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Actionable big data: How to bridge the gap between data scientists and engineers

February 29, 2020 Big Data

The buzz around big data has created a widespread misconception: that its mere existence can provide a company with actionable insights and positive business outcomes.

The reality is a bit more complicated. To get value from big data, you need a capable team of data scientists to sift through it. For the most part, corporations understand this, as evidenced by the 15x – 20x growth in data scientist jobs from 2016 to 2019. However, even if you have a capable team of data scientists on hand, you still need to clear the major hurdle of putting those ideas into production. In order to realize true business value, you have to make sure your engineers and data scientists to work in concert with one another.

The gap

At their core, data scientists are innovators who extract new ideas and thoughts from the data your company ingests on a daily basis, while engineers in turn build off of those ideas and create sustainable lenses in which to view our data.

Data scientists are tasked with deciphering, manipulating, and merchandising data for positive business outcomes. To accomplish this feat, they perform a variety of tasks ranging from data mining to statistical analysis. Collecting, organizing, and interpreting data is all done in the pursuit of identifying significant trends and relevant information.

While engineers certainly work in concert with data scientists, there are some distinct differences between the two roles. One of the fundamental differences is that engineers place a decidedly higher value on “productional readiness” of systems. From the resilience and security of the models generated by data scientists to the actual format and scalability, engineers want their systems to be fast and reliably functional.

In other words: Data scientists and engineering teams have different day-to-day concerns.

This begs the question, how can you position both roles for success and ultimately extract the most meaningful insights from your data?

The answer lies in dedicating time and resources to perfecting data and engineering relations. Just as it’s important to reduce the clutter or “noise” around data sets, it’s also important to smooth any and all friction between these two teams who play vital roles in your business success. Here are three critical steps to making this a reality.

1. Cross-training

It’s not enough to simply put a few scientists and a few engineers in a room and ask them to solve the world’s problems. You first need to get them to understand each other’s terminology and start speaking the same language.

One way to do this is to cross-train the teams. By pairing scientists and engineers into pods of two, you can encourage shared learning and break down barriers. For data scientists, this means learning coding patterns, writing code in a more organized way, and, perhaps most importantly, understanding the tech stack and infrastructure trade-offs involved with introducing a model into production.

With both sides in sync with each other’s goals and workflows, we can foster a more efficient software development process. And in the fast-paced tech world, efficiency gains that can be realized through continued education and clear communication across data science and engineering are a huge win for any company.

2. Placing a higher value on clean code

With your data and engineering teams speaking the same language, you can focus on more tactical aspects, like clean, easy-to-implement code.

When a data scientist is in the early stages of working on a project, the iterative and experimental style of their workflow can seem chaotic to an engineer working on production systems. The mashup of inputs, both internal and external, are being manipulated as they begin to train their models. Operating within a fluid environment like this is commonplace for data scientists but can be problematic for engineers. If code from the experimentation or prototyping phase is passed on to engineers, you’ll soon hit a roadblock. That manifests itself in the model falling short in terms of stability, scalability, or overall speed.

To account for this roadblock, my team has invested time and resources into standardization. The end result is that our data scientists and engineers are aligned on a variety of parameters from coding standards, data access patterns (for example, use S3 for file IO and avoid local files), and security standards. This framework gives our data scientists the means of writing code that’s performant within our ecosystem while allowing them to focus on overcoming challenges specific to their domain of expertise.

3. Creating a features store

One of the best ways to maximize value from clean code is to “productize” it internally, creating an environment where both engineers and data scientists can lean on their strengths. We call this the “features store,” which is essentially a centralized location for storing documented and curated features (independent variables).

The purpose of this data management layer is to feed curated data into our machine learning algorithms. Aside from standardization and ease-of-use, the main benefit for our team is that our feature store enables consistency between the models. It has significantly increased the stability of our algorithms and has improved our data team’s overall efficiency. Data scientists and engineers know that when they take a feature off the shelf, it’s been stress-tested for reliability and won’t break when it goes into production.

The proliferation of big data and machine learning at the organizational level has created new opportunities and new challenges along the way. Phase one was the realization that big data in and of itself wasn’t going to create efficiencies — you need innovative thinkers to make sense of it. Phase two is about helping those good people, the data scientists who are incredible at finding value, to put their ideas into practice in a way that meets the rigors of an engineering team operating at scale, with thousands of customers relying on the product.

