data scientist the sexiest job of the 21st century
TRANSCRIPT
2008: Founded by CERN Data Scientists
Since 2011: Award-winning retail solutions
2014: International expansion, predictive applications
Blue Yonder History
2008
2011
2012
2013
2014
Founded Karlsruhe & Hamburg with a team of 15
Re-branding to Blue Yonder
Cyber One Award
Retail Technology Award
Top Retail Product Award
Data Mining Cup
Blue Yonder UK
Forward Demand 1.0
Data Science Academy
Finalist: Entrepreneur of the Year 2012/13
Blue Yonder Platform
Internet of Things Award
Retail Week Supply Chain Award
150 employees
• Individual product predictions for more than 700 locations
•35 million product-location combinations
•30.000 decisions per second
•300 million data sets evaluated per week
•5 billion individual forecasts annually
•20% reduction in surplus stock
•2 million article returns avoided
•14% reduction in write-off-rate
•9.5% reduction in tied-up capital
•1.3% increase in sales due to increased item availability
•€40 million sales increase
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Predictive Applications at Scale
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Predictive Applications
Foresight
Hindsight
Strategy
Execution
Predictive Analytics
Business Intelligence
Dashboards & Visualization
Predictive Applications
Data Scientist Skill/Mindset
Programming• Programming is the process
that leads from an original formulation of rules to executable computer programs
• Its all about automatization
Statistics• Statistics is the study of the
collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data
• Its all about data
Business• A business is an organization
involved in the trade of goods or services to consumers
• Its all about decisions
p(w|D) ⇠p(D|w)P(w)
Automation of gut feeling 2.0
Coding
• automatization
Business
• decisions
Danger Zone• first step:
simple rule, if this than that
• next step: add a rule/process to adjust
• last step: blocked by contradicting rules
+ =
Automation of modern art
Coding
• automatization
Statistics
• data
Art Zone• solving problems which never
occurs
• defining new problems
• we might need this
+ =
Gut feeling 2.0 gets proven wrong
Business
• decisions
Statistics
• data
Theory Zone• traditional business research
• new ideas how business should work in theory
• proof me wrong! by the way, I already updated my theory
+ =
The key to becoming a better company are better decisions. The key to better decisions is using your own data.
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Categorizing Analytics
Descriptive• Focused on gathering and
collecting data
• Key challenges: data volume and data variety
• Key outcome: hindsight
• Examples: reports, dashboards
• Answers “What happened?”
Predictive• Focused on understanding
and explaining data
• Key challenges: data velocity and complexity
• Key outcome: insight
• Examples: prediction models
• Answers: “Why did it happen and what will happen next?”
Prescriptive• Focused on anticipating and
recommending action
• Key challenges: execution
• Key outcome: foresight
• Examples: decision support, predictive apps
• Answers: “What should we do?”
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