Typically, Management want to leave “no stone unturned” when it comes to answering questions. In order to quickly and thoroughly generate insights, the Business needs the talent, environment and tools to enable accurate, flexible and fast analytics.

I have experienced the “IT Factory” at several points in my career and have found that the Business unit that can grow their own Analytics Ecosystem is more successful at generating insights that save lives, generate revenue and reduce costs. This collaborative environment is the foundation of a successful analytics ecosystem. Furthermore, there needs to be an accurate, repeatable and scalable process for answering similar questions again or more complex ones.

Embedding technical talent in the Business and arming them with the proper environment and tools enables the Business to evolve much faster. Some might say this sounds like “Shadow IT”, but I describe it as “Business IT Consulting.” In order for this approach to be successful, it must adhere to some IT principles, but without constraints.

There are several factors that contribute to a successful Business-run IT group. Ideally, every person on the team has a combination of all skills below:

• Business Understanding / Context
• “Requirements” Gathering
• Agile / Iterate
• Tool Agnostic Fast Data
• Quality Monitoring
• Data Activities
• Go to Production