Jonathan Salama is CTO and Co-Founder of Transfix, an online freight marketplace.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Quick #PowerQuery trick – Get duration days between two dates

January 15, 2020 Self-Service BI

Just a quick tip that you might not be aware of in the Power Query Editor.

If you select two columns in the view and on the Add Column tab, select the Date button – you can select to Subtract Days

Quick #PowerQuery trick – Get duration days between two dates

This will give you the number of days between the dates in the selected columns

Quick #PowerQuery trick – Get duration days between two dates

Use the formula bar to rename the new column by modifying the step

Quick #PowerQuery trick – Get duration days between two dates

Hope this can help you too –

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Erik Svensen – Blog about Power BI, Power Apps, Power Query

Visualise the Relation between Distributions using a Link Function

November 19, 2019 BI News and Info

In the Generalized Linear Model, a Link function maps an arbitrary density function to an underlying Normal Distribution.

Consider the LogNormal distribution, which is a continuous probability distribution of a random variable whose logarithm is normally distributed. It’s link function is simply the natural logarithm.

To explain this concept, one may visualise the mapping from the normally distributed space to the original distribution using the following combined graphic:

I would like to reproduce this graphic in Mathematica. In particular, I would like this to become Dynamic using Manipulate.

So far, I have created the following sub-parts:

normalDistribution=Function[{},ParametricPlot[{PDF[NormalDistribution[],x],x},{x,-3,3},PlotRange->{{0,-0.4},{-3,3}},AspectRatio->1,Frame->True,Axes->False,ScalingFunctions->{"Reverse","Reverse"}]];

logNormalDistribution=Function[{a,b},Plot[PDF[LogNormalDistribution[a,b],x],{x,-1,15},PlotRange->{{-1,15},All},AspectRatio->1,Frame->True,Axes->False,ScalingFunctions->{Automatic,Automatic}]];

transformation=Function[{a,b},Plot[Log[(x-a)/b],{x,-1,15},PlotRange->{{-1,15},{-3,3}},AspectRatio->1,Frame->True,Axes->False,ScalingFunctions->{Automatic,"Reverse"}]]

Finally, I attempted to combine these using:

Manipulate[Graphics[{Inset[normalDistribution[],{0,0},{0,0}],Inset[logNormalDistribution[a,b],{0,0},{0,0}],Inset[transformation[a,b],{0,0},{0,0}],Dashed,Darker[Green],Line[{{0,-1},{2,-1},{2,2}}]}],{{a,0},-1,15,0.1},{{b,1},0.1,3,0.1}]

Which resulted in:

Questions:

Is Inset the right way to go?
- If so, how can I position and scale correctly?
- Is not, what would also work?
How can I draw lines across plots (the dashed green ones in the original image)?
- How do I know what $ {x,y}$ coordinates in my Graphic correspond to the coordinated in one of the 3 Plots?
How can I deal with the Ticks in my plots? They cause the remainder of the plot to be rescaled.
Culd you provide some general advise when dealing with Plots and Graphics?

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Recent Questions – Mathematica Stack Exchange

What About Security between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint?

October 27, 2019 CRM News and Info

One of the leading CRM systems nowadays is Microsoft Dynamics 365. Together with SharePoint, it provides great document collaboration features, and many organizations around the world already use them as a duet. In this post, we will discuss how to ensure security settings synchronization between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. It is going to be very practical! 

The issue of privileges and permissions between Dynamics and SharePoint

Microsoft offers a standard out-of-the-box integration between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. It enables organizations to link SharePoint documents with CRM records. Moreover, it enables users to manage SharePoint documents and use many of the document management features of SharePoint directly in the user interface of Dynamics 365. 

But the security models of Dynamics 365 and SharePoint differ significantly. This out-of-the-box integration does not provide the same level of record security in CRM and SharePoint. This results in documents in SharePoint being accessible to users without the required Dynamics CRM privileges.  

Imagine, a company has its contract values and prospects in their CRM system available only to senior managers. CRM is synced with SharePoint for the sake of document collaboration, productivity and so on. And surprise, the documents which are restricted pretty much from everyone except for certain senior managers, are available to anyone in SharePoint.  

