2018

TDWI Advanced
Analytics Maturity
Model Guide
Interpreting Your
Assessment Score
By Fern Halper
Research Sponsors

Research Sponsors
TDWI RESEARCH

2018

TDWI Advanced Table of Contents

Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Analytics Maturity About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Model Guide About TDWI Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Sponsor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Interpreting Your Assessment Score Foreword from the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
What Is Advanced Analytics and Why Is It Important? . . . . . . . 4
Trends in Predictive Analytics/Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . 5
Value of an Advanced Analytics Maturity Model . . . . . . . . . . 6
Model Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Stages of Maturity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Stage 1: Limited Support for Advanced Analytics . . . . . . . . . . 8
Stage 2: Momentum Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Stage 3: Advanced Analytics Takes Hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
The Inflection Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Stage 4: Maturity Builds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Stage 5: Mature/Visionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Evaluating Benchmark Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Scoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

© 2018 by TDWI, a division of 1105 Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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This report is based on independent research and represents TDWI’s

findings; reader experience may differ. The information contained in
this report was obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the
time of publication. Features and specifications can and do change
frequently; readers are encouraged to visit vendor websites for updated
information. TDWI shall not be liable for any omissions or errors in the
information in this report.

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TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model Guide

About the Author

FERN HALPER is vice president and senior director of TDWI Research for advanced analytics. She is
well known in the analytics community, having been published hundreds of times on data mining
and information technology over the past 20 years. Halper is also coauthor of several Dummies
books on cloud computing and big data. She focuses on advanced analytics, including predictive
analytics, text and social media analysis, machine learning, AI, cognitive computing, and big data
analytics approaches. She has been a partner at industry analyst firm Hurwitz & Associates and a
lead data analyst for Bell Labs. Her Ph.D. is from Texas A&M University. You can reach her by email
(fhalper@tdwi.org), on Twitter (twitter.com/fhalper), and on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/fbhalper).

About TDWI Research

TDWI Research provides research and advice for data professionals worldwide. TDWI Research
focuses exclusively on data management and analytics issues and teams up with industry thought
leaders and practitioners to deliver both broad and deep understanding of the business and technical
challenges surrounding the deployment and use of data management and analytics solutions. TDWI
Research offers in-depth research reports, commentary, inquiry services, and topical conferences as
well as strategic planning services to user and vendor organizations.

Sponsor
OpenText sponsored the research for this TDWI Guide and its accompanying Interactive
Assessment Tool.

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 Foreword

Foreword from the Author

This is an exciting time for advanced analytics. Organizations are collecting increasing amounts of
disparate data. They are looking to advanced analytics technologies such as predictive analytics and
machine learning to help them gain insight and become more competitive. In fact, TDWI research
indicates that a top driver for those already using these techniques is competitive advantage. We
often see organizations enhancing their data infrastructure to support advanced analytics. They
are appointing chief analytics officers and forming centers of excellence to support the movement
to more sophisticated techniques. Vendors are also working hard in this ecosystem to make their
tools easier to use, providing intuitive GUIs and intelligence inside the software to help guide even
nontechnical users to insight more rapidly using advanced analytics.
Big data is a part of this move to advanced analytics. In order to make big data analytics work,
organizations are looking for platforms that are optimized for iterative big data analysis. This
includes platforms with prebuilt algorithms and data stores that can support advanced analytics.
Often these platforms are part of a multiplatform environment that includes newer technologies such
as data lakes or cloud data stores that can support large amounts of disparate data. The platforms are
often hybrid in nature.
Of course, analytics maturity is more than just adoption. Analytics maturity is about the evolution
of an organization to integrate, manage, and leverage all relevant internal and external data sources
for key decision points. Likewise, advanced analytics maturity is not just about the technology. It
also includes the cultural and organizational processes that enable companies to become more data-
driven. This includes organizational structures as well as the processes for a wide range of people to
manage, govern, and utilize the data and analysis.
TDWI is well known for its maturity models and assessment tools. In early 2014, we created a big
data maturity model to help organizations understand how their big data deployments compared
with those of their peers and how they could advance with analytics. The next year we created an
analytics maturity model. We then developed two readiness assessments: one for IoT readiness and
the other for Hadoop readiness. We recently completed a self-service maturity model.
We are excited to offer a maturity model for advanced analytics, with a focus on predictive analytics
and machine learning, because it is such an important market trend.

