Analytical People was born out of a realisation that – in the growing debate about the value of analytics – something was missing. The ingredients for the expansion in the areas of advanced analytics are varied and many: there is an ever-growing amount of unrefined data in the world; there are more technologies – both commercial and open source - which can potentially make sense of that data than ever before; there are more current (or potential) savvy consumers of the analytical interpretation of that data than ever ; the vendors and analysts have done a great job of communicating what is possible with analytical approaches; and so on…

The only problem is that there aren’t enough people who can be found and deployed effectively enough to make the whole thing work. Not enough resource to join the dots. And certainly not enough help to find and grow that resource.

For me it all crystallised when – in my last job with Applied Insights – we were engaged with a multi national customer (one of the internet pioneers in fact) in the early stages of a fairly strategic piece of consulting about how they could link up all their disparate data around customers, ascribe value (or more importantly potential value) to them and ultimately build a process to systematically anticipate and deliver the most relevant content to them. We were discussing which analytical tools they should consider and it became apparent that, given the volume of ongoing analysis they expected to perform - and hence the number of analytical people they would need - then there really was only one of the leading toolsets where there was enough supply of expertise. In other words, despite the plethora of technologies - with their various strengths and weaknesses – our client really had no choice but to go for the market leader.

So in a nutshell we are aiming to help plug the gap between the demand and supply of professional services and resources. We have started to do this in a number of ways by engaging in projects with our own people and those within our network while at the same time looking to consolidate that network … soon we want to do more to grow and develop the talent pool with more partnerships and training activities. Watch this space …