(US & Canada) VIDEO | Analytics Isn’t Plumbing and Shouldn’t Be Tied To Budgets — McKesson Director of Enterprise Analytics

Wendy Lawhead, Director of Enterprise Analytics at McKesson, speaks with Asha Saxena, Founder and CEO of WLDA.tech, in a video interview about the positives of using generative AI, its role in making organizations data-driven, organizational structure as an obstacle, and strategies to overcome the challenges to unlock the full potential of AI and ML.

At the onset of the discussion, Lawhead states that although there are risks associated with generative AI technologies, they will create new roles for people using them. She believes this technology could help free up people from certain tasks and provide an opportunity to contribute in new ways, by capitalizing on human value, creativity, and innovation.

While speaking about data-led organizational transformation, Lawhead notes that her first job as a marketing analyst taught her the importance of knowing customers. She saw how Harris Entertainment managed its customer database, understanding who the customers were, and what they liked. Further, she was shocked that at the time, other organizations were just beginning the process of learning about their customers.

Lawhead maintains that optimizing the cost and providing value to the customer are important, while also remaining profitable. This requires a robust analytics team that has good data quality, creating a win-win situation for the customer and the organization with the data.

Moving forward, Lawhead believes that organizational structure can be an obstacle for organizations when it comes to data and analytics, IT, and infrastructure. She stresses that it depends on how the organization invests in these concepts and states that it should not be considered equal to other infrastructure parts such as data plumbing. Accordingly, Lawhead reiterates that analytics is not plumbing and should not be tied to organizational budgets.

Furthermore, she believes that this disconnect creates a challenge for data science and analytics personnel who require technical infrastructure and platforms to access the data necessary for their work. Lawhead adds that the personnel spend a large amount of their time trying to obtain the resources they need from the IT infrastructure, justifying the investments, and getting access to new data sources.

To overcome this, she insists that high-level executive leadership must be provided to support infrastructure, tools, and the talent set. Additionally, to retain talent, the leadership must provide the tools needed to be successful in the roles, and add value to the business. Lawhead affirms that since data science roles are among the highest paid, failing to provide appropriate tools and data to the scientists will only lead to a waste of money.

When asked about AI’s role in making organizations more data-driven, Lawhead states that emerging generative AI is stimulating and is capturing the focus of many people in the tech industry. Nonetheless, most businesses persist in going through the typical modernization process, but not at a fast enough rate.

In her closing remarks, Lawhead argues there is further potential for ML and AI, and organizations need to surpass the modernization challenges to gain full advantages.

CDO Magazine appreciates Wendy Lawhead for sharing her insights with our global community.