Ash Dhupar - Chief Analytics Officer

Question 1 : How has your role evolved over the past 12-18 months?

The role has evolved from being a an Adviser to a close partner with Business driving change, efficiency and profits for various departments.

Question 2 : What advice would you give someone wanting to become a Chief Analytics Officer, and what are the core skills one needs to thrive within the role?

I think the core skills are no different than those in a leadership position. You have to be obviously very solid from a technical prospective and be a great Mentor and motivator to your team. You gotta have the skills to navigate through the politics and issues to drive progress. You have to be able to paint the vision and deliver on it. More importantly, I think you should have a great amount of persuasion skills as most business owners are not used to making decisions based on data and you to convince them. You have to win the trust from these folks as they are essentially giving up some of the decisions power to the data driven approach. Patience and persistence is the key.

Question 3 : Data is exploding, the number of analysts is flattening and expectations and demand are growing – how does one best manage in this scenario? Should the focus be on processes or business problems?

I think this is tricky one to answer… as my experience says it’s a combination of both Process and Business problems that needs to be simultaneously worked on.

Question 4 : What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today and how are you looking to tackle it?

Data Quality is number one problem. Second is shortage of talent. We are trying our best to be on top of these… but no eminent solutions on hand.

Question 5: What is the biggest challenge faced by the analytics/big data industry currently and in what ways does this affect your business?

Shortage of Talent as well as the expense of getting this talent and staying with you.

Question 6: Where do you see being the biggest area of investment in analytics within your industry over the next 12 months?

Data Governance as well as tools for implementing real-time algorithms.

Question 7: What is the biggest future trend you see within the Big Data and Analytics space? (For example, what opportunities do new data sources such as IoT, web, social, mobile, and ecommerce present? OR What are the future possibilities for Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI?)

I think the trend is moving towards Curation of data with least amount of challenges. Technology is going to play a key role in data consolidation, with more and more data curation algorithms based on ML.