Fern Halper,
VP and Senior Director for Advanced Analytics
TDWI Research

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TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model Guide

What Is Advanced Analytics and Why

Is It Important?
Advanced analytics provides algorithms for complex analysis of either structured or unstructured
data. It includes sophisticated statistical models, machine learning, neural networks, text analytics,
advanced visualization, and other advanced data mining techniques. Excitement is growing around
these techniques as more organizations start to see their value. For example, at TDWI, we see that
predictive analytics and machine learning are at the top of the list of every survey we conduct about
organizational plans for analytics. Additionally, we see in our research those organizations that have
implemented advanced analytics tend to be more satisfied with their analytics program than those
that have not.
At TDWI, we see that Advanced analytics is being deployed in a range of use cases across business units and industries,
predictive analytics especially as data types and volume increase. One of the top use cases for advanced analytics we
and machine learning see at TDWI is predictive analytics to understand customer or operational behavior. Statistical as
are at the top of the well as machine learning models are used to find patterns in this data. Marketing and operations
list of every survey are two departments where predictive analytics is used frequently. For instance, organizations are
about organizational building models to predict churn or fraud, and we often see predictive analytics used to detect
plans for analytics. issues in operational systems before they become problems. This can involve real-time analysis of big
machine-generated data, aka data from the Internet of Things (IoT). These models are often put into
production to automatically score new data as it becomes available.
We also see organizations using text analytics to understand unstructured data. In this scenario, text
is viewed as another form of data. Organizations might use text analytics to extract entities, concepts,
or sentiments to use in conjunction with other “structured” data sources to perform analysis. They
might use machine learning techniques for natural language processing (NLP).
There is clearly value to be gained from advanced analytics. In fact, at TDWI we consistently see
that organizations that become more sophisticated with analytics are more likely to measure top- or
bottom-line impact. In many ways, the use of advanced analytics is part of a success cycle: As
organizations see success with their analytics program, they start to do more. As they do more and
as they gain more experience, they tend to see positive results. This success builds on itself and is
perhaps one reason why those that are more analytically advanced tend to be more satisfied and
measure impact. In other words, there is tangible value to having a mature program.
Of course, though the benefits and the value of advanced technologies should help sell projects,
there are still numerous challenges to getting started. Those include cost, executive support, and
finding skills. There are more difficulties once organizations are using predictive analytics—such as
putting models into production. These challenges often prevent organizations from growing in their
advanced analytics efforts and often we see them stagnating as they move from using visual analytics
to predictive analytics. Later in this guide we discuss some of the best practices for moving from one
stage of maturity to the next.

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 What Is Advanced Analytics and Why Is It Important?

Trends in Predictive Analytics/Machine Learning

Although challenges exist, organizations are extremely interested in advanced analytics technologies. Because data scientists
TDWI expects these technologies to continue to grow in importance. Some of the important trends and statisticians are
in this space include: often in short supply,
• AUTOMATED MODEL BUILDING. Because data scientists and statisticians are often in short supply, many vendors are
many vendors are offering tools that help business analysts and even business users construct offering tools that
predictive models. In some tools, all users need to do is supply the target or outcome variables help business analysts
of interest along with the attributes that they believe are predictive. The software picks the and even business
best model. Some tools even generate derived attributes such as popular ratios to use as model users construct
input. A number of these tools provide details about the statistics and math used; some do not. predictive models.
Although early in adoption, this is a growing trend.

Machine Learning and Advanced Analytics

Numerous tools can be considered advanced analytics, including geospatial and
location intelligence, stream mining, and cognitive computing. The focus of this
maturity model is on predictive analytics and machine learning techniques.
Predictive analytics consists of statistical and machine learning algorithms that are
used to determine the probability of future outcomes using historical data. Some
people think of machine learning as being completely different from predictive
analytics, but machine learning techniques are often used in predictive analytics.
The methods around machine learning originated in the field of computation science
a few decades ago. In machine learning, systems learn from data to identify patterns
with minimal human intervention. The computer learns from examples, typically
using either supervised or unsupervised approaches. In supervised learning, the system
is given a target (also known as an output or label) of interest. The system is trained on
these outcomes using various attributes (also called features). In unsupervised learning,
there are no outcomes specified. Popular use cases include churn and fraud analysis,
which are also popular for statistical approaches. Popular machine learning techniques
include decision trees, neural networks, naïve Bayes classifiers, and clustering. Many in
our TDWI surveys also cite regression as an important machine learning technique.
Part of the market hype around machine learning includes its subset, deep learning,
which uses algorithms to learn functions that can classify complex patterns such as
images. Some deep learning algorithms, such as artificial neural networks, have input
nodes and a number of hidden layers that act as a kind of “black box” to model one
or more output nodes. Whereas early neural networks could not recognize complex
patterns, algorithmic advances in the last decade or so, together with the availability
of vast compute power, have made deep learning feasible as well as more accurate than
some thought possible. This has spurred greater interest in deep learning for audio,
image, and text classification. Much of the hype around AI comes from deep learning.

