Wiley & sas business Series

      Human Capital 
                                          C
hange is inevitable and business analytics is a profession of 
change. The domain has and will continue to change—as our data 
grows exponentially, the real game is moving away from sheer 
brainpower to being able to harness and reduce complexity. Having 
the right answer is only the fi rst step. Without the right supporting 
systems to act on that answer, it ’s all wasted effort. 
 That doesn ’t necessarily preclude sophistication or highly advanced 
analytics. What it does instead is encourage focus on developing the 
right competencies, tasking people with the right objectives, and struc-
turing the organization in a way that allows it to foster, retain, and 
develop talent. By focusing in the right areas, the leadership team can 
hire the right people, establish the right incentives, drive effi ciencies, 
and nurture the right behaviors. 
 One of the reasons it ’s so hard to fi nd the right people is because 
of the breadth of the fi eld. Business analytics is a spectrum that ranges 
from relatively simple information management to highly special-
ized fi elds such as operations research or machine learning. Assuming 
 people with different skills are substitutable just because they work in 
“analytics” is a recipe for disaster. Much like building a house requires 
more than just a carpenter, most of these skills are not interchangeable. 
 That in itself is a challenge—without the right domain knowledge, 
hiring someone with highly specialized experience can be a shot in the 
dark. Complicating things further is that while analytics tends to focus 
Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation 
through Business Analytics by Evan Stubbs
Copyright © 2014 by SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

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B I G   D A T A ,   B I G   I N N O V A T I O N
on hard skills, business analytics requires both hard  and  soft skills. As a 
profession, business analytics is primarily about blending change man-
agement skills with technical domain knowledge. To help with build-
ing human capital, the rest of this chapter focuses on three things:
    1. 
 
What capabilities do I need? 
   2. 
 
How do I get the right people? 
   3. 
 
How do I keep them?   
 Reducing uncertainty during the hiring process is diffi cult. Luckily, 
though, there are a few things to be aware of that can help improve 
the odds of getting the right person. Getting off on the right foot starts 
with knowing what you ’re looking for. The rest of this chapter will 
answer these questions and lay the foundation for skills acquisition 
and development.