A Celebration of CAN's Best Ideas

Contemporary Analysis 2017 ebook coming soon!
In celebration of CAN’s forthcoming 10th birthday, we’ve decided to bring out the best ideas from our blog and combine them into an educational ebook. The posts were originally written by some of CAN’s most notable alumni, many of whom have gone on to start their own businesses in data science.
At CAN, we are all about education. We believe in educating our employees through hands on experience and through courses offered at the Data Science Academy. We also believe in educating our clients about who we are and what we do. We want our clients to understand the systems we put in place. We’re proud of our work. What follows is a six step model on how to implement data, taken from our new ebook to be released soon. We hope you enjoy it, and learn something too.
 
CAN’s Best Practices for Implementing Data Science

1. Define a company’s mission, vision, and values. We want to know how they do business; what values they have that are unique and permanent even when the strategy changes. This understanding set the priorities and filters that guide future discussions.
2. Define a company’s goals. Goals have clear beginnings and ends and typically are accomplished in less than a year. Goals should be in alignment with the company’s vision for the future, and should be accomplished in a way that adheres to the company’s values.
3. Define the business question to be answered. The business question is about business process improvement, and should not involve technology or research questions. When answered a business questions should have a noticeable impact on at least one of the three parts of a business; sales, operations and administrative support.
4. Determine what resources are available. This includes political approval, availability of necessary data, and determining research methodology.
5. Determine how the models will be implemented. Formal Reports help our clients understand the nuances and details of our research. Marketing Summaries provide our clients with colorful and easy to understand summaries of our research.Visual Dashboards help our clients quickly get the up to date information that need to run their operations. Workflow Integration provides our clients with the ability to use our research to impact the activities and operations of large number of people through the systems they are currently using.
6. Evaluate the model. Does the model answer the intended business question? Does the model produce results that reflect reality? Does the model produce the expected results?

 
Keep your eyes out for our new ebook. For more information and great ideas, contact Nate Watson (nate@canworksmart.com) or Bridget Lillethorup (bridget@canworksmart.com).