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TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model Guide

• OPEN SOURCE. Open source has become quite popular, especially for big data and data science,
because it is a low-cost source community for innovation. This appeals to many data scientists
and analytics application developers—especially those who like to code. Although open source
analytics tools such as R have been in use for decades, they exploded on the scene anew with
the advent of data science. Python, an interpreted, interactive, easy-to-read, object-oriented
scripting language, has gained steam over the past few years as well. Many commercial software
vendors now fully embrace open source, integrating Python and R into their environments.
• DEEP LEARNING. With the advent of big data, machine learning techniques have become more
popular. Additionally, much of the market buzz around machine learning is tied up with a subset
called deep learning. Deep learning, as mentioned earlier, is gaining steam as organizations are
interested in using it to classify unstructured data such as text, images, and sound.
• MULTIPLATFORM ENVIRONMENTS. As organizations collect and want to make use of increasing
types and volumes of data, they are looking to other platforms aside from the data warehouse
to support this. The data warehouse is becoming part of a multiplatform environment, which
often includes a data lake for housing and exploring “new” kinds of data. These lakes often have
areas for different kinds of analytics workers to explore the data. The cloud is an important part
of this ecosystem as well. Other platforms such as columnar stores and appliances are also part
of this emerging environment.
• PERSONA-DRIVEN INTERFACES. As more people in the organization use advanced analytics and
machine learning, vendors are building platforms to support different personas. For instance,
a data scientist might want a notebook-based environment on which to develop a machine
learning model. A business analyst might want a graphical user interface. DevOps and business
users may want to see something different. Some of today’s platforms support these multiple
personas with different user interfaces but with integrated data access.
• AUTOMATION. As models are put into production, they are often being used to automatically
take action based on the insights—such as in personalized medicine, predictive maintenance, or
simply to kick off any business process or alert that can be operationalized. Often, these models
are embedded in applications to reap the benefits key data points bring to a business. Here,
there is almost no human intervention. These kinds of automated predictive/machine learning
models are part of the next wave of digital transformation for enterprises.
• EMBEDDED ANALYTICS. In line with automation, we also see movement toward embedded
machine learning and predictive analytics. For many years, organizations have been embedding
dashboards and visualizations in their products. They now want to add forward-looking
analysis such as predictive and even prescriptive analytics into these products as well.

Value of an Advanced Analytics Maturity Model

The maturity model TDWI research indicates that although organizations want to use more advanced analytics, the
provides a framework market is still relatively immature—in the early adoption/early mainstream phase for some
for companies to tools (such as predictive analytics) but still very early on for others (such as deep learning). Yet,
understand where they organizations see these technologies as opportunities and want to adopt them in the majority of cases.
are, where they’ve been, However, even though many organizations are deploying reports, dashboards, and even self-service
and where they still need visual analytics, they are struggling to move past descriptive to predictive analytics.
to go in their advanced The Advanced Analytics Maturity Model can help guide business and IT professionals on their
analytics and machine analytics journey. It provides a framework for companies to understand where they are, where
learning deployments. they’ve been, and where they still need to go in their predictive analytics and machine learning

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 What Is Advanced Analytics and Why Is It Important?

deployments. The model can also provide guidance for companies at the beginning of their processes
by helping them understand best practices used by enterprises more mature in their deployments.
A great feature of TDWI maturity models is the interactive benchmark assessment. At the end of the
survey, you will be able to quantify the maturity of your advanced analytics efforts in an objective
way, understand your progress, and identify what it will take to get to the next level of maturity. This
guide is designed to help you understand the phases of maturity in advanced analytics as well as help
you interpret your benchmarking scores.

Model Dimensions

Figure 1: TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model framework.

