Board of Directors Says Full Speed Ahead with Analytics

INFORMS leadership has taken concrete steps to understand and address the burgeoning analytics marketplace. After spirited debate at the recent Board of Directors meeting at INFORMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, the Board approved funding in order to take a closer look at (1) developing an analytics certification program, (2) developing an analytics training/continuing education program, and (3) building out the executive forum at the spring Analytics Conference to make it more of a true product offering. Take a look at the slides proposing a road map for pursuing the analytics marketplace.

If the “deeper dive” studies for #1 and #2 come back positive for INFORMS in terms of return on investment and creating a unique value proposition for prospective members and customers, then the Board has agreed to invest wholeheartedly in both endeavors. It is estimated these studies will take between 3-4 months to complete. Building out the executive forum for the spring Analytics Conference is underway now.

The Analytics Market Study Steering Committee led by Anne Robinson and Jack Levis are also looking for some quick wins – adjusting some of our existing products and services to better serve the analytics market. Among the “quick win” ideas currently being pursued are:

• Create an INFORMS business analytics community (subdivision) as a first step to perhaps growing to a full-fledge sister society one day (Planning underway now – sign the petition!)
• Modify the Practice Conference to include tracks on the analytics process, more soft skills training, more vertical tracks, and clearly label all sessions as covering descriptive, predictive, or prescriptive analytics content (Planning underway now!)
• Introduce a premier analytics job fair for industry professionals at the Analytics Conference (Planning underway now!)
• Pursue potential partnership with consulting companies currently at work in the analytics space (Planning underway now!)
• Augment all INFORMS collateral including our vision and mission statements, website, and print materials to include the words business analytics or advanced analytics
• Reorganize some existing products and services by vertical industry
• Create easy-to-understand case studies from competition entries
• Begin work on building an analytics maturity model
• Leverage the new healthcare conference as proof of vertical interest
• Create profiles of analytics professionals

We need your help. Do you see other possible quick wins? What do you see as the best long-term solutions? Please contact us to sign the petition to form an INFORMS Section on Analytics. And by all means, please make plans to come to the Analytics Conference in April 2011. This INFORMS Conference formerly known as the Conference on O.R. Practice has been re-branded and is in the process of being re-programmed to make it more appealing to analytics professionals.

If you would like to help in any way, please reach out to Anne Robinson, Jack Levis, or Gary Bennett.

Anne Robinson (annerobi@cisco.com) of Cisco Systems is INFORMS’ Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and Outreach. Jack Levis (jlevis@ups.com) of UPS is INFORMS’ Vice President of Practice Activities. Gary Bennett (gary.bennett@informs.org) is INFORMS’ Director of Marketing and Member Services.