So, how to combine the benefits of both solutions and enforce the correct access rights at the same time? 

Yes, there is. 

The solution for data protection

CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator is a small yet powerful application that monitors privilege changes for Dynamic 365 data items in the background and automatically synchronizes these changes to respective items in SharePoint. The proper privileges from Dynamics 365 are applied to SharePoint items – automatically and instantaneously, securing your data items and documents all the time. 

After installation, the app does the synchronization of permissions and privileges automatically without user interference. Thus, it ensures the protection of commercial information and personal data. Both are also very important for the GDPR compliance and protects the respectful image of the organization. At the moment, this is a unique solution on the market.

How CB Permissions Replicator works for organizations

Since the launch in 2014, the product has gained trust from many private and public institutions. For example, the Department of Justice in Canada has been using it for years.

Another story is from a private sector, namely Compass Group PLC, UK, the largest contract foodservice company in the world. “It was unacceptable to allow unrestricted access to sensitive documentation in SharePoint or to manage it manually”, – says Anthony Crook, Head of Client Business Solutions Compass Group PLC. “The main pain point that led us to Connecting Software’s solution was the need for synchronization. We mostly hold sales and contract information in CRM. Managing data access is key to ensuring that users only have access to the data they are allowed. As people come and go, it’s important that no one has access to more information than they require to do their job”, he explains.  

The geography and industries of the CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator are wide indeed: ACC Governmental Department in New Zealand; Spirit AeroSystems, USA, the world’s largest tier-one manufacturer of aerostructures; Stora Enso Oyj in Finland, a leading paper producer and the oldest limited liability company in the world; Securitas in Sweden, National Rugby League Ltd in Australia, – the list is too long to name all. 

Takeaway

Dynamics 365 is rapidly evolving and conquering the market. So it is only natural if your organization uses it for customer relationship management. And the capacity of the system is boosted in combination with SharePoint – a flexible and multifunctional document management system. The integration of the two allows making good use of the duet if you ensure the synchronization of permissions and privileges between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint.

To see how the CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator can protect sensitive data in your organization, ask for a free trial.

Contact our team to ask about the product now, and we will give our best knowledge!

By Anastasia Mazur, Connecting Software, a producer of synchronization and integration solutions.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Multiple Integration Points between Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Business Central for Improved Efficiency

October 4, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics business management solutions offer a fully integrated platform from which you can manage all aspects of your organization. If you are currently using the CRM solution Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and are considering acquiring Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to manage your operations in the cloud or vice-versa, Microsoft has made the process even easier with multiple integration points between the two.

By combining both platforms, your organization can obtain a 360° vision of your business, ensuring everyone has the visibility they need on all the data relevant to their tasks. This increases synergy and productivity, while also improving collaboration and communication between teams and users. Data will be kept up to date in both systems at once, which will eliminate the number of manual or double entries, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.

Dynamics 365 uses mappings to associate specific types of data records in the two solutions, avoiding duplication. Here are some of the integration points between Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Business Central, including the direction of the integration:

Customer Engagement	Direction	Business Central
Customer	↔	Account
Contact	↔	Contact
Currency	→	Transaction Currency
Customer Price Group	→	Price List
Item	↔	Product
Opportunity	↔	Opportunity
Resource	↔	Product
Sales Invoice Header	→	Invoice
Sales Invoice Line	→	Invoice Product
Sales Price	→	Product Price List
Salesperson	←	User
Unit of Measure	→	Unit Group

Updating these records in either one of the solutions will automatically push the changes to the other, depending on the direction of the integration. This ensures that the sales team has a view on transactions and invoices, while the financial team has access to customer details when needed. As such, your organization will benefit from a fully cloud-based platform to store all of its data and perform the complete management of its sales and operations.

By JOVACO Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration specialist in Quebec

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

What About Security between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint?

September 7, 2019 CRM News and Info

The issue of privileges and permissions between Dynamics and SharePoint

So, how to combine the benefits of both solutions and enforce the correct access rights at the same time? 

Yes, there is. 

The solution for data protection

How CB Permissions Replicator works for organizations

Since the launch in 2014, the product has gained trust from many private and public institutions. For example, the Department of Justice in Canada has been using it for years.