The assessment asks 50 questions across the five categories that form the dimensions of the TDWI
Advanced Analytics Maturity Model (see Figure 1). Participants are asked about their:
• ORGANIZATION. Organizational issues are often more difficult to overcome than technology
issues in analytics deployments. That is why they are so important for maturity. This dimension
of the maturity model examines the extent to which the organizational strategy, culture, and
leadership support a successful advanced analytics program. For instance, is the analytics
strategy part of your organizational strategy? Has there been an impact from analytics? How are
your leaders supporting more advanced analytics?
• DATA INFRASTRUCTURE. Data is a key component of any advanced analytics initiative. This
dimension examines how advanced and coherent the data architecture is in support of
analytics initiatives. Does your organization use newer technologies to support performance
requirements? How well does your company manage its structured and unstructured data in
support of your advanced analytics? How does your organization deal with management and
processing issues? How far along is it in terms of integration and access? Is your architecture
cohesive and coherent?
• RESOURCES. Performing advanced analytics such as machine learning requires skills and budget.
This section examines how an enterprise funds its advanced analytics projects. It asks questions

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TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model Guide

such as: Who is doing the work? How does your organization grow talent and build skills? How
does it organize to execute? Does it have the funding in place for new platforms and tooling?
• ANALYTICS. This dimension examines the scope of analytics deployments, including the kinds
of analytics utilized and how analytics is delivered. Organizations more mature in terms of
their analytics deployments often move past predictive analytics to other kinds of analytics and
deploy models into new systems such as streams. Additional questions include: Are analytics
embedded into your business processes? Are automated analytics part of the picture? In this
dimension, the assessment also examines model management.
• GOVERNANCE. A good governance program is key to advanced analytics success. This includes
data as well as analytics governance. This dimension examines how coherent your company’s
data governance strategy is in support of your analytics program. Is your company able to
manage users’ data discovery and analytics explorations effectively without applying too many
restrictions and getting in the way of their pursuit of insight? What about analytics governance?
Are policies and processes in place? Is someone in charge? What guardrails or controls are in
place to ensure that “correct” models are deployed into production?

Stages of Maturity
Stage 1: Limited Support for Advanced Analytics

In the Limited Support In this stage, organizations may be using self-service visualizations for business analysis, but also
stage, there is little to no make heavy use of dashboards and reports. Here, there is little to no support from executives for
support from executives predictive analytics/machine learning. Some executives feel threatened by it. Others are simply not
for advanced analytics there yet or don’t understand the value the technology can provide or what’s involved. That is not to
or machine learning. say that they won’t eventually come on board; it is just not happening yet.
The data warehouse is the platform of choice for reporting, dashboards, and visualizations. Although
there may be some collaboration happening between business and IT for self-service analytics, more
advanced analytics (self-service or otherwise) has not yet taken hold. Some characteristics in this
stage include:
• ORGANIZATION. It is typical to see IT and other line staff responsible for data management and
deploying analytics solutions. Depending on the organization, there may be tension between
business and IT because they are not collaborating well on analytics. IT may be overwhelmed
by the requests they are receiving—especially if they are for more advanced analytics, which
they are not yet in a position to address. Although organizations at this stage may believe they
have obtained a top- or bottom-line impact with their analytics efforts, they haven’t actually
measured this. Additionally, analytics is not part of the overall corporate strategy.

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 Stages of Maturity

• DATA INFRASTRUCTURE. IT typically has a data management strategy in place that consists of a
data warehouse for structured data. The data warehouse supports dashboards, reporting, and
visual analytics. It is not necessarily set up to support iterative analysis, which is necessary for
techniques such as machine learning. There are no newer platforms in place such as a data lake.
There may be a content management system in the organization, but that does not integrate
with the data warehouse. If the business has its own data sources for a business activity, they are
typically siloed for advanced analysis, which is often done by bringing spreadsheets together. It
is a long undertaking to assemble a data set for analysis.
• RESOURCES. Those who understand advanced analytics are mostly in IT or specialty areas
such as finance or risk assessment. Finance may be running predictive analytics models
utilizing spreadsheets, for instance. There may be a few other people across the organization
who understand more advanced analytics, but they are not yet performing any analysis. Any
leadership is typically BI focused. Additionally, the funding does not yet exist to put an
advanced analytics program in place—from either a tools or a talent perspective.
• ANALYTICS. In the limited support stage, most analysis is descriptive. These descriptive analytics
might be embedded into dashboards. Although predictive analytics and machine learning are
not yet on the radar, in many organizations, employees are thinking that they need to move
beyond descriptive analytics based on reporting, dashboards, and visualizations. They want to
be more proactive in their analytics efforts. For example, an organization may want to better
understand its customers, although no real business questions that require predictive analytics
or machine learning have been formulated.
• GOVERNANCE. During the limited support stage, IT manages most organizational data. Typically,
in early stages of maturity, data security and privacy are well governed, but organizations may
be weak in other areas of data and analytics governance. For instance, there may not be policies
(or platforms) in place that deal with data access rights. This makes the business dependent on
IT for obtaining data. On the analytics front, there are no controls in place for models built
using spreadsheets, or if they do exist, they are on a business unit level.
When organizations move out of this stage, one of several things typically happens. Sometimes a
new executive comes on board to lead the advanced analytics effort or individuals/groups start to
look into more advanced analytics. Sometimes an existing executive makes a push. Often, this starts
when organizations realize they really do need to understand customers or operational behaviors in
order to solve a business problem that is plaguing the company. In other words, advancing analytics
becomes an organizational imperative.

