Data for the 99%:Unlocking Data Curiosity Across Your Organization

Ben ScheinVice President, Data Curiosity and Innovation

DOMO

EVOLUTION OF A DATA DORK

Philosophy, Politics and Economics (no data)

6 years at database software start up: training, coding, selling (and cleaning the bathrooms)

MBA

5 years breaking things in finance at Target (push the envelope of what is given to me)

5 years building analytic solutions at scale (stop breaking things and start building a bigger envelope)

• Target.com Business Intelligence Analytics and Testing (2013-2015)• Enterprise Data BI and Analytics (EDABI) Center of Excellence (2015-2018)

Domo: VP, Center for Data Curiosity and Innovation (June 2018 - present)

THE CORE BI DILEMMA

Why does it always seem so hard to get the data and insight

you need to solve a business problem?

DATA IS EMOTIONAL

• Broken promises

• Wasted investment

• Disappointing your partners

• Interesting but not useful

• Not having what you need

A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE, CIRCA 2016

Everyone has their own black Friday.

E-MAIL FROM A BRAVE MERCHANT

YEARS OF BEING DISAPPOINTED AND NOT GETTING THE DATA YOU NEEDED:

WHAT DOES AMY FEEL?

• Fear that her work is not important/too small• Willingness to settle for less or subpar product• Need to develop complex business case and valuation• Advocacy and pushing from senior executives required to get anything done• Glad to just have request considered/heard

I WAS TIRED OF BEING DISAPPOINTED AND DISAPPOINTING OTHERS…

2013:

“May I please have another $2 million for digital promo data?”

2016:

“Yes, Amy, we can get that set up tomorrow in a couple of hours and create your own page with

real time data.”

I WAS TIRED OF BEING DISAPPOINTED AND DISAPPOINTING OTHERS…

2013:

End-to-End

2016:

End-to-Almost-End

FULLY END-TO-END BI SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT

PRIORITIZATION(“pick one problem”)

ENGINEERS

LONG DEVELOPMENT CYCLE(“wait a long long time”)

Solved???

SOLUTION “COMPLETE”(“hopefully”)

Some problems no longer exist, are no longer relevant or have less importance. Others just never were solved…

… New business problems emerge while waiting for end-to-end solution

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PRIORITIZATION(“pick one problem”)

ENGINEERS

LONG DEVELOPMENT CYCLE(“wait a long long time”)

Solved???

SOLUTION “COMPLETE”(“hopefully”)

Some problems no longer exist, are no longer relevant or have less importance. Others just never were solved…… New business problems emerge while waiting for end-to-end solution

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No wonder our friend Amy the buyer felt the way she did.

FULLY END-TO-END BI SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?(ESPECIALLY IF WE ARE WORKING ON THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEMS)

(building devices like chess-playing machines) might seem like a ridiculous waste of time and money. But I think the history of science has shown that valuable consequences often proliferate from simple curiosity

– Claude Shannon, Bell Labs(Kyoto Prize Acceptance Speech 1985)

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

• Need to build a culture of data curiosity (don’t discourage people from asking for

(ESPECIALLY IF WE ARE WORKING ON THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEMS)

• The fallacy of self service (everyone needs some guidance, help, teaching, configuration).

• Lost business value from the orphaned business problems we pass over.

• Nothing is ever “complete” (by their very nature, business problems will constantly evolve and change).

The Business Case for Curiosity• Fewer decision-making errors

• More innovation and positive changes in both creative and noncreative jobs

• Reduced group conflict

• More-open communication and better team performance

Source: Gino, Francesco. Harvard Business Review Sep/Oct 2018. ”The Business Case for Curiosity”

HANDLING THE SMALL PROBLEMS

• Set up to handle the small problems

• Lower cost

• Staff used to juggling different types of illness

• Applicable to other industries (e.g. Apple Genius Bar)

• Working on the “cool” and “important” things

• Expensive equipment and infrastructure

• Highly trained specialists

VS

”I have a cold”

THE MAYO CLINIC URGENT CARE CLINIC

DUDE’S LAW (DAVID HUSSMAN)Even if the “why” seems small (orphaned business problem)

Source: http://www.devjam.com

. . .then we can see large increases in value.

