Converting Complex Analytics Into Business Value: The Role of Analytic Translator

As more companies adopt Big Data analytic strategies to advance their business efforts, there is a desperate need for people who can understand and apply those analytic discoveries. Today a majority of analytic projects never produce business value --- not because they lack data, technology and analytic talent, but because analysts and business teams don’t speak the same language. As a result, projects are often poorly defined, inadequately explained, or discarded as incomplete or confusing. This session explores the reasons why analytic efforts fail and introduces Analytic Translation, a new role to bridge the gap between the promise of Big Data and the reality of defining and meeting essential business needs.  

Speaker: Wendy D. Lynch, Ph.D.

Founder, Anlytic-translator.com

For over 35 years, Wendy Lynch, PhD has converted complex analytics into business value.  At heart, she is a sense-maker and translator. A consultant to numerous Fortune 100 companies, her current work focuses on the application of Big Data solutions in Human Capital Management. In 2022, she was awarded the Bill Whitmer Leadership Award for her sustained contributions to the science of corporate health. As a research scientist working in the business world, Dr. Wendy Lynch has learned to straddle commercial and academic goals, translating analytic results into market success. Through her roles in diverse work settings—including digital start-ups, century-old insurers, academic medical centers, consulting firms, health care providers and the board room—she became familiar (and fascinated) with the unique language of each. She also became familiar with the difficult dynamic that often exists between business and analytic teams—preventing them from collaborating effectively. Those experiences led to her true passion of promoting clear and meaningful conversations that produce mutual understanding and success. The result is her new book Become an Analytic Translator, and an online course. According to McKinsey there will be a need for 2-4 million analytic translators in the next decade.  Dr. Lynch hopes to train many data professionals to fill those positions.