Data Scientist – ‚The sexiest job of the 21 century‘Frank Kienle | @byanalytics_en

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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Europe’s largest team of PhD-level data scientists among Blue Yonder’s 150 employees.

Data Scientist: finding the gold nuggets in big data - extracting value out of data

Data Scientist: extracting value out of data - its all about predictions

More than half of the apps on a typical iPhone home screen are predictive applications.

Predictive Applications

Foresight

Hindsight

Strategy

Execution

Predictive Analytics

Business Intelligence

Dashboards & Visualization

Predictive Applications

— Thomas J. Watson Sr* (CEO IBM 1943)

“I think there is a world market for about five computers.”

— Niels Bohr

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.”

Data Scientist: extracting value out of data - its all about predictions

Programming/Technology

Statistics/ Mathematics

Business/Processes

p(w|D) ⇠p(D|w)P(w)

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

+ =

Programming/Technology

Statistics/ Mathematics

Business/Processes

Team building

The key to becoming a better company are better decisions. The key to better decisions is using your own data.

Sensor Data Scientist — www.blue-yonder.comFrank Kienle

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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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— Jeff Bezos“Your margin is my opportunity.”