Prashanth H. Southekal, Adjunct Professor of Data Analytics, IE Business School Shares His Significant Accomplishments and Goals for 2022

Prashanth H. Southekal, Founder and Managing Principal of DBP Institute and Adjunct Professor of Data Analytics at IE Business School (Spain) 

Introducing: Prashanth H. Southekal, Ph.D. Founder and Managing Principal, DBP Institute Adjunct Professor, Data Analytics IE Business School (Spain)

1. What were your greatest achievements in the year 2021, to be specific, or in the last two years, and why? 

The last two years were interesting for me because I was able to build more connections and offer data and analytics services to the community. This is mainly because COVID brought talent closer. If you are working from home (WFH), it doesn’t matter if you are in Boston, Barcelona or Bangalore. This has created more opportunities, and we have delivered consulting and education projects in the U.S., the UK, the Netherlands, Greece, Vietnam, Dubai, and India in the last two years, which we did not do before COVID. 

When it comes my personal achievements in 2021, there are three things I am most proud of:

1. I trained over 1,000 business professionals in data and analytics. I am a strong supporter of citizen data scientists because I believe business professionals who are closer to data and business processes are in the best position to leverage data and analytics for improved business performance. Also, I received the IE teaching excellence award for the 2020-2021 academic year.

2. I collaborated with 15 data and analytics thought leaders, including Bill Inmon and Kirk Borne, and I released the book “Make AI & BI Work At Scale” in partnership with AtScale, a leading data and analytics company. 

3. After two years of research, I received a financial grant from National Research Council (NRC) of Canada to build the Data Profiler, the data quality assessment tool for data remediation. The DBP Data Profiler offers a holistic assessment report with 24 data quality KPIs along with recommendations for businesses to take remedial actions and fix the data quality in the organization.

2. What challenges are you facing in the data academic field? 

Data and analytics is an inter-disciplinary field that needs expertise in business, mathematics, social science, computer science, and more. I see two main challenges or areas that are not explored much by the research/academic community:

1. Data and analytics literacy. If data needs to be a core part of digital business, employees must have a basic ability to communicate and understand conversations about data. In fact, according to Gartner, data literacy is the second key reason (after data culture) that is preventing companies from becoming data driven. A data literacy survey by Accenture of more than 9,000 employees in a variety of roles found that only 21% were confident in their data literacy skills.

2. Educating leaders on the importance of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) in data management. One key element that is often missing in most ESG discussions is the impact of digital carbon footprint. Today, digital technologies are responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and the energy consumption from digital technologies is increasing by 9% a year. Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint because training an AI algorithm can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes. We talk a lot about improved business performance with AI, data and analytics, but we hardly discuss the impact of these technologies on the environment. We need more dialogues and more actions on managing the digital carbon footprint. 

3. What traits and qualities are required to be a successful academic data leader? 

 I believe academic and industry data leaders should:

• Be humble.  Developments in the data and analytics field are moving at a frantic pace, and you need to constantly learn to be relevant in the marketplace. However, one cannot be the best at everything, and you need to collaborate. And you can only collaborate with colleagues, industry experts, and even students, if you shun your egos and are humble. Also, being grateful for what you have helps one to be humble.

• Be authentic. Teaching is all about authenticity. This means you are true to your own personality and values. You should show your passion in your work.

• Be adaptable. Change is the only constant thing in life. Data leaders should be flexible, unbiased (leverage data over intuition wherever applicable), pivot smartly to proceed forward, and focus on continuous improvement. 

In my opinion, all these traits/qualities work only if you have a strong goal or purpose that you have WRITTEN down. Research shows that people with written goals are 30 times more successful that people with no written goals.

4. Tell us about your priorities in 2022. What are your key targets? 

As noted earlier, I wear two hats – Consultant and Educator. As part of growing my consulting business, DBP Institute, I am working on making the firm the first option for small and medium sized businesses ($10 million to $10 billion revenue) wanting to create their digital, data, and analytics futures. We have identified seven areas, and I am working on building these capabilities so that we can offer more value to our clients. We also have started a third service this year outside consulting and education — Data Quality Assessment. I am also focusing focus on taking this productised service to the market. 

As an educator, I am working on three projects. Firstly, I am writing a book for IDMA (Insurance Data Management Association) on data quality. This will be my third book (after “Data For Business Performance” and “Analytics Best Practices”) and should be available this spring. Secondly, I am working on training over 1,000 citizen data scientists. Thirdly, I have designed and developed a new eight-hour course —Building Monetizable Data Products — for TDWI. I look forward to launching this course in Chicago on May8. 

5. What advice would you offer aspiring academic leaders to help them prepare for the role? 

When I was at GE, my manager once said, “If you are selling gold in the onion market, it is your mistake. You cannot blame the customers who have come to buy onions.” In other words, you need to be in a place where your skills and knowledge are respected and valued. I would also advise aspiring academic leaders to build the three traits of the data leader (be humble, be authentic, be adaptable), supported by a strong written purpose statement.

Prashanth Southekal is the managing principal of DBP Institute (www.dbp-institute.com), a data and analytics consulting and education firm. He has consulted for over 75 organizations including P&G, GE, Shell, Apple, and SAP. Dr. Southekal is the author of two books — “Data for Business Performance” and "Analytics Best Practices” — and writes regularly on data, analytics, and machine learning in Forbes.com, FP&A Trends and CFO.University. Apart from his consulting pursuits, he has trained over 3,000 professionals worldwide in data and analytics. Dr. Southekal is also an adjunct professor of data analytics at IE Business School (Madrid, Spain) and an instructor with TDWI. He holds a Ph.D. from ESC Lille (FR) and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management (U.S.). He lives in Calgary, Canada with his wife, two children, and a high-energy Goldendoodle dog. Outside work, he loves juggling and cricket.

Prashanth H. Southekal is one of our Leading Academic Data Leaders in 2022. To discover the full list, click here now.