I’ve often heard stories from my operations research colleagues about fantastic results obtained from advanced analytics models they have built, but the models were never used in the business. Typically, the lack of acceptance of their models was due to a lack of understanding of what would be required for successful integration of those models into normal business operations.
What they missed was the need for applying organizational change management principles in order to gain broader acceptance of advanced analytics techniques that are used for decision support. I collaborated with longtime colleagues Zahir Balaporia of Schneider (now at FICO), Karl Kempf of Intel, John Milne of Clarkson University (formerly at IBM), and Rahul Saxena of Cobot Systems (formerly of Cisco)—who have decades of experience in the development and deployment of analytic methods for improved decision making—on a paper about this topic. Following is an adaptation of our paper and the related presentation I have given at INFORMS events.
