Focusing only on the technical aspect might result in over-scaled projects with fuzzy ROI. This is why we (strongly) advise that you first define your project from a business point of view regardless of any technological aspect.

Stating your goals (using your daily business real-world vocabulary) and identifying constrains with allow you to determine a realistic and cogent approach. Only in a second step will it be relevant to select data sources and evaluate the required scientific techniques. The choice of the technical components to use and deploy should follow naturally in the last step.

Company data is a natural information source, they can be extracted from your current tools or collected using dedicated modules.

External data coming from sources outside of your company are relevant and useful when your business can be affected by trends, seasons, economic or political context…

Once identified and analyzed, seemingly meaningless phenomenon might in fact have a significant impact on your activities.

Not having the expertise and/or the technology is not a deal-breaker. What matters most to succeed in capitalizing on data is:

• a clear awareness of your business and where you want to lead it,
• partners capable of understanding your reality and the necessity to adapt their offers accordingly.

Make sure you have a good knowledge of the means deployed by your partners and that you can follow and master their approach as your projects are moving forward.

The most successful initiatives are often the result of a perfect match between information strategy best practices and the reality of your business. This is why we are at your disposal to discuss your project.

Our advice is to opt in for a modular approach.

Most of the technologies available today can be boosted by the simple addition of specific components. While you definitely need to have a global vision of your data initiatives, you don’t need to have to rely on a global and monolithic system.

Modularity offers a way to create and exploit synergies between the solutions you use, and grants you the freedom to evolve as you want and when you need.

Information sciences are made to handle this case.

In the hand of the right experts they allow the selection of relevant and meaningful samples. They also play a key role in revealing the concepts and phenomenon which seems to be buried in the mass of information and which otherwise would stay hidden.

Quality is better than quantity.

Extracting high-value knowledge from small volumes of data is still possible as long as you stay focused on the end goal. Information science comes into play as the subtle way to extract the full meaning of what seemed to be plain data.

If your data is not structured in a way that can be directly used by analytical solutions, you can chose the indirect and agile approach of plugging in intermediary components which will not alter the information you use on a daily basis and will not disrupt your common processes and operations.

Go synergistic! Even if they don’t fit all your needs, your current tools are still part of the solution. To discontinue them and to restart all over from scratch might be more confusing than helpful. You can juxtapose a solution that will fit in your IT landscape while providing the additional service you need. Today many techniques enable such approaches without interfering with or disrupting the end-user habits.

To address an immediate or one-time need, you may also rely on outsourcing. Our Bureau of Investigation can provide you with on demand advanced analytical or predictive support.

Keep in mind that data and the ability to extract value-added information from it is more important than IT systems. IT Tools are just here to process data and fulfill a well-defined user need.

When the needs evolve, setting up data acquisition, valorization and exploitation modules can be performed « As a Service », so the business can directly benefit from actionable results without having to deal with tedious IT projects in the first place.

In this case you can chose to use solutions built for your specific needs. Some custom-made and turn-key approaches allow you to simply define your end goal. The technological aspects and the required resources are encapsulated in a way that just let you focus on benefiting from the result.

Your business is unique. While other companies can be specialized in the same field, they are not identical to yours.

These differences between you and the others make it hardly relevant to rely only on standardized indicators. A smart indicator should be computed following the actual logic of your daily operations. It should be sound, pragmatic, integrates seamlessly in your business and be a key of your information-based management.

Data streams are a mirror of your company genuine activity. Therefore, you need to compute indicators that reflect all the ideas and constrains associated to your defined strategy, and that can provide a reliable and objective assessment of the impact of the actions you are putting in place.

No. In most of the cases, you will just need to add the appropriate technological component to widen your current system capabilities.

The majority of todays’ professional solutions are built on standards that foster systems interoperability.

Creating a competency center firstly means helping your company evolve and acquire reflexes and best practices in terms of data acquisition, transformation, broadcast and exploitation.

The question of hiring or investing in technology comes second and only once you have a clear vision on how you want to capitalize on information.

Bringing the skills in-house, outsourcing, migrating some of your systems or acquiring new ones, each can be worth considering as long as they are in line with concrete and realistic business goals.

We recommend to scale and scope your competency center in conjunction with carefully selected operational projects.

Chose agility over exhaustive or dogmatic approaches and build a solid real-life oriented base which will be able to grow and evolve according to the projects you initiate.