Another story is from a private sector, namely Compass Group PLC, UK, the largest contract foodservice company in the world. “It was unacceptable to allow unrestricted access to sensitive documentation in SharePoint or to manage it manually”, – says Anthony Crook, Head of Client Business Solutions Compass Group PLC. “The main pain point that led us to Connecting Software’s solution was the need for synchronization. We mostly hold sales and contract information in CRM. Managing data access is key to ensuring that users only have access to the data they are allowed. As people come and go, it’s important that no one has access to more information than they require to do their job”, he explains.  

Takeaway

Dynamics 365 is rapidly evolving and conquering the market. So it is only natural if your organization uses it for customer relationship management. And the capacity of the system is boosted in combination with SharePoint – a flexible and multifunctional document management system. Integration of the two allows making good use of the duet if you ensure the synchronization of permissions and privileges between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint.

To see how the CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator can protect sensitive data in your organization, ask for a free trial.

By Anastasia Mazur, Connecting Software, a producer of synchronization and integration solutions.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

How Supply Chains Bridge The Gap Between Sustainability Desires And Reality

August 30, 2019 BI News and Info

I first learned about global warming while still in college in the early 1990s. I had enrolled in “Our Home, the Solar System,” a class taught by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. Enrollment was limited to just 15 students, and to get in I had to write an essay. My rationale was that as a chemical engineer, the class would give me a different perspective from my core engineering curriculum.

For example, chemical engineers learn how to size the height of a smokestack to spread pollutants and lower concentration levels before they reach the earth. Or, as some students put it, “dilution is the solution to pollution.” I suspected that there might be more clever ways to think about mitigating the effects of industrial pollution. Professor Sagan let me into the class and it was indeed eye-opening.

Top-down vs bottom-up

I learned a lot about the problem of global warming in that class. Since then, my career has taken me in the direction of technology, manufacturing, and supply chain management. While the class with Professor Sagan taught me about the problem, my career experience has taught me about ways to address it.

Some environmental topics can be successfully addressed by top-down government policies. The hole in the ozone layer serves as a good example. By banning chlorofluorocarbons, governments have been able to reduce the size of the hole.

The success of this top-down approach can be attributed to the fact that consumers were largely insulated from the ban. Science delivered alternative propellants and refrigerants minus the chlorofluorocarbons. These worked fine, and few people resisted the change.

Other top-down mandates do not fare as well – even though they may emanate from noble aspirations. Why? Because often enough, they directly harm individual consumers and businesses by increasing costs or reducing convenience. The policies may serve the collective good – but because they conflict with many individual desires, compliance is low and, thus, the policies fail.

Desires delivered

The simple fact is that Armageddon-like stories about climate change from scientists and government officials do not seem to be turning the tide. From their pulpits, officials proclaim that each and every one of us needs to make sacrifices to save the planet. They want us to forego the conveniences that we have attained through years of scientific and social progress.

While they blame, point fingers, and spread guilt, they ignore the underlying cause – the rise in population over the past 50 years – which is a second-order effect of the successful avoidance of global pandemics and major atrocities from world wars.

A better approach, I think, can be summed up in a simple phrase: “desire delivered.” Sustainable policies and solutions, in other words, need to capitalize on human nature and consumer desires to channel behavior in the right direction.

For example, in Stockholm (where I’m from), public transportation is structured so that it is faster, more comfortable, more reliable, and less expensive than driving. This has resulted in fewer people driving cars into Stockholm city for work. Congestion is reduced and, more importantly, pollution has decreased. Public transportation is now the preferred transportation choice as it meets the desires of individuals.

Solutions that improve people’s lives

To really address important global issues, we need solutions that improve people’s lives on all dimensions, including the environment. The science is often there. Now, supply chains must be built and scaled to take that science to individual consumers so that they choose to use those new products and services, while the providers of those products and services simultaneously thrive and prosper financially.

There are many examples of companies innovating not only more sustainable products but also more sustainable supply chains. For example, many consumer products consist of a basic ingredient, water. Why not establish business models where concentrated products (without water added) are delivered to consumers who add the water at the point of consumption?

Soda Stream is a great example of this. It reduces the dependence on difficult-to-recycle packaging and lowers the tonnage of product that must be shipped. Leading consumer products companies such as Procter & Gamble have introduced a similar concept for basic household products such as soap and shampoo.

