Companies are beginning to reboot their machine learning and analytics, which have been disrupted by the global pandemic.
copyright by sloanreview.mit.edu
The economic impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented, dramatically changing markets and prospects for economic growth. Supply chains, transportation, food processing, retail, e-commerce, and many other industries have transformed overnight. Unemployment in the U.S. has reached levels unknown in recent memory, and GDP is expected to fall around the world. As one economic journalist summed up the situation: “Nearly everything in the world is super-weird and disrupted right now.”
The data we use to make good managerial decisions has been caught up and turned upside down in this unpredictable marketplace. This is no small matter: Over the past decade, we have seen a dramatic movement toward data-driven decision-making, in step with an explosion of available data sources. Point-of-sale data, the internet of things, cellphone data, text data from social networks, voice, and video — are all automatically collected and reported. Coupled with advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, these resources enable leaders and organizations to use analytics and data science for better-informed and improved decisions. Email Updates on AI, Data & Machine Learning
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But what we’re now evaluating is what happens to this accelerated, data-driven approach when a large-scale disruption, such as a global pandemic, results in a seismic shift in data. Machine learning models make predictions based on past data, but there is no recent past like today’s present.
To better understand the impact on data science of our current moment and how the disruption will be managed going forward, we reached out to a number of data science and analytics directors. We asked what they have experienced in recent months and how they plan to adjust and redeploy their machine learning models as organizations enter a new economic environment.
A Pivot to Fast-Cycle Descriptive Analytics
Every analytics manager we spoke with described the same basic reaction as the pandemic began to disrupt their operations: Regardless of whether the pandemic caused the demand for their company’s products and services to plummet (as it did for, say, apparel) or to spike dramatically (for instance, toilet paper), there was an almost instantaneous shift away from more advanced analytics focused on prediction and optimization to descriptive analytics such as reports and data visualization. Descriptive analytics helped companies get a better understanding of what was happening.
Because of the volatility of the situation, all cycle times for reporting were dramatically compressed. The demand for real-time dashboards increased. As one manager from a global consumer goods company described it, “We weren’t worried about detailed forecasting, we were just trying to get the shapes of the distributions right.”
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Dan Rogers, director of data science and operations research at 84.51°, a marketing analytics company owned by supermarket giant Kroger, echoed that. “There were definitely a lot of resources applied to descriptive reporting at first as we strove to understand what was happening and how the pandemic was affecting our company,” he said. “Entire teams were put on this, doing much of the same analysis they always did, but at an accelerated rate. A monthly or quarterly report might now be requested weekly or even daily.” His teams have also done some descriptive modeling to help isolate the impact of the pandemic, he said. “This work can turn into predictive modeling to forecast the ongoing impact and better understand the ‘new normal’ we find ourselves in.”
At some companies, data teams were asked to focus on specific pain points. At automaker Ford, executives have been less interested in commonly gathered report and dashboard analytics during the pandemic, said Craig Brabec, the company’s director of global data insights and analytics. Instead, they are more likely to ask for custom analyses involving particular situations (for example, the extent of rail delays in the Mexican port of Veracruz) and new data sources.
Predictive Analytics and Automated Machine Learning Get Sidelined
Even in normal times, demand forecasting is one of the most difficult challenges for data scientists. Changing consumer demand, volatile market conditions, and competitive moves all make predicting demand a trial. As the pandemic hit, structural shifts in demand wreaked havoc on machine learning models that were slow to adapt to the unusual data. As one manager quipped, “Our demand-forecasting automated machine learning models didn’t handle eight weeks of zeros very well.” […]
Read more: sloanreview.mit.edu
Companies are beginning to reboot their machine learning and analytics, which have been disrupted by the global pandemic.
copyright by sloanreview.mit.edu
The data we use to make good managerial decisions has been caught up and turned upside down in this unpredictable marketplace. This is no small matter: Over the past decade, we have seen a dramatic movement toward data-driven decision-making, in step with an explosion of available data sources. Point-of-sale data, the internet of things, cellphone data, text data from social networks, voice, and video — are all automatically collected and reported. Coupled with advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, these resources enable leaders and organizations to use analytics and data science for better-informed and improved decisions. Email Updates on AI, Data & Machine Learning
Get monthly email updates on how artificial intelligence and big data are affecting the development and execution of strategy in organizations.
But what we’re now evaluating is what happens to this accelerated, data-driven approach when a large-scale disruption, such as a global pandemic, results in a seismic shift in data. Machine learning models make predictions based on past data, but there is no recent past like today’s present.
To better understand the impact on data science of our current moment and how the disruption will be managed going forward, we reached out to a number of data science and analytics directors. We asked what they have experienced in recent months and how they plan to adjust and redeploy their machine learning models as organizations enter a new economic environment.
A Pivot to Fast-Cycle Descriptive Analytics
Every analytics manager we spoke with described the same basic reaction as the pandemic began to disrupt their operations: Regardless of whether the pandemic caused the demand for their company’s products and services to plummet (as it did for, say, apparel) or to spike dramatically (for instance, toilet paper), there was an almost instantaneous shift away from more advanced analytics focused on prediction and optimization to descriptive analytics such as reports and data visualization. Descriptive analytics helped companies get a better understanding of what was happening.
Because of the volatility of the situation, all cycle times for reporting were dramatically compressed. The demand for real-time dashboards increased. As one manager from a global consumer goods company described it, “We weren’t worried about detailed forecasting, we were just trying to get the shapes of the distributions right.”
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe to our AI NAVIGATOR!
Dan Rogers, director of data science and operations research at 84.51°, a marketing analytics company owned by supermarket giant Kroger, echoed that. “There were definitely a lot of resources applied to descriptive reporting at first as we strove to understand what was happening and how the pandemic was affecting our company,” he said. “Entire teams were put on this, doing much of the same analysis they always did, but at an accelerated rate. A monthly or quarterly report might now be requested weekly or even daily.” His teams have also done some descriptive modeling to help isolate the impact of the pandemic, he said. “This work can turn into predictive modeling to forecast the ongoing impact and better understand the ‘new normal’ we find ourselves in.”
At some companies, data teams were asked to focus on specific pain points. At automaker Ford, executives have been less interested in commonly gathered report and dashboard analytics during the pandemic, said Craig Brabec, the company’s director of global data insights and analytics. Instead, they are more likely to ask for custom analyses involving particular situations (for example, the extent of rail delays in the Mexican port of Veracruz) and new data sources.
Predictive Analytics and Automated Machine Learning Get Sidelined
Even in normal times, demand forecasting is one of the most difficult challenges for data scientists. Changing consumer demand, volatile market conditions, and competitive moves all make predicting demand a trial. As the pandemic hit, structural shifts in demand wreaked havoc on machine learning models that were slow to adapt to the unusual data. As one manager quipped, “Our demand-forecasting automated machine learning models didn’t handle eight weeks of zeros very well.” […]
Read more: sloanreview.mit.edu
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