The Sentient Enterprise: The Evolution Of Business Decision Making

The continued explosion of data and the continued evolution of analytics capabilities will usher in the next analytics revolution beyond the Intelligent Enterprise. This book paints a provocative picture of the evolution of analytics capabilities toward an ideal state that the author calls “The Sentient Enterprise”. The Sentient Enterprise can listen to data to sense micro-trends, conduct analysis and make autonomous decisions with little or no human intervention at massive scale in real-time. It can act as one organism without being impeded by information silos. It is always evolving, with emergent intelligence that becomes progressively more sophisticated. This book describes the evolutionary journey of analytics capabilities that begins with today’s Agile Data Warehouse and culminates in the Sentient Enterprise. A framework is provided to assess ab organization’s progress along this journey and “next practices” that business leaders can harness to unlock the full potential of Big Data and analytics.

Oliver Ratzesberger is Executive Vice President & Chief Product Officer of Teradata Labs. He provides visionary direction for all research, development, and sales support activities related to Teradata integrated data warehousing, big data analytics, and associated solutions. He is an accomplished practitioner, thought leader, and popular speaker on using data and analytics to create competitive advantage – known as his Sentient Enterprise vision in his executive role, Ratzesberger spearheads technology investments and acquisitions. He and his team work with global customers, alliance partners, industry analysts, and academic researchers to understand the market, anticipate new requirements, and collaborate across the Teradata community.

Mohan Sawhney (Evanston, IL) is the McCormick Foundation Chair of Technology and Director, Center for Research in Technology and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He is a globally recognized scholar, author, and speaker in strategic marketing, IT, and e-business strategy. His research and teaching interests include marketing in the connected economy, IT and business value, customer-centric organization design and business innovation in large companies. He has been widely recognized as a thought leader. Business Week named him as one of the 25 most influential people in e-Business. Crain’s Chicago Business named him a member of “40 under 40”, a select group of young business leaders in the Chicago area. The Editors of Fortune Magazine invited him to their Brainstorm 2001 and 2002 conferences, as one of the “smartest people we know”. He is a Fellow of the prestigious World Economic Forum.