Thesis Statement > Topic Sentences > Supporting Evidence Throughout high school and college, the above formula for how to write a good essay followed me everywhere I went. The thesis statement defines the argument to be made, the topic sentences break up the argument into smaller points, and the supporting evidence drives it all home.…
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Organizations have grown increasingly enthusiastic about the business insights and other benefits that big data analytics can deliver, and rightfully so. But as they pursue the promise of business analytics, companies often come face to face with some hard truths. One of the most problematic: following the traditional process of first creating a data warehouse and then analyzing the data...
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In the world of big data and predictive analytics the standard approach for gathering and analyzing data follows the CRISP-DM approach. While the CRISP-DM model has been a good approach on which to structure many projects, it suffers from the same issues waterfall-style requirements gathering approaches to software design have suffered from, including: Longer time to understand the...
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As companies incorporate data science and machine learning to help them push into the new AI frontier, some are finding it difficult to get data science operationalized. We know organizations have data, and lots of it, but not every organization achieves the same level of agility from its analytics and data science initiatives, meaning one organization may see the impact of data science more...
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Last week I was a panelist at the Utility Analytics Summit 2018 in Irvine, CA. This conference brought together IT and business leaders to share trends, insights, and challenges as they leverage data insights in their organizations. Below, I share some specific areas where the IT role is evolving in this exciting area.…
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Last September, I had the opportunity to attend Tech in Motion Chicago‘s Timmy Awards ceremony, where West Monroe Partners received an award for Best Tech Work Culture. The ceremony was hosted by 1871, a shared workspace for technology start-ups and other entrepreneurs to create, collaborate, accelerate, and celebrate new business ideas.…
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Some form of data governance is necessary for all organizations, regardless of industry or size. Data governance accomplishes many goals, from meeting regulatory requirements to fueling strategic initiatives that depend on data. While most organizations recognize the importance of data governance, they have trouble keeping momentum after starting. One issue is that data governance models are...
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Does data have your head spinning? Here are a few tips and tricks for successful systems integration in the Utilities sector. As the West Monroe team gears up to attend DistribuTech this week (Booth #2761), we expect there to be plenty of buzz around enterprise data analytics solutions. Through enterprise data analytics initiatives, value is driven at the data intersections across...
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We recently attended the annual gathering of utility practitioners at Utility Analytics Week in San Antonio. A common theme discussed was “how do we get started?”, “where do we start?”, and “how do we justify the cost?”. Electric utilities are becoming increasingly digitally-oriented and data intensive with the adoption of AMI meters, deployment of SCADA systems across the grid, and...
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Change can be tough. When a new technology advancement is implemented at your current employer, that can be even harder. Especially for those who have worked for years on a process successfully, the question always comes up “why change what isn’t broken?” This past summer I experienced change first hand, both personally and professionally.…
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Everyone knows ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ While that may be true for some activities, after attending the Tableau Conference, #DATA17, we couldn’t help but share some of the key takeaways. Tableau, a data visualization platform, has been an industry leader in recent years (as recognized by Gartner and other organizations), and is known for its design-focused data visualizations...
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The marketplace for business intelligence and analytics tools becomes more saturated every day. Between standardized reporting, ad hoc self-service visualizations, and predictive analytics, many managers and buyers are so overwhelmed by keeping up with product releases and understanding tool features that they do not have time to consider the pitfalls that can sabotage a successful...
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