Map Your Way to a Successful Analytics Strategy

October 22, 2019 Eve Provencher Dagenais

Before investing significant resources on any data or analytics project, it is important to fully understand the current state of technology, data, people and processes within an organization. Creating a data and analytics strategy can help organizations better leverage their resources. Once the data strategy is defined, an analytics roadmap takes the data strategy and translates it into a plan of action, considering the day-to-day activities that need to occur in order to bring the strategy to completion. It is intended to be a high-level plan discussing goals, objectives, resource requirements, technology changes and process improvement initiatives.

Successful transformations are the result of a well-designed plan delivered by an experienced and qualified team. To craft that plan, you should capture and define both the current state of your analytics environment and the target state – including your strategic vision and goals. An analytics roadmap is the outcome of this mapping exercise between current and target states, clearly establishing the activities that need to be done to get there.

From structured and unstructured data sources to self-service visualizations and predictive models, your analytics advisor should provide insight into how technology can help create measurable value in your organization.

When Newcomp is advising our clients, we seek to optimize user experience and ensure ease of administrative maintenance. Our teams work with clients from start to finish on each analytics project, and deliver carefully written operations documents to help facilitate the transition period as well as create awareness for the new analytical and data science solutions. A good advisor should also provide coaching to users to ensure they understand and have mastered the full functionality of the tools they have acquired. At that point, it is easy for users to understand how these tools help the organization and allows them to plan for continued/further analytics success.

Looking to get started on your own analytics strategy? Reach out to us and we can help guide you from wherever you are in your analytics journey.

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Modernize your applications to ensure a competitive advantage

September 10, 2019 Alexandre Lanoue

As explained in my last article, the Synergy project proposes a game plan for artificial intelligence. However, where do we start? This question is frequently asked by my clients. My answer is always the same: are your applications and data ready?

This may sound like a simple question, but most of the clients I meet will answer no to this question. In fact, many organizations are still struggling with silo applications where it is difficult to access or retrieve data. So, what do we need to do for that kind of application? Do we just replace them with more modern applications? Personally, I am not a fan of the big bang theory that some major manufacturers are promoting as it means to throw away what we have and replace everything. In the Synergy project, we are focusing on modernizing applications. This is the first journey we propose in order to bring the data “available”.

Why focus on application modernization?

The answer is simple: protect your existing investments and accelerate the achievement of results. Indeed, the application modernization approach has many benefits out of which some of them are immediate:

  1. Accelerate digital delivery and transformation. Modernization delivers improvements faster than major system replacement projects.
  2. Motivate your employees to embrace change. Speed of delivery motivates employees who are on the front lines and who reap the immediate benefits. This creates a stronger culture of change.

How to achieve successful modernization?

Several ingredients are needed for a successful modernization. IBM describes this quite well in a guide entitled “Application Modernization Field Guide”. If you do not want to read it in its entirety, here is a little essential.

The first ingredient is the toolbox: cloud computing. Easy to access and a pay-per-use model, cloud services make it easy and fast to integrate new technologies.

After the toolbox, you then have to follow a technique. Personally, I suggest the garage method. The idea is quite simple: refactor what is necessary, but do not necessary refactor. For more information on this technique, I suggest you visit the IBM Garage Method site. On this site, you will find everything you need around that proven methodology.

The last ingredient is a trusted partner that will offer you both advice and guidance through your transformation as well as tangible and quick business results.

At SIA, we created the Synergy project to help our clients achieve their digital transformation. If you have any questions or would like to see what the garage method really looks like, I invite you to contact me!

Interested in making AI functional at your organization?

Schedule your FREE 30 minutes consultation.

The Synergy project: is your artificial intelligence roadmap ready?

September 10, 2019 Alexandre Lanoue
Indeed, in today’s world, it is not possible to think about digital transformation without artificial intelligence. However, what does that mean? How can we operationalize artificial intelligence? This may sound like a simple question, but I have not met many companies that have been able to answer it. To answer this question, SIA and NextBlue created the Synergy project. This project, of which I am very proud, proposes a game plan to operationalize artificial intelligence. This is the secret ingredient that will allow organization to know what to reinvent to increase their agility. In order to enable our customers to achieve this agility, we have divided the roadmap into 5 levels: The first three levels provide the basis for a real digital transformation:
  • Level 1 – Multi-cloud Modernization – At this level, we are modernizing the various systems to make their data accessible and ready for use.
  • Level 2 – Intelligent Automation – We automate tasks that can be automated and deploy tools that present information in the right context to humans performing complex tasks.
  • Level 3 – Trust and Safer Business – We protect information and digital processes and improve transparency about their use to create a sense of trust among users.
Levels 4 and 5 allow the organization to reinvent itself and orchestrate everything that goes on in its organization to allow it to achieve agility with a big “A”:
  • Level 4 – Digital Reinvention – We are co-developing new business models to create better experiences (customers, employees, suppliers) that will allow the organization to stand out.
  • Level 5 – Decision and Orchestration – We use the maturity acquired in previous levels to develop tools to take the “best next good action” in relation to the various situations that arise within the organization.
Only NextBlue can propose a viable plan to operationalize artificial intelligence. We have both the tools (with IBM Cloud), the expertise (with our partners) and the methodology (with our Expressway method) to help you define your path to agility. You’re interested in the subject and you don’t know where to start. Or you already have an opinion on the subject and want to assess whether you are on the right track. Do not hesitate to contact us. Our unique approach will meet your expectations!

Interested in making AI functional at your organization?

Schedule your FREE 30 minutes consultation.