Supply chains are transforming to capitalize on this change and deliver scalable, desirable products to consumers. As a chemical engineer, I learned that what is possible in a beaker many not be directly replicated at scale due to, for example, differences in heat and mass transfer properties. So, to address the challenge in front of us, supply chain innovation is required, as supply chains are the mechanisms to take new ideas to the consumer and to businesses.

Supply chains that drive sustainability

Although I received my lowest grade in college from Professor Sagan, I have to say that his course is the one that I reflect upon the most to this day. Statistically speaking, if I’m lucky, I have approximately 1,700 weeks left in my life, based on my current age and life expectancy. I aspire to enjoy those weeks to my fullest, knowing that the daily choices I make result in an even better future for generations to come.

This is why I choose to invest my working hours helping digital supply chains deliver what people, including me, desire most – all in a way that helps drive sustainability and address the challenge of global warming.

To learn more on how to drive sustainable supply chain processes, download the IDC report “Leveraging your intelligent digital supply chain.”

This article originally appeared on Forbes SAP Brand Voice.

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Digitalist Magazine

The difference between conservative and liberal satire is that the RW audience thinks theirs is true

August 18, 2019 Humor

In the continuing asymmetric war of right-wing and leftist humor(s) a minor site like Babylon Bee (America Offers To Trade All Of Its Communists For Democratic Protesters In Hong Kong) tries so hard to be a RW Onion which pretty much makes it some kind of shallot or garlic clove.

Snopes tried to measure the gullibility.

RW readers are less likely to be skeptical because in some cases they lack the ability to process information logically, but mainly because they are truly desperate for bias-reinforcing stories over objective truth.

Like the lack of humorous RW editorial cartoons, irony tends to get lost on the RW side of the spectrum. Darn those propaganda effects and source credibility, media framing and fact-construction do tend to favor those audiences aware of reflexivity.

Satirical articles like those found on The Babylon Bee frequently showed up in our survey. In fact, stories published by The Bee were among the most shared factually inaccurate content in almost every survey we conducted. On one survey, The Babylon Bee had articles relating to five different falsehoods.

x

Stories published by The Babylon Bee were among the most shared factually inaccurate content in almost every survey of this research. https://t.co/x96rPCl1w9

— snopes.com (@snopes) August 16, 2019

Members of both parties failed to recognize that The Babylon Bee is satire, but Republicans were considerably more likely to do so. Of the 23 falsehoods that came from The Bee, eight were confidently believed by at least 15% of Republican respondents. One of the most widely believed falsehoods was based on a series of made-up quotes attributed to Rep. Ilhan Omar. A satirical article that suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders had criticized the billionaire who paid off Morehouse College graduates’ student debt was another falsehood that Republicans fell for.

www.snopes.com/…

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What Is the Difference Between Email Marketing and Marketing Automation?

August 1, 2019 CRM News and Info

You’ve probably heard the buzz around marketing automation but are wondering why you need to invest in it if you already have an email service provider (ESP). Although marketing automation platforms and ESPs have many of the same features, marketing automation is designed to help you go beyond email marketing to provide customers with a more tailored and unique experience, improving your engagement rates and ROI.

Sure, things might be going just fine with your ESP, but why settle when there’s a better alternative? Marketing automation can help you move beyond random one-off emails to deliver your target audiences with a more personalized and holistic customer journey. By drastically enhancing the customer journey, you can expect improved engagement and even better results while saving your organization time and resources. Who doesn’t want that?

If you’re not convinced, keep reading to learn a few key ways marketing automation helps you go beyond email marketing.

Move Beyond Random Acts of Marketing Through Segmentation and Personalization

Savvy marketers know that marketing is not a one-size-fits-all deal. While one email message might inspire one customer to open, read, and engage, the same email message can motivate another to delete it or unsubscribe from receiving communications from you altogether.

That is because different customers will want different things based on their specific pain points and where they are in the sales funnel. You can also expect different recipients to need different tools and resources to help them make a decision based on criteria such as industry, pain points, job title, preferences, and budget — just to name a few. In order to gain that final sales conversion, it is your job as a marketer to segment your customers and deliver them targeted and relevant content that keeps them moving along from one stage of the sales funnel to the next.