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TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model Guide

Stage 2: Momentum Begins

In the Momentum Begins Momentum around predictive analytics begins to build in this stage. This may start as a few groups
stage, leadership starts of people using a cloud-based tool on a small scale for advanced analytics. Alternatively, it might
to get interested in start with the organization hiring a few data scientists to build predictive models. By the end of this
predictive analytics and phase, there may be the beginnings of an advanced analytics group or even a center of excellence that
the organization starts to includes model-building capabilities.
hire a few data scientists
• ORGANIZATION. Leadership often begins to get interested in predictive analytics/machine
to build predictive
models, often as a POC.
learning. An executive may be frustrated because decisions are being made in the absence
of sophisticated insights—which may be driven by some performance metrics that can’t be
explained. The executive might come from an outside organization that is more analytically
advanced. Movement begins that may involve a proof of concept (POC) against a well-known
business problem or other low-hanging fruit for analysis. The business might work together
with IT and start developing a business strategy for advanced analytics.
• DATA INFRASTRUCTURE. The company typically has a well-defined data warehouse or several data
marts to support its reporting and dashboard efforts. The enterprise typically supports some
self-service descriptive analytics that is used by business analysts. Although structured data is
still the predominant type of data used for analytics, it is getting large. Disparate data types,
such as log files, may be part of the equation. As excitement builds, companies realize that they
need to start developing a data strategy beyond the warehouse to deal with this data as well as
to support the more advanced analytics that is coming down the pike. That might include a
data lake or a move to the cloud. However, at this stage the data warehouse is typically used for
predictive analytics.
• RESOURCES. There are at most a few quantitative staff members (such as statisticians, a data
scientist, or a sophisticated business analyst) looking to build models. The organization may be
funding a POC, but it is limited in scope and might require outside consulting or professional
services if the organization has yet to hire its own data scientists. Additionally, the organization
has either not yet invested heavily in advanced analytics software or not yet provided the people,
processes, and backing to derive significant benefit from it.
• ANALYTICS. A business in this stage has already invested in a visual analytics tool for descriptive
analytics, but it is now hoping to take on more sophisticated analyses. This might involve
a few people in different organizations starting to use low-cost tooling (in the cloud or on
premises) and perhaps some open source software to build a predictive model. As small
projects demonstrate positive results, the organization sees greater potential analytics value.
However, at this stage, models are not operationalized as part of a business process. In fact,
many organizations at this stage have not even thought about what it takes to put a model into
production. The model is simply used to drive some insights—about customers, operations, and
so on. These are only the first insights that organizations might derive from data.

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 Stages of Maturity

• GOVERNANCE. During this stage of maturity, a company will typically have a data steward in
place. The enterprise may be building out its data governance team that will include members
of IT as well as business stakeholders. This is critical in order for an organization to mature
with analytics. Security and privacy policies are most likely in place for data. However, the
organization may not have thought through how to handle big data security when disparate data
sources are involved. A limited number of people may have access rights to the data infrastructure,
but the organization has most likely not begun to think about analytics governance.
There are several keys to moving from this stage of maturity to the next. One is to get started with
projects that can illustrate impact. This may mean building a model in a POC that gets better results
than what the organization has seen by simply utilizing descriptive statistics. Another important best
practice is to make sure the results are measured and publicized. This helps to ensure that others start
to get excited, too. A third best practice is to set realistic expectations. This can be difficult, especially
when executives see progress, but it is critical. Finally, many organizations make the mistake of not
beginning to think through production details when they first start to build models. This often leads
to a situation where, when the time comes to put a model into production, there is no team in place
to do so. TDWI has seen situations where it can take six to nine months or longer to put a model
into production under these circumstances.

