become digital. Artificial intelligence, Google/Amazon/Facebook/Uber, and big data have dramatically raised customer expectations and demand.

Organizations that are effective in using data will win in the economies of the mid-21st century. These must-have core competencies include data analysis, machine learning, data visualizations, data mining, and predictive analytics, and deep learning. Organizations that won't or can't digitally transform will go the way of Blockbuster or Border's Bookstore.

The organization that better harnesses the power of data to create a superior customer experience will thrive in the new business realities.

The question is, how does an organization digitally transform? There are many digital technologies for organizations to choose from - too many choices! And digital technologies are only part of creating a digital organization. The employees must be trained in the new technologies, leaders must learn how to use data in making strategic decisions, and the organization's business processes must be reinvented. So many choices to make and the stakes have never been higher!

This course will give you a framework to help you successfully navigate the challenges posed by digital transformation. First, we will discuss how to use the organization's dynamic capabilities to start the digital transformation. Second, we will use fitness landscapes to build a competitive digital business model. Finally, we will implement a strategic foresight function to help evolve the digital business model for the organization's continued success.

Champions of digital transformation have many data technologies to choose from:

• Artificial intelligence

• Machine learning

• Cloud computing

• Digitization

• Predictive analytics

• Internet of Things

• Deep learning

As a business leader, you may be asking yourself, what’s next? R? Python? Graph Databases? The latest data analytics technology that was launched last week?

How do you craft an effective digital strategy from these technologies? How do you build the data transformation roadmap to give your organization a competitive advantage? How will you digitally transform your organization to give the best customer experience?

In this course, we will explore three case studies to learn the practical tools and methods used to build a digital organization. The first course gave you the theory of the dynamic capabilities, fitness landscapes, and strategic foresight framework to transform an organization. Now, we will put those theories to use in three types of organizations.

The first organizational type is a new startup. You will learn how to build a digital organization from the ground up using the lean startup methodology.

The second organizational type is an established organization. This type of organization has developed processes and deep-rooted culture. The challenge is to help the organization digitally transform while retaining the best aspects of the organization.

The third organizational type is the organization that turns to digital transformation to help save it. This may be the most challenging digital transformation effort because you need to regain customer trust under a tight deadline while your competitors are eager to capture your customers.

For all three digital transformations, we will use Disciplined Agile Delivery to plan and execute the organizational change programs. "Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is a people-first, learning-oriented hybrid agile approach to IT solution delivery. It has a risk-value delivery lifecycle, is goal-driven, is enterprise aware, and is scalable." DAD is ideal for digital transformation projects.

Decisions made by humans are rarely made by data alone. Human decision-makers have cognitive biases, are affected by emotions, and make conceptual leaps beyond what the data may suggest. The best way to educate and persuade decision-makers is through stories. Stories built by good data analysis.

In this course, you will learn how to create stories based on data - data storytelling - by using the ABT (“And, But, Then”) Narrative Framework. We will start by using powerful data science techniques to explore and refine your data. We shape a compelling narrative out of the data findings using brain-friendly storytelling techniques.

Once you have your stories, you will learn to create insightful data visualizations and build a persuasive presentation for business professionals - both in-person or online.

The final week of the course deals with Customer Training. Customers want the latest and greatest digital products full of features. But customers don't want to spend too much time learning those features. Customer training helps the digital organization be more strategic by assisting the customer in engaging more with the product.

Using data storytelling skills, you will craft stories to help customers understand how your organization’s products and services will make their lives better. You will learn how to use the data analytics and machine learning in your digital organization to create effective customer training, so your products and services get the traction you need for digital transformation success.