While segmenting your audience and delivering targeted messages is possible through an ESP, the manual process involved in those outdated platforms is very labor-intensive and prone to error. The many hours involved in exporting and importing lists might not be worth the effort when you only see a small spike in improvement.

The great thing about marketing automation is that it allows you to do this better and with much less effort. For example, Act-On has adaptive segmentation which enables you to automatically move contacts into tightly targeted list segments as you find out more about them and they meet certain criteria. As they do, you can automatically enter them into automated nurture campaigns to ensure they receive relevant and useful information that will keep them engaged and motivate them to take action sooner rather than later.

But why stop there? With marketing automation, you can replicate this personalization beyond email so you can improve your marketing and see better results across the board. You’ll gain valuable insights that will enable you to develop more targeted landing pages, forms, and content.

Deliver the Right Message at the Right Time

Email marketing success is highly dependant on sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Marketing automation platforms allow you to send behavior-triggered messages, such as onboarding emails, that are automatically launched whenever your contact fills out a form, downloads an asset, or completes any other action worthy of a follow-up.

Act-On’s Adaptive Sending takes this practice one step further by tracking each contact’s behavior and learning their preferences, enabling you to email each individual in your database at the most optimal time.

Improve Your Ability to Track ROI and Enhance Your Email Marketing Efforts

It’s easy for our email marketing efforts to remain stagnant when we don’t have the insights and resources to figure out how to make them better. While ESPs might provide you with a limited overview of what’s working, the results you gather simply aren’t granular enough for you to make significant improvements.

Marketing automation enables you to perform A/B Testing on everything from subject lines, CTAs, email design, copy, and more — so you can pinpoint which email elements are catching your audience’s attention. You can use the insights you collect to make your emails better and better each and every time.

We practice A/B testing ourselves here at Act-On and meet every few weeks to review our results and talk about how we can enhance our future email marketing efforts. We recommend you do the same on a regular basis, even if it just means updating a subject line or CTA that did not perform as well.

Target the Best Opportunities Through Lead Scoring

Even if you’re seeing leads coming through the door thanks to your email marketing efforts, you should be asking yourself how you can continue to improve. How do you know what else they need? Where are they in the sales funnel? Are they ready to talk to Sales? Piecing this information together is difficult when all you have is open and click-through rates gathered through your ESP.

Marketing automation gives you greater visibility into the status of your leads by allowing you to identify criteria that indicate when a lead is ready to move to another stage in the customer journey and then score your leads accordingly. Lead scoring not only allows you to keep track of where prospects are in their journey, but it also improves your ability to transfer the most qualified leads to your sales team so they can focus on the best opportunities.

Empower Your Sales Team to Have More Impactful Conversations

One of the most valuable aspects of marketing automation is that it enables you to provide each target customer with a personalized buying experience. That means that you have the tools and insights to deliver targeted solutions from the moment your contact first becomes known to when they’re ready to chat with a member of your sales team.

Marketing automation integrates with your CRM so that your sales team is able to gain a detailed view of your target customer’s behavior and engagement history, empowering them to appeal to their specific pain points and product interests. This leads to better collaboration between marketing and sales and, in turn, helps your salespeople close more deals, all while allowing you to attribute marketing ROI. When was the last time your ESP helped you do that?

Marketing Automation Success Is Closer than You Realize

Let’s be real. Investing in new technology is not a decision that comes easy or cheap, and it’s hard to part with your ESP, even if it’s not getting the job done. With the right knowledge, tools, and strategy in place, however, you can make sure you’re generating the best return from your marketing automation investment from the beginning.

If your organization is considering marketing automation and wants to start off on the right foot, you should check out an eBook that we wrote with our friends at London Research. It’s appropriately titled “Making Marketing Automation a Reality” and gives a comprehensive but easy-to-follow overview of how and why to implement marketing automation.

We also interviewed several high-profile digital marketing thought leaders, and their views and advice are threaded throughout the resource to help you make better, more informed decisions about the next step in your digital marketing journey.

Check it out below!

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Act-On Blog

Getting Past The Trust Gap Between CFOs And Their Finance Teams

April 19, 2019 BI News and Info

There seems to be a divide happening in finance between CFOs and their accounting teams.