Stage 3: Advanced Analytics Takes Hold

By this stage, an expansion strategy begins to take hold. Organizations realize the power of In the Advanced Analytics
predictive analytics to drive insights. More projects are underway. The critical factor in this stage is Takes Hold Stage, the
to make sure that the organization can support the move to advanced analytics. That means hiring organization makes
the right people and getting the right infrastructure in place. It is also means thinking through how the move to support
to take action on analytics. predictive analytics and
put it into production.
• ORGANIZATION. By this stage, a leader for predictive analytics either emerges from the existing
organization (having perhaps led existing analytics efforts) or is hired or designated by the
executive leadership team, following more serious interest in the initiative. Titles include chief
digital or analytics officer and director/VP of analytics or data science. No matter what title is
chosen, this person is responsible for the advanced analytics strategy of the organization as well
as driving toward analytics that has an impact. This is who the CEO or other senior leadership
calls on for updates, so this person also becomes the chief spokesperson for more advanced
analytics, evangelizing it and garnering needed collaboration from other groups (which may
have vocal contributors on the theme or might need encouragement to get it in place). To help
achieve the vision, enterprises often use road shows where leads show groups what is possible.
The culture begins to move to embrace advanced analytics, including applications of machine
learning, across the organization. Business teams who use the output from the models (and not
simply the teams building the models) are becoming part of the strategic approach.

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• DATA INFRASTRUCTURE. Multiple data types are collected and managed routinely and
sometimes used in analytics—and the architecture is beginning to reflect this. In this stage,
the organization will typically start to build out a modern data architecture to support high
volumes of new data types. This often involves moving to the cloud or building a data lake. A
multiplatform data architecture that integrates data from disparate data sources for analysis is often
in the works. This involves multiple data pipelines and a coherent architecture that is beginning to
be put in place during this stage of maturity. Some organizations with advanced visual analytics
capabilities may have already started to implement a multiplatform data architecture.
• RESOURCES. As advanced analytics and model building takes hold, it will be important to have
the right skills in place. This includes a range of people from architects to data scientists and
DevOps who may be borrowed or graduated from existing teams and/or hired new. As such,
training is also important here and the funding starts to become more formally available for
in-house as well as external training, although some organizations might still be partially flying
by the seat of their pants. Other companies create or build upon a center of excellence that
can provide expertise and training to those looking for it, as well as usher processes and action
across internal divisions.
• ANALYTICS. Organizations might be using a variety of methods to build predictive models. For
instance, data scientists are building the models along with statisticians and other quantitative
personnel. They might be using commercial as well as open source tools for model building (still
typically against structured data). However, the organization might also be using other advanced
analytics (such as social media or text analysis) to begin to get a handle on unstructured text.
They may be thinking about mining stream data or even putting models into production against
a stream (such as in an IoT use case), although they are only beginning to do this.
Business analysts might be learning new skills as well as evaluating easy-to-use tools for building
models. Some organizations may start to use platforms that support multiple personas, as
mentioned earlier. Typically, as organizations move out of this stage of maturity, they are more
often putting their models into production. Either the data scientists are doing it themselves or
they are beginning to work with another team such as DevOps and/or a formal or deputized
data engineer. This includes embedding models into databases, systems, applications, and
processes so users can take action on them.
• GOVERNANCE. A company at this stage of maturity typically has some data governance in place.
This will include policies around access rights for certain people to gather the data they need
for analysis. There will likely be a data steward in place and perhaps a data governance team.
However, the organization needs to move to put analytics governance in place as well. Analytics
governance will help establish the policies and practices that control models put into production,
as well as manage and monitor those models, including policies for handling version control
and recalibrating models in production.

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 Stages of Maturity

The Inflection Point

Some best practices to move past stage three and through the inflection point to becoming mature
include the following. First, organizations need to fund training efforts. Supporting more advanced
analytics such as predictive analytics and machine learning will require skills in architecture, model
building, and model management. It will also require skills in more advanced techniques. The
organization will need to fund the development or hiring of these skills. Second, the organization
will need to commit to a change management program. In an analytically mature organization, the
nature of how people do their work may change. For example, a call center agent might utilize a
model for a next-best offer. A line supervisor may get an alert that a part needs to be taken offline
for maintenance. The people in the organization need to be able to buy into and trust the process.
Finally, governance will be key as organizations move to become more mature and put more models
into production.

