‘We want to be the face of analytics’

By Peter Horner

If INFORMS President-Elect Rina Schneur can handle the enormous changes that the Institute is facing as well as she once deftly step-ball-changed from Israeli folk dance to hip-hop performances, 2011 could be a defining year for INFORMS for all the right reasons. From the open access trend in publications, to the rebranding of the spring conference to the search for a new executive director, change is most certainly in the air for INFORMS. The only questions is, will INFORMS and the INFORMS community be ready for it and embrace it?

The biggest potential change on the horizon is the “analytics” wave that has already taken much of the corporate world by storm and is making its way into the title of more and more business school courses. Now, after extensive study, INFORMS is making plans to not just ride the analytics wave, but to stake out a leadership position on the crest of it.

Will INFORMS become the “face of analytics” (or, as one wag more modestly put it, the “Facebook of analytics”)? Only time will tell, but the INFORMS Board, soon to be led by Schneur, is clearly on board and ready for the challenge. The notion also received overwhelming support from rank-and-file members who packed a session devoted to the subject at the recent INFORMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

Schneur attended her first INFORMS conference 20 years ago as a Ph.D. student at MIT and served on the INFORMS Board as vice president of meetings from 2005-2008 before being elected president in 2009. After a year on the Board as president-elect, she will take the reins as president on Jan. 1, 2011. The director of Performance, Reliability and Modeling at Verizon, Schneur knows that every change INFORMS faces presents a challenge as well as an opportunity, none bigger on all three counts than trying to capture the analytics flag.

OR/MS Today editor Peter Horner sat down with Schneur in Austin for the following interview. Not surprisingly, changes and analytics were foremost on her mind.

What’s your take on the state of INFORMS and the profession?

Right now, INFORMS is in a good place in a changing environment. It’s an exciting time with lots of opportunities. It’s also quite challenging. Many things are changing around us. Open access is one of them in terms of publications. There is the whole analytics movement. Everywhere in the world there are uncertain financial situations that impact everyone, including INFORMS.

The reason we are in a good place is because we have great people working to make sure that we are ready for the future. We are making decisions – and need to continue making those decisions – that will position us well for the future. We have to be ready to embrace some of the changes that are going on around us.

What about your presidential candidacy resonated with the INFORMS members who voted for you?

It’s hard to know. It could have been my presidential statement, my experience or my exposure as a member of the INFORMS Board. I’ve been mostly involved in the meetings area, and I’ve done that for quite some time. I think it’s important that we, as an organization, sustain the momentum we have going for us in a number of areas, and I made it clear that was my top priority.

There used to be a tendency to do one thing one year and another thing the next year as another president came in. It’s important to look at the health of the organization. There are quite a few aspects to that, including sustaining momentum. If you’re heading in the right direction, keep going. I have my own tendencies and things that I think are important, but they have to fit within the overall scheme of where INFORMS is going.

Growing INFORMS membership was one of the key issues you specifically mentioned in your presidential statement. Why has membership remained stagnant for the past several years?

You’re right, membership has been pretty flat. The challenge is to provide value on a constant basis to a broad range of members. As an organization, we may need to not only look at membership per-se, but also to look at it in terms of cultivating engaged customers. As part of capturing the analytics movement, for example, we’re looking at the different services we can offer that would be attractive to a larger community. These people may not all become members in the sense that we know it today, but they will be our customers, and they will still be generating income and become engaged with INFORMS.

Of course, the difficult worldwide financial situation also impacts membership numbers. Many companies have stopped reimbursing for association memberships and attending conferences. That clearly has had some effect.

Why don’t more student members retain their INFORMS membership once they graduate?

Because of academic requirements, they join INFORMS and come to INFORMS meetings to learn, to present and to network, but they have to be hooked or they will get away. That’s one of the reasons that when I was vice president of meetings, I worked with the vice president of subdivisions to develop regional meetings because that’s a great way to engage people. The regional meetings are pretty inexpensive for students to travel to, and once they get hooked, they will come to the larger meetings and they will become more involved with INFORMS. The regional meetings have been very successful.

While the regional conferences have no doubt helped capture some student members long term, many others walk away from INFORMS upon graduation.

Some of them may not do O.R. after graduation, at least not on an everyday basis, so they may not see the need to continue their membership in INFORMS. The analytics movement may actually change that because INFORMS may offer more services that will appeal to those type of customers and potential members.

Earlier this year, INFORMS contracted with Capgemini Consulting to study the analytics movement and determine if it makes sense for the Institute to try to “capture” it in some fashion, and, if so, how best to proceed. The report that came back supported the initiative and outlined a path to follow (see OR/MS Today, October 2010, pages 59-62). In your opinion, is “analytics” – however you define it – a flavor of the month or a potential game-changer for INFORMS?

I embrace the idea of INFORMS doing all it can to take advantage of and even lead the analytics movement, and the INFORMS Board voted the same way. There are changes around us that we cannot ignore. Companies are restructuring to build large analytics groups and are rebranding themselves as “analytics” providers. Business schools are renaming their O.R. and quant courses “analytics.” Government agencies are looking for quantitative methodology. You can call it many things, but the business world now recognizes it as “analytics.”

