The Death of Why, Part 2

By Bill Schmarzo

My previous blog, “The Death of Why – Part I,” discussed how big data analytics is negating the need to understand “why” things happen.  With the vast amounts of detailed data available and high-powered analytic tools, it is possible to identify what works without having to worry about why it worked.  This can enable us to “think different” about the user experience and the context in which we present business insights to our users.

The capabilities of big data analytics to identify significant, material, and actionable insights buried in the data, without having to understand why these insight occur, provides the foundation for an entirely different user experience.  Instead of presenting an endless series of reports and dashboards in hopes that users can discover what’s important to their business, we can instead reverse the traditional analytic process and present to the users only that which is important to their business.  We do this by starting with the interesting insights, and then provide the relevant data, reports, and dashboards required to support those insights (see chart below).

Continued at: http://infocus.emc.com/william_schmarzo/the-death-of-why-part-ii/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

See Part 1: http://infocus.emc.com/william_schmarzo/the-death-of-why-–-part-i/