Stage 4: Maturity Builds

In this stage, users are becoming more adept at predictive analytics. They are working with more data In the Maturity Builds
sources and doing deeper analytics, using techniques such as deep learning. Some key characteristics stage, organizations
are that the culture supports experimentation with analytics and that data management platforms are putting their models
support disparate data types. Another important characteristic of this stage is that organizations are into production and
putting models into production, and their process involves a team of people building, deploying, and they have a process for
monitoring these models. doing so that involves
a team of people
• ORGANIZATION. By now, analytics has become part of the overall corporate strategy. The
building, deploying, and
company begins to depend on analytics to make decisions and on advanced analytics to tackle
monitoring these models.
bigger projects and drive insight and action. Executives set the vision and the tone for advanced
analytics and other leaders across the organization drive day-to-day changes. Some risk taking
becomes an acceptable part of company culture, especially with an experimentation mentality
about new analytics ideas (succeed or “fail fast,” then move on to other ideas or approaches).
The company has processes in place to measure the impact of its analytics and is seeing positive
results. Employees across the company are using data models that have been embedded in
systems and applications for line-of-business users to do their jobs more effectively.
• DATA INFRASTRUCTURE. A range of technologies might be used, including Hadoop, streaming
platforms, and appliances or a data warehouse, both on-premises and in the cloud. The
infrastructure is meant to scale to support high volumes and diversity of data. The information

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architecture is unified in a way that underpins analytics. The company is thinking in terms
of multinode, multiplatform data architecture that encourages innovation and enables users to
explore new types of data on a variety of platforms for analysis. For example, a data lake might
be in place for data scientists to use to iterate and discover patterns. The lake is well managed so
it is not a data swamp.
• RESOURCES. The company is invested in helping those in the organization get the training they
need and grow their skills in advanced analytics. This includes internal and external training
opportunities. For instance, the organization might fund training for a business analyst who
wants to utilize sophisticated techniques within machine learning. A DevOps person might
want to become a full-time data engineer or might just need training on APIs and other
tools to put models into production. The funding is also in place to support a modern data
infrastructure that is typically multiplatform. Roles and responsibilities around analytics
become clearly defined—from data architecture to data engineering and DevOps.
• ANALYTICS. At this point, models are operationalized as part of a business process. Data is
flowing through models that provide insights and suggest (or even automatically take) action.
This may occur even at the edge of a network, such as in IoT use cases. Analytics tools are often
persona driven, with different interfaces for different users. Tools also address the complete
analytics life cycle, including model management and monitoring. Mature organizations have
a good handle on how to get their models into production as well as how to monitor them
for degradation once in production. This includes building analytics apps that might use
machine learning algorithms. Additionally, they are making use of more advanced algorithms
for predictive analytics, such as IoT, deep learning, NLP, and other facets of AI. If the use
case makes sense, they will use these techniques on many data types—for instance, classifying
images or sounds. Finally, they are expanding their analytics arsenal to include advanced
analytics beyond machine learning.
• GOVERNANCE. In this stage of maturity, different stakeholders from across the business are
working together to set the policies and the processes for both data and analytics governance.
The group meets regularly to review new issues. DevOps (or a similar group) is able to monitor
models in production. It is a delicate balance to make sure that users have access to the data
they need and authoring rights while maintaining data integrity and compliance.
Of course, companies are never truly finished on their analytics journey, but the organization at this
stage should be proud. It is utilizing a variety of analytics to solve a range of problems. Its governance
processes are in place. This is a solid state of maturity.