In a recent survey, 70% of CFOs declared that they ultimately trusted the numbers they were reporting to the greater business and its stakeholders, while only 38% of accountants could say the same.

This disparity calls for a deeper look into financial reporting and begs the question: Why?

The changing role of the CFO

The role of the CFO has become broader and more strategic over time. The people who traditionally filled these roles were often CPA-trained with extensive experience in areas like public accounting or corporate finance.

Now, a solid understanding of accounting rules is the barrier to entry. CFOs are increasingly expected to be strategic partners to the CEO, possessing a deep understanding of operations and an ability to connect back-office functions to larger company initiatives, like driving company growth.

This is a good thing. We’re often discussing how important it is for finance to act as a partner to the business. But it seems like there might also be some drawbacks.

Without being intimately familiar with the rigor of reporting activities, after doing them as an accountant, some CFOs lack a natural appreciation for the effort and margin for error that exists at month-end.

CFOs must find ways to harness the knowledge and power of their accounting and finance teams to balance their newfound responsibilities with the mandatory reporting and forecasting duties of the more traditional CFO role.

Strategies for the CFO’s success

While discussing this topic with Molly Boyle, BlackLine’s senior manager of Solutions Marketing, three main areas of focus were brought to light. To ensure trust in the numbers, today’s CFOs need to invest in:

People. Hire the right people. This means professionals with skills beyond basic bookkeeping who are also equipped to analyze financials through the lens of business strategy. Spend the necessary time and money to recruit, train, and develop this type of talent for the future of your business.

Process. Invest the time needed to understand legacy processes and be humble enough to admit that processes might need to change. Understanding best practices and striving to meet them in your operations will set you up for success. This might require a larger culture shift, but it’s worth it in the long run―and your teams will respect your leadership to get processes where they need to be.

Technology. Adopt finance automation tools that have best practices built in and make the transition less arduous, while also allowing for scalable, sustainable growth and change. By leveraging leading technology, you’ll find newfound trust in the numbers and richer visibility into both accounting processes and talent.

Key takeaways

The CFO’s role is expanding, often suspending them between different but equal responsibilities: managing risk and driving strategy.

The more traditional activities need to be prioritized within the larger context of their jobs, and we’ve outlined some ways for that to happen while still acknowledging and participating in the larger mission to drive business strategy alongside the CEO.

The equation is this: People + Process + Technology = Trust.

While it’s obviously not as simple as 1, 2, 3, this broad outline should give you some ideas for how to begin bridging the trust gap between accountants and finance leaders.

For more on this topic, please read Mistrust in the Numbers: The Global Scale Of Financial Data Inaccuracies.

This article originally appeared on BlackLine.com and is republished by permission.

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Digitalist Magazine

Tag Archives: between

Actionable big data: How to bridge the gap between data scientists and engineers

The gap

1. Cross-training

2. Placing a higher value on clean code

3. Creating a features store

Quick #PowerQuery trick – Get duration days between two dates

Visualise the Relation between Distributions using a Link Function

What About Security between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint?

The issue of privileges and permissions between Dynamics and SharePoint

The solution for data protection

How CB Permissions Replicator works for organizations

Takeaway

Multiple Integration Points between Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Business Central for Improved Efficiency

What About Security between Dynamics 365 and SharePoint?

The issue of privileges and permissions between Dynamics and SharePoint

The solution for data protection

How CB Permissions Replicator works for organizations

Takeaway

How Supply Chains Bridge The Gap Between Sustainability Desires And Reality

Top-down vs bottom-up

Desires delivered

Solutions that improve people’s lives

Supply chains that drive sustainability

The difference between conservative and liberal satire is that the RW audience thinks theirs is true

What Is the Difference Between Email Marketing and Marketing Automation?

Move Beyond Random Acts of Marketing Through Segmentation and Personalization

Deliver the Right Message at the Right Time

Improve Your Ability to Track ROI and Enhance Your Email Marketing Efforts

Target the Best Opportunities Through Lead Scoring

Empower Your Sales Team to Have More Impactful Conversations

Marketing Automation Success Is Closer than You Realize

Getting Past The Trust Gap Between CFOs And Their Finance Teams

The changing role of the CFO

Strategies for the CFO’s success

Key takeaways

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