The recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will undoubtedly have broad implications across the corporate landscape as updates to the tax code will necessitate major changes to certain financial management decisions. Finance needs a solid FP&A modeling foundation in order to lead tax-related decision making within their organizations. While there are many aspects of the tax code that will require in-depth financial impact analyses, changes to the deductibility of capital expenditures has been a particular area of interest for some Ironside clients that invest heavily in fixed assets. Read more
Tag Archive for: Strategy
Being the sole data champion within your organization can present difficulties when you’re vying for limited company resources and attention from the “powers that be.” No doubt, you may find the role to be frustrating at times. Yet you may also find the role to be extremely rewarding, because it gives you a great deal of responsibility and offers you with the opportunity to achieve the goal that every data champion aspires to: Gaining user buy-in of the data insights you’ve unlocked. Read more
Ironside’s Ray Haddad published an article on LinkedIn titled “Applications of Nonlinearity in Life and Customer Analytics” in August 2017.
What’s the best way to hold on to your customers in a competitive marketplace?
That’s a classic business question, for which Ray Haddad uses an innovative methodology to provide surprising answers in this just-posted article. Ray, an Account Executive in Data and Analytics Strategy at Ironside, initially poses a hypothetical question to serve as an example of this methodology in action: Are you inclined to think that increasing your automotive speed from 60 MPH to 120 MPH will save you more time in getting to your destination than by increasing it from 10 MPH to 20 MPH? Read more
Press release issued by Forbes Corporate Communications; Ironside comments on how to capitalize on data
NEW YORK, May 31, 2017 — Corporate leaders consider data and analytics capability a top investment priority. Yet despite this, faith in the data businesses rely upon is low. According to the Forbes Insights and KPMG “2016 Global CEO Outlook,” 84% of CEOs are concerned about the quality of the data they’re basing their decisions on. Read more
BOSTON, May 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Ironside, a data and analytics firm headquartered in Massachusetts has been named a Strategy Consultant in Customer Analytics in Forrester’s Vendor Landscape for Customer Analytics Services Providers, Q2 2017. Read more
When planning your next dashboard project, watch out for these 5 dashboarding terms that could possibly jeopardize its success. Read more
Remember our friend Empathy from the previous article? Well, now that you’ve interviewed, observed, and worked alongside your end-users and fully understand what it means to walk in their shoes, it’s time to leverage that new knowledge.
You’ve likely interviewed people in many different groups or roles within your organization. While analyzing your notes, you may begin to notice that certain people have similar needs, pain points, goals, etc. You can use this information to start persona building. Read more
Squeaky wheels usually don’t go away; they just get louder.
Imagine you purchase a new car. The car is shiny and runs great, but after a year maybe there are few things you wish were different – the seat design could be more comfortable or the road noise is louder than you expected. Maybe you just bought the standard model. Now you wish you researched a bit more or requested a few more accessories. Or maybe in reality you just need a quick tune up. Read more
In the last few weeks, I’ve spoken with three different clients who are struggling with the issue of end user adoption. Each described a routine set of activities, either completed or in process, that you would expect to see in a thoughtful change management program. Nonetheless, all three customers expressed frustration at the lack of user adoption.
Why is this? Do we need to rethink our traditional process for engaging users as we embark on our data and analytics journey?
In a word, yes. Read more
IT and business leaders share a common goal – to leverage the data available to them in order to make more informed business decisions. The first step to achieving that goal is to create a data & analytics roadmap, a task many companies find daunting. Where do you begin?
“Most organizations are ineffective in communicating data & analytics-related concepts across departments, resulting in suboptimal management and utilization of information.”
– Doug Laney, Gartner Blog Network