. . . when we can make the “how” continuously smaller (easier, self service platform)

ENGINEERING + BUSINESS TALENT

Innovation can be sparked by engineering talent, but it must be combined with business skills to set the world afire

-Walter Isaacson, The Innovators

Hire engineers that also have business skills/context

Hire enough engineers so you can have dedicated groups for each business area/function

Upskill business people with more technical skills.

Develop a different kind of tool/platform that achieves some of all of these

How can we combine engineering and business talent?

SOLVING THE PROBLEM: END-to-ALMOST-END

END-TO-ENGINEER

END ONLY

Build architecture that allow engineers to build solutions to many different problems.

Focus on tools with maximum flexibility that allow users to control everything (excel, Access, other).

END-to-ALMOST-ENDBuild platforms that let non-engineers (business people, analysts, executives) create the last mile of insight delivery.

End-to-EndPicking one or two major problems and spending long development cycles to “solve”. No longer viable in a modern data organization.

DON’T MAKE ME BUILD MY OWN GAS PUMP“Data is the new oil. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc. To create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so data must be broken down, analyzed for it to have value”. -Clive Humby

Once the oil is refined, what do I expect a user to do with it? Would I ask them to:

• Measure the octane in the fuel on their own

• Use parts to put together their own gas pump

• Use a different kind of gas pump at every station

NO. Build a gas pump that is end-to-almost-end. The user has some choices and inputs and flexibility.

WHAT DO END-TO-ALMOST-END SOLUTIONS LOOK LIKE?

Build tools that get “almost to the end”

The last mile of insight delivery happens very close to the business problem (sometimes dedicated BI, sometimes within the business)

Solving business problems is always the inspiration but engineers aim for just short of the actual problem (solve the problems of people solving the problems) and focus on the biggest most interesting problems

Maintain engineering rigor on the last mile without engineers (automation, dependency, logging, backup, usage tracking)

END-TO-ALMOST-END FOR DATA & ANALYTICS

ConnectStore / Catalog

/ Compute Prepare

Any source Cloud or on Premise

Data Automation/Management Business Optimization

Exabyte Scale, Elastic, Highly

Secure

ETL, Transforms Data Cleaning

Visualize

Mobile & Web Data Visualizations

Collaborate

Realtime chat, and business

collaboration

Predict/Alert

Intelligent Alerts & Predictive

Extend / Accelerate

Accelerated time to Value

Security

• Traditionally, data and analytics required multiple “end-to-end” systems to connect, store, prepare, visualize, predict and more.

• This created dependencies on engineers to help connect these systems which slowed down everything

• An “end-to-almost-end” approach in Domo empowers all users to leverage all of these components in delivering insights over the “last mile”

ConnectStore / Catalog

/ Compute Prepare

Any source Cloud or on Premise

Data Automation/Management Business Optimization

Exabyte Scale, Elastic, Highly

Secure

ETL, Transforms Data Cleaning

Visualize

Mobile & Web Data Visualizations

Collaborate

Realtime chat, and business

collaboration

Predict/Alert

Intelligent Alerts & Predictive

Extend / Accelerate

Accelerated time to Value

Security

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Don’t Orphan Business ProblemsHarvest the value of small business problems while building a culture of data

curiosity.

Maintain Engineering Rigor

Don’t forget about automation, dependency,

logging, backup, usage tracking, security and other

engineering disciplines.

Build End-to-almost-end

Build platforms that let non-engineers (business

people, analysts, executives) create the last

mile of insight delivery.

USE “END-TO-ALMOST-END” WITH DOMOTO UNLOCK DATA CURIOSITY ACROSS YOUR ORGANIZATION

THANK YOU