So what role can INFORMS play in this massive analytics movement?

The Capgemini study gave us some idea of what it means to be engaged with analytics and what would fit INFORMS in terms of what directions we should take. There are many ways we can go within the spectrum, but one thing that resonates with everybody – members and nonmembers – is the concept that there are three levels of analytics: descriptive, predictive and prescriptive.

Think of it as a pyramid. At the descriptive level, you have a large number of people using relatively low levels of quantitative methodology to look at data in order to describe what happened. That’s the base of the pyramid. At the descriptive level, you have a smaller number of people using more sophisticated methodology to look at the data and figure out what will happen. At the top – the prescriptive level – you have an even smaller number of people looking at data to figure out not just what happened and what will happen, but what to do about it to achieve a competitive advantage. That’s operations research.

It’s amazing to me how this resonates with people who don’t know anything about O.R. We have been trying for many years to explain to the world, to potential customers, to others and even to members of our own families what operations research is all about, without much success. But when you replace the words “operations research” with “analytics” or “advanced analytics” – and really that’s what most of us do when we do O.R. – it instantly resonates with everyone.

Certain members of INFORMS, including some who have been active in the Institute for many years, have huge investments in the words “operations research” and “management science” in terms of their education, degrees, publications, departments and identity. Where does this leave them?

There is certainly a risk and concern in certain parts of the INFORMS community that this will jeopardize what we already have, and we have a great organization. We put a lot of time and money looking into this and are studying it carefully. Some people on the Board put months into this, on a volunteer basis, because they feel so passionate about it. There are legitimate concerns and risks, but the way I look at it is this: Analytics is not a replacement for O.R.; it is adding another dimension to INFORMS.

O.R. is advanced analytics, primarily concerned with the prescriptive level of analytics and perhaps the predictive level, but there are many, many analysts who only do the descriptive part today but may want to advance to the other levels. They may not come to this meeting or read our journals, at least not right away, but they may become customers or engaged with INFORMS in other ways such as through an education or certification program. As part of this effort, we are looking to add products and services that will engage the broader analytics community.

So how and when is INFORMS going to get out in front of the analytics bandwagon and introduce these new products and services?

I’m not going to get into the “predictive” area here. I don’t have enough data. We are at the active exploration stage in terms of products. What do we want to do? Ideally, we want to be the face of analytics. We want do it in such a way that it will not jeopardize our core competency, our core products, our core environment that we already have. Before we do anything, we have to do risk management. We are all experts in optimization and risk management, so we need to practice it on ourselves.

Along these lines, I understand INFORMS has renamed its spring meeting.

Yes, it’s now called the “INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research.” This is an initial and easy step in the analytics direction, and it will also allow us to “test the water.”

How will the conference be different from previous spring “practice meetings”?

In many ways, it’s always been about business analytics. So to some extend it is rebranding. When Coca Cola renamed its original coke “Classic,” it brought back all the customers who left it when “New Coke” came out. In addition to rebranding, we are organizing an entire track devoted to analytics in terms of how to take companies from the descriptive stage all the way to the prescriptive stage. That’s a challenge many companies face.

I understand INFORMS is also launching a subdivision or section to be called “Analytics.”

I think it will officially be called a section, but it’s not really vertical or special interest, so let’s just call it a “community.” It’s one thing we can do right away to start the analytics movement within INFORMS. It will be a home for anyone in INFORMS with an interest in the broad area of analytics and the process from descriptive to predictive to prescriptive analytics, or in any part of it. Again, another initial, relatively easy step to “test the water.”

Is INFORMS contemplating some sort of certification program to distinguish those practicing “advanced analytics” (i.e., O.R. or prescriptive analytics) from those doing descriptive analytics at the bottom of the pyramid?

Yes, one of the first things we are exploring is a certification program. We are looking to hire people to study the feasibility of such a program. At this point, we need to figure out how to do it and what it will take to do it.

If INFORMS does, in fact, become the “face of analytics,” what does that mean in terms of the Institute’s growth potential?

According to Gartner Consulting, Capgemini and others, as many as 100,000 people are doing analytics in the United States, so you can see the potential.

What opportunities do you see for analytics growth in government and the public sector?

Through sporadic e-mail and interactions I had at conferences with various entities including the Clinton Foundation, I realized that it’s a very ripe time to engage government and non-profit agencies that are looking for ways to figure out what to do with their data. With a few exceptions, they don’t know what to do with their data, and they don’t necessarily know what INFORMS is or what operations research is, for that matter. I was surprised to hear that the Clinton Foundation received funding from the Gates Foundation specifically to look at using operations research within their activities.

So last year I put together a task force under the auspices of INFORMS to look into government and non-profits to see which ones we should contact in order to introduce them to INFORMS, O.R. and analytics. The idea was to disseminate analytics within the areas of government and the DoD, healthcare-related agencies and non-profits. It’s challenging because it takes a while to establish the right connections.