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 Stages of Maturity

Stage 5: Mature/Visionary

Only a few companies can be considered visionary in terms of predictive analytics and machine Visionary companies
learning. Typically, these companies have a culture of analytics and some have transformed their have a culture of
business models based on best practices as well as innovation. Digital transformation (not just analytics and some
analytics transformation) is well underway. have transformed their
business models based
• ORGANIZATION. Visionary companies share several characteristics. First, executives have bought
on best practices as
into advanced analytics and view it as critical to competitive success. Second, many of these
well as innovation.
companies can actually measure the impact of their analytics efforts. These organizations have
a culture that is not risk-averse and believes in experimentation. It is collaborative in nature.
Analytics is a way of daily life with these organizations, whether it is creating, consuming, or
looking for new opportunities for analytics.
• DATA INFRASTRUCTURE. A coherent data infrastructure is in place that supports experimentation
and discovery. This is most likely a hybrid environment that consists of on-premises and cloud
deployments. It is architected to be hybrid to support analysis of disparate data types that are
both internal and external to the company. Most visionary companies are utilizing big data and
have at least a few implementations that are real-time in scope.
• RESOURCES. The visionary company has made a commitment to predictive analytics and
machine learning and has approved funding to execute on its vision. It is also organized to
execute. For instance, it may have innovation teams to try out new ideas and bring products
to market. These organizations often hold Kaggle-like competitions or analytics conferences to
spur innovation, share learnings, and incentivize employees.
• ANALYTICS. Users in visionary companies have access to a range of analytics techniques
and platforms. The key is to act on analytics and automate analytics where possible. These
companies are embedding analytics, which may include embedding predictive analytics
and machine learning into applications they provide to customers or partners. The different
personas using more advanced analytics each have their own interface that maximizes their
skills and efficiencies (e.g., notebook for data scientist, GUI for business analyst), and the
environments are integrated for seamless pushing of work between them. Control processes are
in place to make sure valid models are maintained and any decay is routinely addressed.
• GOVERNANCE. Data and analytics governance are well established. This includes security and
privacy, policies, processes, structure, and controls. For example, data access policies are clear
and in place at the company level and business unit level, including rules around viewing
versus editing to be completely compliant with confidential data (e.g., HR or HIPAA). Model
deployment processes are in place in the organization. For example, models must be checked for
unethical impact (e.g., racial bias) and always checked against fresh sample data sets before they
are put into production. Security policies have been thought through and operationalized.
Of course, analytics maturity is a continual evolution. As circumstances change, organizations will
need to adapt their analytics strategies accordingly.

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Evaluating Benchmark Scores

The benchmark survey has 50 questions across the five categories that form the dimensions of the
TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model (see Figure 1).
These dimensions should now seem familiar because they are the same categories we have been
referencing throughout this guide. Of course, organizations can be at different stages of maturity in
each of these five categories, and most are.

Scoring
Questions may be weighted differently depending on their relative importance. Each dimension has
a potential high score of 20 points. Because organizations can be at different levels of maturity in the
five dimensions, we score each section separately as well as provide an overall score. There are also
questions that aren’t scored but rather used for best-practices guidance.
The output of the assessment is a score in each dimension and the total score, as well as a comparison
between your score and others in the same industry and company size.

Interpretation
Once you complete the survey, a report-based interface will show how your responses compare to
those of your peers. The breakdown of scores for each dimension is as follows:

SCORE PER DIMENSION STAGE

4 or less 1: Limited Support

5–10 2: Momentum Begins

11–15 3: Advanced Analytics Takes Hold

16–19 4: Maturity Builds

20 5: Mature/Visionary

For instance, if you receive a score of 11 in the organization dimension of the assessment, you are
in the Advanced Analytics Takes Hold stage for that dimension. You should expect to see different
scores for each dimension. Predictive analytics programs don’t necessarily evolve at the same rate
across all the dimensions. For example, your company might be more advanced in terms of bringing
analytics sources together than it is in analyzing them or governing this data.

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 Summary

When you complete the assessment, you might see scores like this:

DIMENSION SCORE STAGE

Organization 10 Momentum Begins

Resources 7 Momentum Begins

Data Infrastructure 11 Advanced Analytics Takes Hold

Analytics 4 Limited Support

Governance 7 Momentum Begins

Total Score: 7.8 (i.e., the average)

This means that you are more mature in your data infrastructure but less mature in the other areas.

Summary
The TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Assessment provides a quick way for organizations to assess
their maturity in predictive analytics/machine learning and compare themselves in an objective way
against others with analytics initiatives. The assessment is based on the TDWI Advanced Analytics
Maturity Model, which consists of five maturity stages with an inflection point between stages three
and four.
The assessment serves as a relatively coarse measure of your maturity. It consists of 50 questions
across five categories; this merely touches the surface of all of the complexities involved in building
out your analytics ecosystem. To gauge precisely where you are, you may also choose to work with an
independent source to validate your progress.

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TDWI Advanced Analytics Maturity Model Guide

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18  TDWI RESEARCH
 TDWI Research provides research and advice for data
professionals worldwide. TDWI Research focuses exclusively
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