One of the first agencies we went to talk to was the Office of Management and Budget. By that time, we had this terminology [descriptive, predictive, prescriptive]. The OMB has excellent data, but they have no idea what to do with it, and they are looking for help. They are looking to evaluate all the agencies and the projects they are responsible for, including the DoD.

When I mentioned those three levels – descriptive, predictive and prescriptive – it resonated with them within five minutes. They began talking about those levels and how the OMB is now at the descriptive stage. We are also developing a separate track of analytics within the public sector, including the Department of Homeland Security, DoD, the government as a whole and some non-profit and health-related organizations.

The idea of INFORMS making inroads into all of these agencies seems like a monumental task.

It is a big undertaking. One of the challenges is to figure out what type of relationship and engagement will be possible and most productive. The goal is to demonstrate tangible impact.

INFORMS is built on three main pillars: journals, conferences and subdivisions. As currently structured, what are their strengths and weaknesses?

All three areas you mentioned are very strong. You look at this meeting here in Austin; I don’t need to say more, right? Record attendance. More than 4,500 attendees. The level of energy here is unbelievable. But it’s not just the number of people; it’s the energy, the excitement. Everybody comes here to meet with other people. It’s the place to be, and it’s great. Of course, we have excellent staff and volunteers that make it all happen.

We’re also exploring and looking to expand other types of meetings, including our international meetings like the one we collaborated on in Buenos Aires this summer. The regional meetings I mentioned earlier have been quite successful.

And you’re rebranding and perhaps repositioning the spring practice conference.

Right. We will see if and how that will impact the meeting itself. Of course, that meeting is much different than our annual meeting here. It’s certainly much smaller with fewer tracks, but the amount of networking and the amount of engagement is amazing. People are so surprised. Again, it’s the amount of energy and enthusiasm. You learn a lot, you interact with people a lot, you get new ideas. You come back and you are re-energized.

How about the journals? You talked briefly earlier about the open access trend and what it might mean.

The times are changing and we need to be ready for the change. We cannot stop the change. Maybe we can redirect it, but we need to be prepared to move forward in a direction we want to go. The quality of our journals is excellent. We have more submissions to some of our journals than we can take, so we’re working on making that as easy an experience on the authors as possible. The environment around us with open access and going online is changing and we need to change with it.

And the subdivisions?

They are very active and strong. They contribute so much to this conference, for example. Look at how many sessions the subdivisions organize. I had quite a lot of interaction with the subdivisions when I was VP of Meetings. They are very forceful and a big part of INFORMS – a very important part – because they help get a lot of people involved with INFORMS on a number of levels.

In these tough economic times, how would you describe the overall financial health of INFORMS?

Our permanent reserve is higher than it’s ever been. Clearly, we recovered from the recession in that sense, but it’s still challenging financial times everywhere. We are in a strong position, but we must be sure that we keep it that way so we can ride the wave whatever it will be. The other challenge is we want to invest in new and existing products and services, whether it’s publications, meetings or in the analytics direction. Clearly, we have to make tradeoffs. Where would it be best to invest? Every organization faces that problem. We need to practice what we preach and do so well – optimize under budget constraints.

Where do things stand with the permanent executive director search, and what is INFORMS looking for as far as experience and a skill set for that critical position?

Terry [Cryan] is the interim executive director and is doing an outstanding job while the search for a permanent executive director is underway. We’ve engaged a search firm that specializes in associations. We have a search committee, and the firm interviewed the committee for direction. There is a structured process in place to find and interview candidates to give us what we’re looking for. The committee will then interview promising candidates face-to-face and make a decision. I expect the process will take a few months, so we should have a new executive director in place by the spring.

What do you like to do for fun when you’re not working for Verizon or volunteering for INFORMS?

I have two daughters, 13 and 9, so I spend much of my time with them. We travel a lot; my husband and I have taken our girls all over the world. They have already been to more than 20 countries. I enjoy running, especially in the morning; it gets me energized for the day. I like to dance; I used to do Israeli folk dancing, and a group of us from Boston were sent to Israel to perform. Now I’m taking hip-hop dance classes.

Hip hop? That’s a giant leap from Israeli folk dancing.

When my daughter was 8, she wanted a hip-hop birthday party. I had no idea what hip-hop was. I called the school where my daughters take dance lessons, and it turned out they had a hip-hop teacher who came over and gave all the kids a group lesson. It was lots of fun. Later, the school formed an adult hip-hop class. I tried it and I really like it. The last two years, we even performed at the school’s annual dance recital.

From your standpoint and looking a year ahead, what would constitute a successful presidency?
Being ready for, and on our way to, the future of INFORMS in terms of it being a healthy organization financially and also in terms of what we would like to achieve and what will sustain INFORMS as a strong organization. The main thing is to have the members and the INFORMS community engaged and more than satisfied with the Institute and where it is heading.

And the analytics movement?

That will take time. The goal is to launch a program, so now we are going to the next step, which is exploring in detail how we want to go about it. Then we will have to make a decision, in the middle of next year. It is a huge undertaking, and if we do it the right way and are successful, it will be very rewarding.

Sounds like a busy year.

I think it will be a great year.

Peter Horner (horner@lionhrtpub.com) is the editor of OR/MS Today and Analytics.